YOUR 1966 BRAVES: #8 Billy Hitchcock

#8 BILLY HITCHCOCK
Bench Coach/Manager

What came before: One has to feel than Hitchcock was the fox in his proverbial henhouse when Hitchcock, a special scout for the Braves and a native Alabamian, was added by the Braves to his coaching staff as bench coach after Bragan had hired the others.
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Not that Hitch wasn't qualified; he had played for five major league teams between 1942-53 after being an all-SEC tailback at Auburn. After serving as the Tigers' third base coach from 1955-60 between AAA managerial stints, he'd managed the Baltimore Orioles for two seasons. He was fired after the 1963 season despite going 86-76 (things were different then!). He next oversaw Baltimore's minor league operation for a year, then became a Braves' scout.

That 1966 season: He accepted the managerial job after pitching coach Whitlow Wyatt turned it down. But it wasn't a controversial hire; he was a former Detroit teammate of GM Bill McHale and his right-hand man, Paul Richards. In Hitchcock's first game, the Braves defeated Sandy Koufax and the Dodgers 2-1 on a ninth-inning homer by Eddie Mathews. Denny Lemaster earned the win on a three-hitter, waiting out a two-hour, five-minute rain delay in the fourth inning (did we say things were different then?).
Hitchcock's Braves caught fire and went 33-18, moving from eighth to fifth.

What happened next: The promise of that fast finish was not realized in 1967. With Mathews traded, Joe Torre and Tony Cloninger next to useless all season, the team stumbled to a 77-85 record. Hitchcock would be fired with three games left in the season.
McHale had moved on to the expansion Montreal Expos and Hitchcock scouted for him from 1969-71.
He soon was named Southern League President in 1972 and helped the league take off by introducing split-season play. The league championship trophy is named after him. He'd serve until 1980, when he finally retired to his farm in Opelika.
In 2003, Auburn named its new baseball stadium Hitchcock Field and the same year, Baseball America named it the best college field in the nation.
Hitchcock passed away in 2006 at the age of 89.