Former manager Jim Frey, who led Royals to first World Series, dies at age 88
Jim Frey, who replaced Whitey Herzog as the Kansas City Royals’ manager in 1980 and helped the franchise to its first World Series that season, died Sunday. He was 88.
The Somerset Patriots, an Independent League team in New Jersey for which Frey once worked as vice chairman, made the announcement on Twitter. No cause of death was given.
”As you would expect from any close friend of Don Zimmer, Jim Frey was a terrific baseball man,” Hall of Famer Joe Torre said in a statement shared on Twitter. “Jim played with my brother Frank in Toledo in 1955, and he went on to a long and successful career, including leading winning teams for the Royals and the Cubs. Most importantly, he was a class act who earned the respect of others. I send my deepest condolences to Jim’s family, friends and all the people he touched.”
The Royals won three consecutive American League West division titles from 1976-78 under Herzog but lost to the Yankees each time in the AL Championship Series. After the Royals finished second in the West in 1979, the popular Herzog was fired and replaced by Frey, who was on Earl Weaver’s staff with the Baltimore Orioles.
“The Royals couldn’t have picked a better man than Jim,” Weaver said at the time. “I know the Orioles will miss his knowledge, his judgment, and his organization ability.”
In 1980, the Royals finished 97-65 and regained the top spot in the West. In the ALCS, the Royals finally got past the Yankees, sweeping New York in a five-game series. George Brett punctuated the win with a towering three-run homer off Yankees relief pitcher Goose Gossage that turned the tide in Game 3.
“The owner said, ‘You know why we hired you? We hired you to go to World Series,’” Frey told the Florida Times-Union in 2013. “So we went. We had a helluva team.”
In the World Series, the Royals dropped the first two games at Philadelphia and couldn’t recover, losing to the Phillies in six games.
A players’ strike interrupted the 1981 season when the Royals had a 20-30 record. The Royals were 10-10 to start the second half, but Frey was fired and replaced by Dick Howser, who lost his job as the Yankees’ manager after the 1980 ALCS.
“Our condolences to family and friends of former Royals manager, Jim Frey, who passed away on Sunday,” the Royals wrote in a Twitter message. “In 1980, he led the club to a (97)-65 record and a World Series appearance.”
Frey was hired as the Chicago Cubs’ manager in 1984 and turned around a team that had won 71 games a season earlier. The Cubs won the National League East with a 96-66 record and made their first postseason appearance since 1945.
“The monkey’s off our back!” Frey said after clinching the division.
In the National League Championship Series, the Cubs won the first two games at Wrigley Field, but because the stadium didn’t have lights, Chicago had to play the next three games at San Diego. The Padres swept those games at home and were the first team in baseball history to rally from a 2-0 deficit to win a playoff series.
Frey was honored as the NL Manager of the Year, but the Cubs slumped to a 77-win season the following year, and he was fired after the Cubs started the 1986 season with a 23-33 record.
After a season of radio work, Frey was hired as the Cubs’ general manager ahead of the 1988 season and held that job for four seasons.
Somerset, the Independent League team, said on its website that Frey was “instrumental “in the franchise’s creation in 1998 and was vice chairman in its early years.
This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 10:50 AM.
