Paul Rapier Richards: Major League Baseball Player (1908–1986)

Paul Rapier Richards, Major League Baseball player and manager, was born on November 21, 1908, in Waxahachie, Texas, to Jesse Thomas Richards, a schoolteacher, and Sarah Della (McGowen) Byars Richards. His mother was a widow who had four children from her previous marriage. Two of her sons were baseball enthusiasts who strongly encouraged their younger half-brother Paul’s interest in the game.

In 1916 the city of Waxahachie convinced the Detroit Tigers to shift its spring training from Gulfport, Mississippi, to Waxahachie. Waxahachie already had a minor league franchise in the Class D Central Texas League, but the ballfield was not up to major league spring training standards. Therefore, the Waxahachie Ball Park Association raised funds to build a grandstand around the ballfield. Dubbed Jungle Park, it was within walking distance of the Richards home and afforded seven-year-old Paul an opportunity to see in person big league ballplayers (notably future Hall of Fame players such as Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, and Harry Heilmann). The Tigers returned in 1917 and 1918 before moving on to Macon, Georgia, but they were replaced in 1919 by the Cincinnati Reds, who went on to win the World Series that year. After an off year in 1920, Waxahachie hosted the Chicago White Sox.

Baseball was more than a spectator sport for Richards, however. Nicknamed “Sleepy” because he sometimes fell asleep in class, he was anything but when it came to baseball. Richards played shortstop, third base, and pitcher for Waxahachie High School. His work on the mound was particularly noteworthy as he was ambidextrous. When Richards joined the baseball team, it was in the middle of a run of nine consecutive state championships (1919–27). During Richards’s tenure with Waxahachie High School (1923–26), the team won sixty-five games in a row.

Understandably, baseball scouts took an interest in the Waxahachie team. Eight of Richards’s teammates played professional ball, and five (Archie Wise, Belve Bean, Jimmy Adair, Gene Moore, and Art Shires) reached the big leagues. After signing a minor league contract with the Brooklyn Robins (as the Dodgers were known in 1926) at age seventeen, Richards embarked on a minor league odyssey that included the Pittsfield Hillies, Crisfield Crabbers, Waterbury Brasscos, Muskogee Chiefs, Macon Peaches, Asheville Tourists, and Hartford Senators. On February 14, 1932, he married Margie Marie McDonald of Waxahachie. They had two daughters together.

Richards, at age twenty-three, finally arrived in the big leagues with the 1932 Dodgers. By this point, however, he had been recast in a new role. He had agreed to serve as a catcher for the 1930 Macon Peaches after two of the team’s catchers were injured. His skill set was a perfect match for the position, so he remained a catcher for the rest of his playing career. Nevertheless, Richards was largely relegated to the role of backup catcher in his big-league career. His defensive skills were first-rate but his hitting at the big-league level left something to be desired, even though his career minor league stats were impressive (an even .300 batting average, 1,402 hits, and 166 home runs). He also had the misfortune to play behind two outstanding catchers (Al Lopez with the Dodgers in 1932 and Gus Mancuso with the New York Giants in 1933 and 1934).

Richards remained in the big leagues through 1935. He had his best season with the Philadelphia A’s that year but differed with owner/manager Connie Mack on the handling of pitchers. Mack traded him to the minor league Atlanta Crackers. The Crackers had won the Southern Association pennant in 1935 and earned another in 1936 as Richards, the first-string catcher, enjoyed an all-star season. When the Crackers dropped off to third place in 1937, manager Eddie Moore was fired and Richards, though just twenty-nine years old, was named player-manager. In 1938 he led the Crackers to a league championship and was named The Sporting News Minor League Manager of the Year. After his worst season (76–78) with the Crackers in 1942, Richards found himself back in the big leagues as a player.

Because World War II had occupied most professional ballplayers, teams scrambled to fill out rosters. While many minor leagues suspended operations, big league ball continued with the approval of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a married man with a daughter (Paula Del, born in 1939) and a bad knee, Richards was not subject to conscription. Thinking that the Southern Association might also suspend operations (it did not), he signed a player’s contract with the Detroit Tigers. Richards had been away from big league ball for seven seasons, and he was now thirty-four years old. His offense was still lacking (he hit .231 in four seasons with the Tigers), but his ability to throw out baserunners and handle pitchers made him a valuable commodity. In 1944 the Tigers finished one game behind the St. Louis Browns who won their only pennant that year. In 1945 the Tigers won the American League pennant and defeated the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. It was not Richards’s first championship season, as he was a member of the 1933 Giants, who had defeated the Washington Senators in the World Series that year. Richards did not play in that series, however. In 1945 he appeared in all seven games.

