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He worked off-seasons at a variety of menial jobs, finally settling in at a loan company, where he interviewed applicants and tracked down delinquent borrowers. Ballplayers with lame excuses have since found that a manager who once chased defaulters views their alibis with a gimlet eye. In 1956 Weaver was hired as player-manager of the Class A Knoxville Smokies, a move that penurious owners traditionally employ to get two jobs done on one salary. The new manager promptly showed insight by benching Knoxville's second baseman, one Earl Weaver. When the year ended, he gave up on baseball and headed for a career in small loans. "The only thing I'd ever wanted in my life was to be a major league ballplayer, but I had to admit to myself that I wasn't good enough. It broke my heart. But right then I started becoming a good baseball person, because when I came to recognize, and more important, accept my own deficiencies, then I could recognize other players' inabilities and learn to accept them, not for what they can't do, but for what they can do. And in the process, I suppose, I broke some hearts."
But the Baltimore front office had spotted Weaver's managing talent during his brief tenure in Knoxville. He was offered a job as player-manager of the Class D farm team, and was on his way. Milwaukee Brewer General Manager Harry Dalton, a former Baltimore executive who shepherded Weaver's rise through the minors, had no doubts about picking him to manage the Orioles: "He's always been a winner, and it's as simple as that. In baseball language, that denotes a particular type—a man who gets the most out of his ball clubs."
Some American League umpires may find it hard to believe, but Weaver was much more tempestuous in the minors than he is today. Blessed, or perhaps cursed, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, its rules, precedents and subtleties, he pushed his cause with a vigor that bordered on the manic. American League President Lee MacPhail recalls the day when Weaver was thrown out of a game for disputing a call at third base —and uprooted the bag and took it with him. A policeman had to be dispatched to recover the base so the game could continue. Dalton remembers that when Weaver did not like a call at home, he would insist that, since the umpires could not see the plate anyhow, it might as well be obliterated: "He would get down on all fours and make little sand castles on top of home plate and completely cover it up."
Reflecting on Weaver, a trio of American League umpires offer differing views.
Says Ron Luciano, who has tangled spectacularly with him over the years: "He gives me the impression that he wants everything—that he wants you to cheat for him. He wants an unfair advantage. Maybe that comes with a winning attitude."
Says Dave Phillips: "His main objective is to intimidate. He doesn't use any curse words. He just fights for everything he can get." Jerry Neudecker is kinder: "I'd just as soon have Weaver out there as anybody else. He's been fair to me. He won't take up for a ballplayer when he knows the ballplayer is wrong."