Kerby Farrell

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Major Kerby Farrell (September 3, 1913 - December 17, 1975) was a longtime minor league baseball manager who spent but a single season — 1957 — as a pilot in American Major League Baseball. He was a three-time winner of The Sporting News' Minor League Manager of the Year award (1954, 1956 and 1961) — the only man to have won the award more than twice (as of 2007).

Born in Leapwood, McNairy County, Tennessee, Farrell in his playing days was a first baseman and veteran minor-leaguer who played two full MLB seasons during the World War II manpower shortage, with the 1943 Boston Braves and the 1945 Chicago White Sox, batting .262 with no home runs and 55 runs batted in. He also pitched in five games for the 1943 Braves, losing his only decision and compiling an earned run average of 4.30 in 23 innings of work. He batted and threw lefthanded.

Farrell began his managing career before the war in the Class C Middle Atlantic League in 1941-42. In 1947, he became a skipper in the farm system of the Cleveland Indians with the Spartanburg, South Carolina, Peaches of the Class B Tri-State League and began a steady rise through the Cleveland organization. His 1953 Reading, Pennsylvania, team in the Class A Eastern League won 101 games, while his 1954 and 1956 Indianapolis Indians, then Cleveland's AAA club, won American Association pennants and earned Farrell his first two awards.

At the close of the 1956 season, when the Indians finished as runners-up to the New York Yankees, Cleveland manager Al Lopez resigned to become the new skipper of the White Sox and Farrell was promoted to succeed him. But 1957 was a star-crossed season for the Indians. Prodigal lefthanded pitcher Herb Score, a strikeout king and 20-game winner in 1956, was nearly blinded on May 7 by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees' Gil McDougald, and missed the rest of the campaign. Two other 20-game winners from '56, eventual Hall of Famers Bob Lemon and Early Wynn, slumped to below .500 records. The team changed general managers, from Hank Greenberg to Frank Lane. The Indians fell to a 76-77 (.497) record and a sixth-place finish, and Farrell was fired.

He then returned to the minors, where he managed in the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets and Minnesota Twins organizations. He also coached for the White Sox (1966-69) and Indians (1970-71). As a minor league skipper over 21 seasons, Farrell won 1,710 games, losing 1,456 (.540).

Farrell died in Nashville, Tennessee, at age 62.

[edit] See also

Chicago White Sox all-time roster

[edit] References

Johnson, Lloyd, ed., The Minor League Register. Durham, N.C.: Baseball America, 1994.
Marcin, Joe, ed., The Baseball Register. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1970.