Green dies at 82, spent most of life in game

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 bigger than-life personality,” Phillies Chairman David Montgomery said in a statement.

As a major league pitcher, Green went just 20-22 in the 1960s.

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

In 1980, with Pete 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 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.

“Dallas was pure and simple a ‘true baseball man,’ ” the Mets said in a statement.

Martinez will start opener: The St. Louis Cardinals picked Carlos Martinez to start their April 2 opener against the World Series champion Chicago Cubs.

Adam Wainwright had started the past four openers for the Cardinals.