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Joe McCarthy

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Joe McCarthy was born on 21 April 1887, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was elected to Hall of Fame by Veterans Committee in 1957, as Manager. Joe McCarthy managed in the major leagues for 24 seasons. His winning percentage of 0.614 is the highest in baseball history. His seven World Championships are a record shared only with another Yankee manager, Casey Stengel. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1957.

In 1932 McCarthy became the first manager to capture pennants in both leagues. In the ensuing World Series the Yankees beat the Cubs in four games, a great moment of revenge for their manager. McCarthy's players respected him, most liked him and some were devoted to him. But he was perceived by the public as dull.

Joe McCarthy, best known as the Yankees manager of the 1930s and early 1940s, finished his long career with an all-time best winning percentage of 0.614. Over a 24-year major league career, Marse Joe achieved nine pennants, one with the Chicago Cubs and the rest with the Yankees, including four World Championships in a row from 1936 to 1939. His teams also placed second seven times, and he never finished out of the first division, compiling an impressive 2,126 wins.

The war years were tough on McCarthy, and when Larry MacPhail became his boss in 1945, he didn't have the same rapport he had enjoyed with Ed Barrow. On May 24, 1946, McCarthy resigned. He became the Red Sox' manager in 1948 and came within a hair of winning a pennant that year and again in 1949, before retiring for good early in the 1950 season. McCarthy died January 13, 1978 at the age of 90.

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