Phillies Top 20 of All-Time (11-15)

Dallas Green, Phillies manager 1979-81, including 1980 World Series champions

11. DALLAS GREEN, Manager

Dallas Green was born and raised in Delaware, and signed with the Phillies as a 20-year old free agent in 1955 out of the University of Delaware. A tall righthander, Green progressed incrementally through the Phils minor league system, debuting in the major leagues in 1960.

As a player from 1960-64, and then again in his final career stop in the 1967 season, Green went 20-22 for the Phillies in 185 games, 46 of them starts. He was a relief pitcher on the star-crossed 1964 Phillies, and made one appearance during their infamous late-season collapse.

In his final 1967 season, Green was a player/manager of the AA Reading Phillies, and then continued managing in the system with stops at the helm in Huron and Pulaski. At the latter, Green won the Rookie League championship and was co-Manager of the Year.

Well respected in his already long tenure with the club, Green wanted to pursue a career as a club executive. He was named as the assistant to Farm Director Paul Owens, and then in the middle of the 1972 season when Owens was elevated to the General Manager job, Green became the Director of the Phillies minor league system. This made him the first former Phillies player to hold a front office position with the team in decades.

Green set about making numerous changes to the way the club evaluated minor league prospects, and instituted a new scouting structure. These changes have been credited with greatly helping lay the foundation for the Phillies success from the mid-70’s through the early-80’s. In 1974 he added the responsibilities of Scouting Director, and he directed the Phillies drafts from that point until 1979.

During that 1979 season, with a team that had won 3 consecutive NL East crowns having collapsed in disappointment, Green was brought in by Owens to manage the club in place of the laid-back Danny Ozark. Green immediately began instilling discipline to a too-relaxed group of veterans, guiding the club to a 19-11 record over the final month.

That success carried over to the 1980 season when Green pushed and prodded and barked the team to a 4th NL East crown in 5 years. The players claimed to hate him, equating him to a military Drill Sergeant, and he had both public and private confrontations with a number of the veterans. But it worked. This time the team would finally kick down the postseason door.

Under Green’s direction the 1980 Phillies defeated the Houston Astros to win the first National League Pennant in 30 years, and then upended the Kansas City Royals to win the first-ever World Series championship in franchise history.

After guiding the team back to the playoffs in 1981, Green left to finally take his dream job as a General Manager. He served the Cubs in that capacity in the early 1980’s, then managed both the New York Yankees and Mets from the late-80’s through mid-90’s.

In late 1996, Green returned to the Phils as a Special Assistant to the GM under Ed Wade, and has continued serving a key advisory role for both Pat Gillick and Ruben Amaro Jr in that role into the present day.