There have been player-managers throughout the history of baseball, including in the major leagues. However, the player-manager faded out over time as it was realized that the manager had to concentrate on so much that playing a position was a distraction. The last actual player manager was Pete Rose with the Reds in the mid-80s.
Interestingly, two current managers were player managers in the past: Joe Torre and Frank Robinson.
That’s an exception. Virtually all MLB managers are former players, but usually not top-level ones, or for the teams they now manage, and some of them didn’t make the major leagues as players at all. The theory is that players with marginal talent have to really learn the game, and how to deal with people, just to hold the jobs they love. That makes them better coaches and managers than players who just did it naturally well, didn’t have to learn all the nitty-gritty, and can be too impatient with players with less talent than they had. There are certainly exceptions, notably Frank Robinson.
The talent pool is even narrower, actually - the bulk of managers are former catchers or second basemen. A player at those positions always has to keep his mind in the game, always has something to do on every play, always has to know what everyone else is doing and how they’re doing it (well, 2B’s not as much as catchers, but still), and of course that translates well into managing. Pitchers, who make up nearly half the player roster, almost never become managers, by contrast - their involvement in, and knowledge of, the game is deep but just too narrow.
This is correct. Connie Mack began as a player (catcher, IIRC) and became “manager” (captain would have been a better term, but he was not a coach) around 1900. Playing manager, of course, they all were. He then started a team in the brand new American League (which was systematically referred to as the junior league while I was growing up) and thereby became an owner-player-manager. When he stopped playing, he became owner-manager. At that point, or some later point, he began wearing a suit. I can still see him standing at the top of dugout steps, holding a scorecard and watching the game intently. At some point, baseball passed a rule that only uniformed people could go on the field. There are obviously exceptions: grounds crew, trainers, umpires,… but that is the basic rule. So Connie Mack was never on the field during a game. He retired in 1950 and they immediately extended the uniform rule to the dugout. They also, at some later date, banned owner-managers as Ted Turner (and I) discovered when he tried to manage the braves. I have no idea why they felt such a rule was needed.
Incidentally, after Connie Mack died they erected a statue of him in that pose, wearing a suit, holding a lineup card and on a step and put it at 21st and Lehigh and, for all I know, it is still there (but no ballpark remains).
That was an ad hoc ruling by the commissioner of baseball (Bowie Kuhn at the time), who ruled that, since Turner had no managerial experience, his presence of the manager was detrimental to the game. (The commissioner does have the right to make rulings on that basis.)
There’s no rule against it; if Joe Torre bought the Yankees and decided to continue to manage, he could.
“Almost never” is a bit strong. It’s true that they’re proportionally underrepresented in the managerial ranks, but there have been several former pitchers who became major league managers. Among the top 100 managers of all time in terms of wins, Tommy Lasorda, Clark Griffith (who, like Connie Mack, was also an owner, and a player/manager, but was never all three at once), Fred Hutchinson, and Roger Craig were all pitchers, as were Walter Johnson, George Bamberger, Larry Dierker, Wild Bill Donovan, Eddie Dyer, Freddie Fitzsimmons, Kid Gleason (though he was also a solid major league infielder), Dallas Green, Burleigh Grimes, Mel Harder, Lum Harris, Clyde King, Marcel Lachemann, Bob Lemon, Eddie Lopat, Ted Lyons, Christy Mathewson, Kid Nichols, Mel Queen, Phil Regan, Larry Rothschild, and Bucky Walters, who all managed at least a couple of years in the majors. Orel Hershiser has been mentioned as a candidate for recent managerial openings, and consensus is that if Greg Maddux doesn’t decide to chuck baseball for good after he retires that he’d be an outstanding manager as well.
Does Nolan get any of that $250 Million? If not, he’s getting screwed.
If I read the rules posted by aktep correctly, there’s no restriction on a manager not in uniform going onto the field. The only restriction seems to be that he couldn’t be a base coach.