told<\/a> The Times during the 1999 World Series. \u201cBut certainly, when we leave, we understand each other, and it hasn\u2019t been printed and nobody knows about it. At least most of the cases.\u201d<\/p>\nRobert Joe Cox was born on May 21, 1941, in Tulsa, Okla., and grew up in Selma, Calif., near Fresno. His father, J.T. Cox, was an electrician for a pump company, and his mother, Willie Mae (Hendrix) Cox, was a store clerk. <\/p>\n
Bobby played for his high school baseball team, and the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 organization signed him in 1959 as an amateur free agent. He remained in the minor leagues until the Yankees obtained him in a December 1967 trade from the Braves\u2019 organization. He debuted in the major leagues the following year.<\/p>\n
Cox managed in the Yankee farm system from 1971 to 1976. He then became the Yankees\u2019 first-base coach under the manager, Billy Martin, in 1977 when the team defeated the Dodgers in the World Series.<\/p>\n
He replaced Dave Bristol as the manager of the floundering Braves in 1978. The Braves\u2019 only winning season under Cox came in 1980, when they were 81-80. He was fired after the strike-shortened 1981 season.<\/p>\n
He had better success managing the Blue Jays, which had entered the American League as a 1977 expansion team. He took them to 99-62 record in 1985, though they lost to the Kansas City Royals in the seven-game league championship series after taking a 3-to-1 game lead.<\/p>\n
Cox was fired afterward, then served as the Braves\u2019 general manager from 1985 to 1990. During that tenure, he drafted third baseman Chipper Jones, another future Hall of Famer, and traded for Smoltz.<\/p>\n
Cox replaced Russ Nixon as the Braves\u2019 manager in June 1990 while remaining as general manager. John Schuerholz took over the front office after that season, and they proved to be a highly successful tandem.<\/p>\n
While 1995 was a triumphant season for Cox, he was in the news in connection with a troubling family matter in May of that year. His wife, Pamela, called the police to their home after they had argued the night following a game. The police said she told an officer that her husband had hit her in the face. Cox was arrested on a battery charge, then quickly released on $1,000 bail.<\/p>\n
The next day, at a news conference arranged by the Braves, Pamela Cox retracted the allegation. Under a court arrangement, Cox enrolled in anger-management counseling, and his wife attended a program for battered women. Early in September, upon completion of those obligations, the charge against Cox was dismissed.<\/p>\n
He and his wife, Pamela (Boswell) Cox, had three daughters. He also had five children from an earlier marriage, to Mary Xavier, that ended in divorce. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n
Cox retired as the Braves\u2019 manager following the 2010 season but continued to serve as an adviser. He also became an executive with a bank in the Rome, Ga., area.<\/p>\n
Apart from the wins-losses column, Cox set a record for an arcane statistic, having been ejected from 162 games<\/a> long before managerial challenges of most questionable calls could be settled by video replays, avoiding chest-to-chest arguments.<\/p>\nMost of the time, Cox was protecting his players from ejections by shouldering their anger, and there were evidently no hard feelings on the part of the umps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe umpires have the utmost respect for Bobby Cox,\u201d the umpire Richie Garcia told The Associated Press in 2007. \u201cWhat happens one night isn\u2019t carried over to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the umpire Bob Davidson put it, \u201cIf I was a ballplayer, I\u2019d want to play for Bobby Cox.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bobby Cox, the Baseball Hall of Fame manager who led the Atlanta Braves to five National League pennants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16339,2520,16338,16341,16337,16340,9951,16336,8,9,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-26707","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-american-league","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-baseball-hall-of-fame","11":"tag-bobby","12":"tag-coaches-and-managers","13":"tag-cox","14":"tag-deaths-obituaries","15":"tag-halls-of-fame","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116547928864853306","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}