Baseball getting ready to lose a great one...

[Spence]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5759008&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines

I met him when I was a kid. Watched him manage a huge collection of ego's successfully. IMO he is the best ever.

[Eric]

That's unfortunate. I didn't really get a chance to appreciate the 84 Tigers or anything, but by all accounts he's immortalized in Tigers history along with Kaline, Harwell, etc. He was a great manager in Cincy too.

[Spence]

He was an ambassador to the game in the truest sense. I will miss him.

[donovan]

Those days, the eighties, were great to baseball. Sparky was entertaining and a great strategists. Had some great ball players, Bench was certainly one of the best. I remember when he and Stengel would go after it. One time he said, "“My idea of managing is giving the ball to Tom Seaver and sitting down and watching him work.”

[Spence]

That worked very well. Sparky was also the king of the understatement.

[Spence]

George Sparky Anderson died today. He was 76. RIP Sparky.

[donovan]

Sad day. Listen to Pete Rose on Sparky Anderson. Interesting.

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/player?rd=1#/podcenter/?autoplay=1&callsign=ESPNRADIO&id=5764813

[Spence]

Pete is always interesting if nothing else. The fact that Sparky could manage the large group of ego's and basically keep that team together so long, is amazing. Today half of the would be playing for the Yankee's after the '74 season.

[Brian Roastbeef]

And I see now another of baseball's greats has passed on in Bob Feller. To me, he wasn't even as notable for his pitching prowess with Cleveland back in the day or even his honorable readiness as one of the first to join the fight in WWII, as he was for his devotion to the fans in Cooperstown. There's something of a joke that it is actually harder down there to find a ball without Bob Feller's signature on it. He was always there, a friendly guy willing to chat with the fans about the older days of baseball, even kids like me who weren't even born for decades after he left the mound for good - even if I was a Yankee fan. RIP.

[donovan]

Yes...another childhood idol gone.