Buddy Bailey, a longtime manager in affiliated minor league baseball in the summer and in the Liga Venezolana de Beisbol Profesional in the winter, died Tuesday at the age of 68.
Bailey, who had a winning record as a skipper at every level he had managed, was recently diagnosed with cancer, according to a report in Venezuelan media outlet Meridiano.
In all, Bailey managed 36 seasons in the affiliated minor leagues, starting his manager career in Rookie ball with the Pulaski (Va.) Braves of the Appalachian League after a brief career as a player in the Atlanta Braves organization, leading the Braves’ lowest-level affiliate in 1983 and 1984.
“I was in spring training with the Atlanta Braves in 1983. Joe Torre was the manager. Dale Maxvill was the third base coach. And one morning, ‘Maxi’ walks by and says, ‘Hey, Joe wants to talk to you,” Bailey reocunted in a video posted to the Myrtle Beach Pelicans’ Instagram account last year. Torre “goes in, sits me in his office, we’re talking to some other people in the front office of the Braves. We’re talking that they needed a rookie league manager. A lot of them had recommended me. And I said, ‘Joe, I’m really young. I want to keep playing.’ But he basically said, ‘They don’t have plans for you. They want you to stay in baseball. And this is probably your best shot.'”
It meant that Bailey had to mature immediately, he remembered.
“I went probably from 24, 25 years old to about 45 in a couple hours,” Bailey said.
After managing Pulaski, Bailey managed the Sumter (S.C.) Braves in the South Atlantic League in 1985 and 1987, the Advanced-A Durham (N.C.) Bulls of the Carolina League in 1986 and 1988, and the Double-A Greenville (S.C.) Braves in 1987 and 1989-90.
In 1991, Bailey joined the Boston Red Sox organization, managing the Lynchburg (Va.) Red Sox of the Carolina League for two seasons, before serving as manager of the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox from 1993-97 and again from 2002-04, winning the International League’s Manager of the Year award in 1996 and 2003. In the intervening years between his stints managing in Pawtucket, Bailey served as bench coach for the Boston Red Sox in 2000, his only stint as a coach in Major League Baseball, and as a minor league field coordinator and MLB advance scout for Boston.
After joining the Chicago Cubs organization in 2006, Bailey took various managing assignments, managing the Advanced-A Daytona Cubs in the Florida State League 2006 and 2009-11, the Triple-A Iowa Cubs in 2007, the Double-A Tennessee Smokies of the Southern league in 2008 and 2012-15, the Carolina League’s Myrtle Beach Pelicans from 2016-18, the South Bend Cubs in the Low-A Midwest League in 2019, and the Myrtle Beach Pelicans again in the Low-A Carolina League from 2021-24.
It was in Venezuela’s Liga Venezolana de Beisbol Profesional, the country’s winter league, where Bailey achieved his greatest success as a manager, taking over the Tigres de Aragua for the 2001-02 season. Based in Maracay, Aragua State, Bailey led the club to nine LVBP championship series appearances, including six in a row, six LVBP championships and the 2009 Caribbean Series title. In Venezuela, he managed a team that at times included Miguel Cabrera and won the 2006-07 LVBP Manager of the Year Award.
“They hadn’t won a championship in like 30 years, 29 years, I think. We won five out of six championships,” Bailey recalled in the video posted by the Pelicans. “And my first taste that year was a young man who had just played A-ball, an A -league player in this league. Well, his name was Miguel Cabrera. The next year, he started in Double-A. [The Florida Marlins] won the World Series, and he was a big factor when they had called him up late in the year.”
Welby Sheldon “Buddy” Bailey was born March 28, 1957 in Norristown, Penn., outside of Philadelphia, and grew up in western Virginia, where he graduated from Amherst County High School and Lynchburg College, and always had coaching in his blood.
“When I went to college, I always thought I was going to be a high school baseball coach or football coach, or both,” Bailey said in the Pelicans’ instagram video. “So I kinda grew my mentality to be, ‘Well, if I don’t get to play pro ball, I was educating myself to be a high school baseball or football coach.”
Instead, Bailey went to professional baseball, where he went 2607-2418 as a manager in the minor leagues, and became the first manager in the LVBP to win 500 games in his career — not an easy feat in a league that plays a 56-game regular season schedule.
“One of the best moments of feelings I’ve ever had in my life, we were playing the Caribbean Series one year, and they had gone around the country asking kids that were like 10 to 14 years old who would they want to play for,” Bailey remembered.
“The guy told me, he said, 80% said Buddy Bailey. And you think, holy moly. I’ve represented Venezuela six times in international competition, luckily to win it once. So all those games on TV… people see you. And I think the one big thing that captured those people that like me is because when we did win the Caribbean Series down in Mexicali, Mexico, in ’09, the Venezuelan championship was for Tigres fans. This is for all of Venezuela.”
Photo: Venezuela manager Buddy Bailey, left, gestures during a Caribbean Series baseball game against Puerto Rico at Quisqueya stadium in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012. Puerto Rico won 3-1. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
