Dallas Green was large, and he was loud. People called him a “baseball man.” If you ever met him, you really didn’t have to hear anything else to know what that meant.
Green died Wednesday at age 82.
When I was 10 years old, I thought he was the greatest manager in history. He had just led my childhood team, the Phillies, to their first world championship in the 98-year history of the franchise. A curse-breaker before there ever was one.
When I was 19, I saw a game at Yankee Stadium for the first time — July 4, 1989.