The first major biography of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver—who has been described as “the Copernicus of baseball” and “the grandfather of the modern game”—The Last Manager is a wild, thrilling, and hilarious ride with baseball’s most underappreciated genius, and one of its greatest characters.Long before the Moneyball-era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968–1982. When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing. Weaver was the first manager to use a modern radar gun, and he pioneered the use of analytical data. By moving 6’4” Cal Ripken, Jr. to shortstop, Weaver paved the way for a generation of plus-sized superstar shortstops, including Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. He foreshadowed almost everything that Bill James, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and hundreds of other big brain baseball types would later present as innovation. Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character. Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. Weaver’s outbursts offered players cathartic relief from their own frustration, signaled his concern for the team, and fired up fans. In his frequent arguments with umpires, he hammed it up for the crowds, faked heart attacks, ripped bases out of the ground, and pretended to toss umpires out of the game. Weaver also fought with his players, especially Jim Palmer, but that creative tension contributed to a stunning success, and a hilarious clubhouse. During his tenure as major league manager, the Orioles won the American League pennant in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1979, each time winning over 100 games. The Last Manager uncovers the story of Weaver’s St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and “desk contracts” to the modern era of free agency, video analysis, and powerful player agents. Weaver’s career is a critical juncture in baseball history. He was the only manager to hold a job during the five years leading up to, and five years after, free agency upended baseball in 1976. Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. In his retirement, he even admitted that “if he had been an umpire, he would have thrown himself out of more games than he actually was.” Belligerent, genius, infamous—The Last Manager tells the story of one man who left his mark on the game for generations.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?