Les Moss was someone I always felt sorry for as Tiger. He never actually played for the Tigers. He started in professional baseball at the
age of 16 when in 1941 he signed with the St. Louis Browns for $200. Two months later WWII broke out. He spent two years in the Merchant Marine
during the war. In 1946 he made his
major league debut as a St. Louis Brown as a late season call up. He did not get a hit but he did get hit and
drove in a run as the Browns beat the Athletics 5-1. The next year Les was the starting catcher
for the Browns at the age of 22. He hit
.157 but did hit 6 homers. In 1948 he
upped his average to .257 with 14 homers.
Les would continue to be the Browns starting catcher splitting time with
Clint Courtney. In May of 1951 the Red
Sox traded for Les. They sent Matt
Batts, Jim Suckecki, $100,000 and later Jim McDonald for Les who was hitting
.170. The Sox were impressed with Les’s
raw power, not his frequency of power.
However, that November they traded him back to the Browns with Tom Wright
for catcher Gus Niarhos and Ken Wood.
Les would never be a starting catcher again. He stayed in the majors into 1958 with Browns
and moved with them to Baltimore and then ended his career with the White
Sox. He was a career .247 hitter with 63
homers in 824 games. Afterwards Les
stayed in the game as a coach and minor league manager. He made it to the majors as a manager in 1968
for the White Sox where Les was the pitching coach. It was not an easy tome for the Pale Hose as
they had 5 managers that season. Among
them was Les who was promoted temporarily and served two games as interim
manager between Eddie Stanky and Al Lopez.
Later that season, when Al went out for an appendectomy Les was in again
as skipper. After a brief stint with
the Angels Les was signed by the Tigers to manage the Tigers AA Montgomery
team. Les replaced Jim Leyland as
manager. He managed there for two years
and both seasons won the Southern League championship. He moved up to Detroit’s AAA Evansville club in 1977 and 1978 and won
Manager of the Year for the American Association and Minor League Manager of
the Year by the Sporting news. At the
end of the 1978 season Tigers manager Ralph Houk announced he would be retiring
and Les Moss was named new Tiger manager.
Les was 27-26 with the Tiges in
1979 when in June the Tigers announced they had signed Sparky Anderson to a
five year contract as manager. Les was
abruptly gone from the Tiger organization.
Les went on to coach for the Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros and also
helped in player development with the San Francisco Giants. He finally retired from baseball after
1995. In 2010 he had hip replacement
surgery after a fall and also suffered some bleeding on the brain. He had been bedridden until he died in 2012. Joe Falls once wrote about him
that
one of the nicknames the players bestowed on him behind his back was “Sieg
Heil,” but Falls added, “This makes him sound tough. He isn’t. He just believes
in a full day’s work for a full day’s pay, a rather novel notion among some of
the modern-day athletes. He is a taskmaster, but he is not mean and ornery. He
works hard, and he expects everyone else to do the same.”
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