Former Yankee, Met manager Green dies

Dallas Green, the tough-talking manager who guided the Philadelphia Phillies to their first World Series championship, died Wednesday. He was 82.

The Phillies said Green died at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. He had been in poor health for a while.

Green spent 62 years in baseball as a player, manager, general manager, team president and other roles.

“He was a big man with a big heart and a biggerthan-life personality,” Phillies Chairman David Montgomery said in a statement.

As a major league pitcher, Green went just 20-22 in the 1960s. His most notable distinction on the mound might have been giving up the only grand slam launched by all-time hits leader Pete Rose.

Instead, it was in the dugout where the gruff, 6-foot-5 Green really found his voice — and a booming one, it was.

In 1980, with Rose playing first base on a team that included future Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, Green guided the Phillies to the World Series championship, ending a drought that stretched back nearly a century.

Midway through that season, he really let the Phils hear it after a loss in Pittsburgh left them around .500. His clubhouse tirade was so loud that writers outside the locker room at Three Rivers Stadium said they could hear every word.

Green later managed the New York Yankees — where bombastic owner George Steinbrenner liked the idea of someone being able to stand up to him — and the Mets.

Green also was the GM and president of the Chicago Cubs and made a shrewd trade to get a young infielder from the Phillies, future great Ryne Sandberg. The deal helped turn a long-dormant franchise into a club that came within one win of reaching the 1984 World Series.