Richards returned for one more season with the postwar Tigers in 1946, but at age thirty-seven he knew that younger catchers returning from military service would surely displace him. The Tigers, however, tabbed him to be the player-manager of their Triple-A farm club in Buffalo in 1947. He served there for three years and won the International League Championship in 1949, his last year as a player. In 1950 he moved to the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League.

After nine seasons managing in the minor leagues, Richards had built a reputation as a superb teacher of young players. He emphasized building a team around pitching (which he estimated was 75 percent of the game), defense, and speed. Chicago White Sox general manager Frank Lane took notice of Richards and offered him his first chance at managing a major league team. In 1950 the White Sox had not had a winning season since 1943. Richards immediately injected new life into the White Sox, which acquired the nickname the Go-Go Sox. In 1951 the White Sox improved to 81–73 and led the league in hits (1,453), triples (64), stolen bases (99), and batting average (.270). In August of that year Richards’s younger daughter, Lou Redith, died of a heart condition at age five.

Eddie Robinson, a native of Paris, Texas, was the Chicago White Sox first baseman when he first encountered Richards. Under Richards’s tutelage, he was an All-Star in 1951 and 1952 before he was traded to the Philadelphia A’s. Robinson, who played for seven American League teams, toiled for an assortment of managers but considered Richards “the best teacher I encountered in all my years of baseball.” Robinson later worked with Richards in front office roles at Baltimore, Houston, Atlanta, and Arlington. Under Richards the White Sox improved until 1954, when they finished with a 94–60 record. The White Sox had their best season since 1920, but the pennant was won by the Cleveland Indians, which had one of the best seasons (111–43) in major league history.

Resigning from the White Sox on September 14, 1954, Richards joined the Baltimore Orioles, who offered him the dual position of field manager and general manager. The Orioles, completing their inaugural year in Baltimore, were in a similar situation as the White Sox before Richards took over. With the Orioles, Richards could not only manipulate players on the field, he could also acquire players he wanted, either by promoting them from the Orioles’ minor league affiliates or trading for other players (his seventeen-player deal with the Yankees in November 1954 is still a record for the number of players involved). In 1955, his first full year with the Orioles, his book Modern Baseball Strategy was published by Prentice-Hall. Essentially a youth movement, the Orioles’ “Kiddie Korps” progress was not as dramatic as in Chicago, but by 1960 the team broke through with a record of 89–65 and finished in second place behind the New York Yankees. Richards was named the American League Manager of the Year by both the Associated Press and United Press International. In 1961 the Orioles improved to 95–67 but backslid to third place. As in Chicago, Richards had the team on the right track, but he was not there to lead them to a pennant (the Orioles would win the World Series in 1966).

The National League expanded by two teams in 1962. One of the new franchises was the Houston Colt .45s, as they were known before they opened the Astrodome and adopted the Astros nickname. The team’s owners offered Richards the job of general manager. Because Richards was still under contract to the Orioles and the Colts had not asked their permission to make a job offer to him, secret negotiations went on throughout the 1961 season. To return to Texas and build a major league franchise from the ground up was a dream come true for Richards. While the other expansion team, the New York Mets, chose over-the-hill veterans in the expansion draft, Richards concentrated on prospects. As a result, the Colts not only finished ahead of the Mets (64–96 versus 40–120) in 1962, they also surpassed the established Chicago Cubs (59–103).

Richards emphasized pitching with the Colts/Astros. Colt Stadium, the team’s ad hoc home while the Astrodome was being constructed, was designed with a roomy outfield. To give pitchers an extra edge, Richards had the grounds crew leave the grass long enough to slow down groundballs. He also made sure the lights were not overly bright, lest they tilt the advantage to hitters. As a result, the Colts’ pitching staff had an earned run average (3.83) lower than the league average, allowed fewer runs (717) than the league average, and allowed the fewest home runs (113). For a first-year team, it was a remarkable accomplishment. However, the ballpark also stymied the Colts’ offense, as the team was at the bottom of the league in runs scored (592) and home runs (105).

When the Astrodome opened in 1965, it was also a pitcher’s park. Balls didn’t carry well in the climate-controlled air, which also assured that pitchers would not be stung by wind-assisted home runs and that fielders would not have to battle wind-buffeted fly balls. The first indoor baseball stadium, the Astrodome was the perfect venue for Richards’s emphasis on pitching, defense, and speed. However, he was only present for the inaugural year of the facility. In 1965 Roy Hofheinz, one of the team’s principal owners, bought out the controlling interest of R. E. “Bob” Smith, another franchise founding father, and became the majority owner. Hofheinz and Richards were at loggerheads on numerous issues, and both were hard-headed. Hofheinz fired Richards following the 1965 season. Given Richards’s reputation as a baseball doyen, the decision by Hofheinz, who had no background in baseball, appeared to be ill-advised and the parting was not amicable. When sportswriter Mickey Herskowitz of the Houston Post referred to Hofheinz as “his own worst enemy,” Richards replied, “Not while I’m alive.”

