The passing of Joe Morgan: A summer of joy in baseball form and the best Red Sox manager of my lifetime

Monday 9/7/26

Was saddened yesterday to learn about the passing at age ninety-five of Joe Morgan, author of Morgan Magic, one of the greatest summers in Red Sox history back in 1988. A long life, seemingly well lived. That team was overmatched against the Oakland A's in the ALCS, but goodness was that summer stretch exciting, joy in the form of mid-season baseball.

Morgan famously--at least around these parts--hailed from Walpole. I always found it interesting that he never managed at the big league level for any other team, despite obviously being a foxy manager, but that also feels apt. He was a Red Sox guy. The organization fired him to bring in Butch Hobson of all people, a terrible move, and it looked like one in real time, too. The Sox had quite a thin roster in the early 1990s, which Morgan knew, but the Sox brass preferred to make as if he was the problem, which was soon revealed to have not been the case.

Morgan had been the manager of the Pawtucket Red Sox from 1974-1982. That is a long time to be a Triple A manager. Real dues were paid. He was the manager for the famed 33-inning game in 1981, which I once wrote about for The Boston Globe, getting ejected in the 22nd inning.

Then he resigned, became a scout for a couple years, and after that became the Red Sox' first base coach in 1985, it's bullpen coach in 1986, and it's third base coach in 1987. Meaning that he was in his late fifties when he got the chance to be a big league manager on July 14, 1988.

Personally, I enjoyed that Red Sox summer of 1988 more than any other Red Sox period of my life. Part of that has to do with what my life became--one in which no enjoyment of anything, really, was possible. That's how it is when the pain is constant, you have no hope, and no viable reason to live, save to create more of the greatest work there's ever been that no one will see. My age was also a factor. Where I was in my life. And that we, as a family, were on Cape Cod. It's not for nothing that the first story in Buried on the Beaches takes place during that summer on the Cape during that run.

Morgan Magic was captivating. It took hold of the imagination. That Red Sox team wasn't good before that run, and they weren't all that good after it. But that summer was just so magical indeed, that it didn't matter. The summer was the season.

And I know I just said that those Red Sox didn't have a chance against the A's that year. I don't feel like I'm exaggerating. The A's themselves had this element of invincibility to them that year, which made what happened against the Dodgers in the World Series all the more surprising. If Kirk Gibson doesn't hit that Game 1 homer, that series goes a different way. I know, you can't say that, it's the first game, etc. But that series was all about the Gibson homer.

At the same time, you look at that Sox roster, and they had plenty of great and good players. Prime Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs. Dwight Evans. Jim Rice had tapered off, but Mike Greenwell was second in AL MVP voting that year to Jose Canseco. Future Hall of Famer Lee Smith in the bullpen. Ellis Burks in center.

And yet, they only won 89 games, and it took Morgan Magic to even make that happen. The 2026 Red Sox--who can't come close to that level of star power--there are likely no future Hall of Famers on this squad, unless Aroldis Chapman makes it in or Roman Anthony lives up to his hype--will finish right around the same number of wins.

Morgan pinch hit for Rice that year, and Rice, proud man that he was, lost it and flipped out on the skipper in the dugout. A lot of managers wouldn't have done what Morgan did in that instance. Easier not to. But it was the right move. He knew the game in that Gene Mauch-type of way, but had a lighter touch than Mauch. Toned-down Jimmy Williams with pragmatic New England flintiness. Avuncular.

He's the best Red Sox manager of my lifetime and I don't think it's close. Prior to Morgan taking over in 1988, Ralph Houk and then John McNamara were the team's field generals for the 1980s. Houk was checked out by then. McNamara was wrapped up in being a dick. Jimmy Williams later on was pretty good, too, but Morgan had this no-BS shrewdness to him. He didn't putz around; he understood what was going on, how things work and don't.

The guy even looked like a manager. He had the profile of the Old Man in the Mountain up in New Hampshire, but was also one of those people who looked older than they were but who you suspected would be around for a long time and continue to appear as they did at that point in time throughout the rest of their life, which is what Morgan did.