Phil Garner, a feisty baseball lifer with an endearing soft side, dies at 76

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Garner was 76 years old when he died on Saturday night in The Woodlands, Texas. In a statement released by the Pittsburgh Pirates, Garner’s son, Ty, said that the cause was pancreatic cancer. “Phil never lost his signature spark of life he was so well known for,” the statement said, “or his love for baseball, which was with him until the end.” The last day of Garner’s playing career was not, in fact, his last day in baseball. Garner would spend thousands more as a manager for the Milwaukee Brewers, Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros, leading the Astros to their first World Series appearance in 2005. As a player, Garner got there in 1979, when he batted .500 (12-for-24) in the Pirates’ seven-game victory over the Baltimore Orioles. Nobody in World Series history has ever collected more hits for the winning side. In all, Garner played 16 seasons as a sparkplug second and third baseman for the Oakland A’s, the Pirates, the Astros, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Giants. He made three All-Star teams, had three seasons with at least 30 stolen bases, and batted .260 with 1,594 hits — all with a Yosemite Sam mustache and a memorable nickname, Scrap Iron, that belied a softer side. “Everybody knew he had this fiery temper and intense competitiveness,” said Astros broadcaster Steve Sparks, who pitched for Garner with the Brewers and Tigers. “We had lost a tough game in Milwaukee and he’s shredding us in the locker room, flipping the (food) spread, all those things. “At the end of it, his wife Carol has a Harley-Davidson wheeled into the clubhouse for his birthday — and right away he turns into Jerry Seinfeld in the ‘schmoopie’ episode, from one character to another in the blink of an eye. He was so relatable. He knew how to laugh at himself.” Garner, who was born in Jefferson City, Tenn., and played at the University of Tennessee, met Carol on a blind date in college. They were married for 55 years and had three children and six grandchildren. Carol Garner attended nearly all of Phil’s games, but missed the first grand slam of his life, for Pittsburgh in 1978. Carol was dismayed, so Phil promised he would hit another for her. In the first inning of the very next game, he did just that, becoming the first National Leaguer in 77 years to hit grand slams in consecutive games. Garner had reached the majors in 1973 as a September call-up for the A’s. When the Pirates traded (yes, traded) for A’s manager Chuck Tanner after the 1976 season, Tanner implored them to acquire his feisty second baseman, who had just made his first All-Star team. Pittsburgh sent six players — Tony Armas, Doug Bair, Dave Giusti, Rick Langford, Doc Medich and Mitchell Page — to Oakland to get him. It was a lot to lose for a team that considered itself a family, and Dave Parker, the boisterous Pirates star, greeted Garner that spring with an incredulous cry: “Six brothers?!” It was the first voice Garner heard as he entered the clubhouse, and he gave it right back to Parker, cursing him in his Southern drawl. “The initiation was complete, and I had a new sparring partner,” Parker wrote in “Cobra,” his memoir with Dave Jordan, adding that Garner won him over when he was leaving the complex that afternoon. “In the twilight, ol’ Scrap Iron was still out there, hours later, taking extra fielding practice at third base. As pissed as I was about the trade, I knew it was the smart move and we got ourselves a winning player.” Garner had his best season in 1979, hitting .293 with an .800 OPS and switching from third base to second after a midseason trade for Bill Madlock. His verbal jousting with Parker brought the roster together. “Our team was known to be, oh, a little rowdy, a little cocky, and nobody was safe in the clubhouse,” closer Kent Tekulve said on Sunday. “It didn’t matter where you stood in the pecking order, everybody was fair game, and a lot of that was Gar. “It was hilarious every day when we’d come in. Whichever one got there first — Parker or Gar — you were waiting for the second one, because it was going to start. You’ve got this 6-foot, 5-inch, huge Black guy and this 5-foot, 9-inch little redneck, and they’d just start in on each other, and that spread. Everybody’s involved now. “And he knew what was going on. I mean, Phil was a smart guy. He knew if he got on Parker, then everybody else would get on him, too. And Parker liked that, because that gave him a reason to prove you wrong.” Tekulve said he knew Garner could manage because of that intuition about teammates; he had an uncanny sense of how each player needed to be handled to maximize his talent. Sure enough, a little over three years after his final game, Garner got his chance with the Brewers, who hired him in October 1991. Garner immediately led the Brewers to 92 victories, the most for the franchise in a decade. But the team crashed hard after losing Paul Molitor in free agency, struggling through much of the 1990s and firing Garner in 1999. The Tigers, who were opening Comerica Park, hired Garner as manager for 2000. The team improved by 10 games, but its new centerpiece, outfielder Juan Gonzalez, refused a contract extension and sulked about the ballpark’s dimensions. The pitching fell apart the next season, and the Tigers fired Garner in early 2002. Even so, Garner made a strong impact on his players. Pitcher C.J. Nitkowski once criticized Garner in public after a frustrating game, and Garner admonished him for it the next day in a clubhouse meeting. In private, though, he accepted Nitkowski’s apology and even tried to acquire him when he managed the Astros. “I felt terrible, like I disappointed my dad, but he was as good as anyone could be in that situation,” said Nitkowski, now a broadcaster for the Atlanta Braves and SiriusXM. “It really spoke to me and made me reflect on how I want to handle myself. He showed what professionalism looks like, and what forgiveness looks like.” In 2004, Garner took over a talented Astros team that was only .500 at the All-Star break. He led Houston to a 48-26 record and the National League Championship Series, then overcame a slow start to reach the World Series in 2005. Garner stayed with the Astros through August 2007, and later served as a special adviser to the A’s when Melvin was their manager. Garner had hired Melvin as bench coach in Milwaukee and Detroit, seeing something in his old teammate that Melvin had not seen in himself. “When he would talk to me, he would always say, ‘When you manage …,’” Melvin said. “Not one time did he ever say, ‘If you manage …’ And it just resonated with me that he had that much confidence in me. Obviously, I did end up managing, and a lot of my philosophies and a lot of my values in baseball come from him. There’s no more impactful guy in my career than Phil Garner.” As it happened, in that final game as a player in 1988, Garner pinch hit for Melvin and drew a seven-pitch walk. Then he was caught stealing, scrappy to the end. “There you go,” Melvin said, laughing softly. “That was him.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Tyler Kepner is a Senior Writer for The Athletic covering MLB. He previously worked for The New York Times, covering the Mets (2000-2001) and Yankees (2002-2009) and serving as national baseball columnist from 2010 to 2023. A Vanderbilt University graduate, he has covered the Angels for the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise and Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and began his career with a homemade baseball magazine in his native Philadelphia in the early 1990s. Tyler is the author of the best-selling “K: A History of Baseball In Ten Pitches” (2019) and “The Grandest Stage: A History of The World Series” (2022). Follow Tyler on Twitter @TylerKepner