Bobby Bragan

Robert Randall Bragan (born October 30, 1917, at Birmingham, Alabama) is a retired player, manager, and coach in American Major League Baseball. He also was an influential executive in minor league baseball. On August 16, 2005, Bragan came out of retirement to manage the independent Central League Fort Worth Cats for one game, making him - at 87 years, nine months and 16 days old - the oldest manager in professional baseball annals (besting by one week Connie Mack, the legendary and Hall of Fame skipper and part owner of the Philadelphia Athletics). Always known as an innovator with a sense of humor - and a world-class umpire-baiter - Bragan was ejected in the third inning of his "comeback" and enjoyed the rest of the 11-10 Cats' victory from a more comfortable vantage point.

During his major league career, Bragan never skippered a game past his 49th birthday. He managed the Pittsburgh Pirates (1956-57), Cleveland Indians (1958) and the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves (1963-66), each time getting fired in the mid-season of his final campaign (in Cleveland, he lasted a total of only 67 games of his maiden season before his dismissal). His career record in the major leagues was below .500: 443-478 (.481).

But Bragan was highly respected as a minor league pilot, winning championships in 1948-49 at Fort Worth of the AA Texas League during a successful five-year run, and with the 1953 Hollywood Stars of the Open-Classification Pacific Coast League. A photograph of Bragan lying at the feet of an umpire who had ejected him, still arguing, was published in LIFE Magazine at the time. Bragan also was a major league coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Colt .45s.

Bragan was a protégé of Branch Rickey, the Hall of Fame front office executive, who hired him as an unproven young manager at Fort Worth when both were with the Brooklyn Dodgers and then brought Bragan to Hollywood and Pittsburgh, where Rickey was general manager from 1951-55. Ironically, Bragan clashed with Rickey in 1947 over the Dodgers' breaking of the baseball color line after the major-league debut of Jackie Robinson. Bragan was one of a group of white players, largely from the American South, who signed a petition against Robinson's presence. He even asked Rickey to trade him. But Bragan quickly relented. "After just one road trip, I saw the quality of Jackie the man and the player," Bragan told mlb.com in 2005. "I told Mr. Rickey I had changed my mind and I was honored to be a teammate of Jackie Robinson." And as a manager, Bragan earned a reputation for fairness and "color-blindedness."

He began his seven-year (1940-44; 1947-48) major league playing career as a shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies, but by 1943, his first season with Brooklyn, he had learned how to catch and was a largely backup receiver for the Dodgers for the remainder of his MLB playing days. A righthanded batter, Bragan hit .240 in 597 games, with 15 career home runs.

In 1969, Bragan, a Fort Worth resident, began a new career chapter when he became president of the Texas League. He was so successful, in 1975 he was elected president of the minor leagues' governing body, the National Association of Professional Baseball Clubs. Bragan comes from a baseball family. His late brother Jimmy was a minor league player and longtime coach and scout in major league baseball who himself was president of the AA Southern League during the 1980s, and the younger generations of the Bragan family have owned and operated numerous minor league teams.