Having specialized in building up new or ailing franchises, Richards was sought out by the Atlanta Braves. Still fondly remembered as a successful player-manager for the minor league Atlanta Crackers, he returned to the city as director of instruction and development. By the end of the 1966 season, he was the team’s general manager. The Braves already had plenty of offense, so Richards concentrated on improving the pitching staff. This was a challenge, as Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was a notorious hitter’s park. Nevertheless, in 1969 the Braves pitching staff managed to do slightly better than the league in earned run average (3.53 versus 3.59), and the Braves won the National League West Division. It was the only first-place finish a Richards-directed major league team ever enjoyed. However, the Braves were upended by the Mets in the National League Championship Series and disappointed in subsequent seasons. Richards was fired in mid-season 1972.

Richards spent a few years away from baseball. After Bill Veeck became owner of the White Sox, Richards agreed to manage the team in 1976. The result was a 64–97 record, the worst in the American League. It was the last year of Richards’s managerial career and the only time one of his teams finished last. He did not return as manager in 1977 but did serve in the White Sox front office in a variety of positions through 1980. In 1981 Richards found employment closer to home with his old colleague Eddie Robinson, the general manager of the Texas Rangers. Initially hired as “a scout, instructor, and troubleshooter,” Richards remained with the Rangers as a “special assistant” for the rest of his life.

Richards earned a reputation as a judge of talent, a teacher, an innovator, and a strategist (another nickname was the Tall Tactician, though he was only 6’1”) throughout his career in Major League Baseball. An early proponent of pitch counts, he also pioneered the concept of earned run averages for catchers as well as pitchers. He was known to employ unorthodox tactics, such as walking a weak-hitting pitcher with two outs so the batter at the top of the order would come to bat and not lead off the next inning. Another move for which he was known was shifting a pitcher to a different position for one batter, bringing in an opposite-handed relief pitcher to face that batter, then shifting the original pitcher back to the mound. In 2009 baseball writer Rob Neyer christened this strategy the Waxahachie Swap. One of Richards’s most famous innovations was an oversized catcher’s mitt (jokingly referred to as an elephant ear) designed to help receivers handle knuckleball pitchers. Richards had a knack for bringing out the best in knuckleballers. With the Atlanta Crackers, he was credited with developing Dutch Leonard, a knuckleballer who went on to a long career. Two knuckleballers he managed, Hoyt Wilhelm (with the Orioles) and Phil Niekro (with the Braves), were enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Richards was an uncompromising type of manager. “Stern,” “aloof,” and “a disciplinarian” often crop up in players’ remembrances of Richards. Billy Loes, who pitched for Richards in Baltimore, got into a shouting match with him after he was taken out of a game. “He thinks he’s God!” he declared to his teammates, many of whom felt the same way and sardonically referred to him as such. A number of umpires would have agreed with that assessment, as Richards was not shy when it came to disputes. He led the American League in ejections for eleven consecutive seasons (1951–61), which earned him yet another nickname, “Ol’ Rant and Rave.” Nevertheless, Richards’s abilities as a manager were widely acknowledged. Infielder Joe DeMaestri, a twenty-two-year-old rookie when he played for Richards in Chicago in 1951, said Richards was the best manager for whom he ever played and that he was always “three innings ahead of everybody else.” When asked how he wanted a player to think of him, Richards replied “That I’m getting the most out of him, personally, and the team collectively.”

Richards spent his off-seasons in Waxahachie and retired there. He was dubbed the “Wizard of Waxahachie” by Chicago sportswriter Edgar Munzel in 1952. The phrase followed Richards throughout the rest of his career as a manager and general manager and was the title of a biography published in 2009. His wife died of liver cancer in 1983. Like many former ballplayers, Richards was an avid golfer during his retirement. He was found slumped over in a golf cart at the Waxahachie Country Club on Sunday, May 4, 1986. The cause of death was a heart attack. Paul Richards was buried alongside his wife and daughter at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Waxahachie.

Paul Richards occupies a prominent place in the baseball history mural on the side of the Parks and Recreation building in downtown Waxahachie. Waxahachie High School plays its baseball games at the same field where Richards watched spring training games in his youth. After he led a fundraising effort to fix up the park in 1946, the park was renamed Paul Richards Park. In 2007 Richards Park was designated a Texas Historical Site. Richards was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1959. In 2022 the museum hosted an exhibit dedicated to him following the donation of a large collection of memorabilia by his daughter Paula’s estate. In 1984 Richards was inducted into the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame, and in 1996 he was enshrined in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.