YOUR 1966 BRAVES: #9 Bill Adair

#9 BILL ADAIR
Coach

What went before: Has been a better “company man” in baseball history? Adair's claims to would-be fame are as special as they are obscure: he manged farm clubs for the Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves; he managed in the minors for 21 seasons (encompassing 1949-73) and won nine pennants, including four straight from 1955-58; he played second base for 19 minor league seasons = but eight of those overlapped as a player manager from 1949-56.
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His first minor league managing assignment, for Owenboro in the legendary Kitty League, saw Adair has his own superstar: .353-20-120 in his best pro season.
His minor league playing career, which began in 1935, was interrupted only for World War II, where he saw action in France and Germany and came away with four Bronze Stars, among other decoratations.
He never even got a taste of the majors until 1962, when he good work managing the Braves' Austin farm club earned him a promotion and he was named to Birdie Tebbetts' coaching staff. But when Tebbetts bolted to the Cleveland Indians in 1963, he was not retained by new skipper Bobby Bragan and returned to the minors to pilot the Braves' top farm club, then in Toronto. He held that job capably when the Milwaukee Braves moved that Triple-A club to Atlanta for the 1965 season, and he led the final Crackers team to a fine 83-64 record and a second-place finish in the IL.

That 1966 season: Adair, now 53 years old, was comfortably back as a job he did well, managing the Braves' Triple-A club, which moved to Richmond after a year in Atlanta. It wasn't a bad year, except maybe by Adair standards (75-72, only good for fourth), but when it hit the fan in Atlanta, Adair got an unofficial promotion. When Bragan was fired, his sole personal coaching aide, Grover Resinger, also resigned in protest. Since Adair's minor league season was over, he became Resinger's de facto replacement, and an appreciative Billy Hitchcock added him to the staff for 1967.

What came next: Unfortunately, it was only another one-and-done stint for Adair, as Hitchcock was fired late in the season and his staff was not retained. Adair had seen and done enough for the Braves, and followed Paul Richards over to the Chicago White Sox, where he managed four more seasons in the minors. But in between, 1970, he was again promoted to the big league coaching staff of Don Gutteridge.
The White Sox were horrible in 1970, losing 107 games. Gutteridge was fired Sept. 3, and Adair became a major league manager for the first time. He went 4-6 before Chuck Tanner was hired on Sept. 14 and Adair's managing career was over with over 1,500 total wins. But he was far from retired; he became one of the top scouts in all of the minors, mostly for the Expos, for whom he signed Vladmir Guerrero and Tim Raines. Baseball named him Scout of the Year four times, finally retiring in 1991 only due to the onset of Alzheimer's.
He moved from Florida back to his beloved Mobile Bay, and passed away in 2002 at the age of 92.