Hall of Famer Sparky Anderson dies

Three-time World Series winner Sparky Anderson, who managed five Minor League teams prior to his Hall of Fame career in the Majors, died at age 76 on Thursday.

Anderson, the first skipper to lead a World Series champion in each league (with the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers), passed away in a hospice in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

George Lee Anderson spent six years playing Minor League Baseball for the Dodgers, Royals and Angels. He was dealt to the Phillies in 1958, and made his big league debut a year later. Anderson was sent back down to the Minors at the end of the season. He never made it back to "The Show" as a player, and after returning to the Minors for a few more years, he began his managerial career in Toronto in 1964.

Over the next four seasons, Anderson won pennants with four different teams in four different leagues.

As the 31-year-old skipper of the Rock Hill Cardinals, he won a Western Carolinas League pennant, followed by a Florida State League title with the St. Petersburg Cardinals, a first-year affiliate of St. Louis, in 1966.

Anderson led the Modesto Reds of the California League to a crown in 1967, and '68 saw him take the Asheville Tourists, the Double-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, to just the fourth championship in their 53-year history.

With that string of Minor League successes to his credit, Anderson moved up the Major League level, first as a coach for the expansion San Diego Padres, then in a similar capacity with the California Angels and later as the manager of the Reds. In Cincinnati, he worked with GM Bob Howsam, who had given him his first opportunity in St. Petersburg less than three years earlier.

Anderson spent the next 26 years as a Major League manager, including nine years in Cincinnati and 16 more in Detroit, before retiring in 1995 at age 61.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a manager in 2000 and inducted into the Reds' Hall of Fame later that year. His number was retired by the Cincinnati Reds and the Double-A Fort Worth Cats of the Texas League, who were a Dodgers affiliate in 1955 when Anderson played there in his third year of professional baseball.

Anderson is survived by wife Carol, sons Lee and Albert, daughter Shirley Englebrect and nine grandchildren.