{"id":6190,"date":"2014-06-08T06:01:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-08T12:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=6190"},"modified":"2014-06-06T16:18:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T22:18:21","slug":"the-boys-of-zimmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/the-boys-of-zimmer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boys Of Zimmer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/zim.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6191\" src=\"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/zim.jpg\" alt=\"zim\" width=\"600\" height=\"388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/zim.jpg 600w, https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/zim-300x194.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a>Former Cub manager Don Zimmer passed away Wednesday evening. \u00a0A baseball lifer, Zimmer started his career in professional baseball in 1949 and wore a uniform until earlier this year, when he underwent heart surgery and, sadly, never left the hospital.\u00a0 Zimmer first came to the Cubs as a player in 1960.\u00a0 He left for the Mets in the expansion draft after the 1961 season.<\/p>\n<p>In 1984, he returned to the North side as third base coach when his high school pal Jim Frey was named manager.\u00a0 The Cubs surpised everyone by winning their first division title and heading to the post-season for the first time since 1945.\u00a0 When Frey became the team&#8217;s general manager following the 1987 season, he hired Don Zimmer to be his manager.\u00a0 One year later, the so-called Boys of Zimmer led the Cubs to their second divisional title in 6 seasons.\u00a0 In 1991, after demanding a contract extension from\u00a0Tribune executive Donald Grenesko, Zimmer was fired.<\/p>\n<p>After leaving the Cubs, Zimmer bounced around a bit as a coach before teaming up with Joe Torre in New York for their string of 4 World Series titles in 5 seasons starting in 1996.\u00a0 He left the team in 2003 after, what else, an argument with George Steinbrenner.\u00a0 He had spent the last decade as a senior advisor for the Tampa Bay Rays.\u00a0 Starting in 2008, he was the last member of the Brooklyn Dodgers to still hold a field position.<\/p>\n<p>After 66 years in baseball, Don Zimmer leaves behind many friends and admirers.\u00a0 Nearly everyone involved in the game has a story about Zimmer, and they&#8217;ve all been retold over the past few days.\u00a0 Somewhere, I&#8217;m sure Zimmer would enjoy sitting around a clubhouse being part of those retellings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Cub manager Don Zimmer passed away Wednesday evening. \u00a0A baseball lifer, Zimmer started his career in professional baseball in 1949 and wore a uniform until earlier this year, when he underwent heart surgery and, sadly, never left the hospital.\u00a0 Zimmer first came to the Cubs as a player in 1960.\u00a0 He left for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[4799,120,116,1804,4800,4801,4798,4760,261,255,2971,51],"class_list":["post-6190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","tag-boys-of-zimmer","tag-cubs","tag-dodgers","tag-don-zimmer","tag-donald-grenesko","tag-george-steinbrenner","tag-jim-frey","tag-joe-torre","tag-mets","tag-rays","tag-tribune-company","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6190"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6194,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190\/revisions\/6194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}