Former Braves and Blue Jays manager Bobby Cox

May 11, 2026

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

One night in Atlanta I was stuck for an idea -- which happened often.

Someone at the office suggested writing a piece about Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox. I wrinkled my nose and my toes.

But an idea is an idea.

Passing though the lunch room, the late great Hall of Fame broadcaster Skip Caray, before heading downstairs at Turner Field, asked, “What you writing tonight?”

“The manager.”

“Good luck. Come and see me with your empty notebook when you are done.”

I tried about 20 ways asking that night. Cox talked about his pet shelter but not much about baseball. He was fine to sit and talk with in the dugout three or four hours before first pitch. I managed to pry a few words out of John Smoltz and Chipper Jones.

Skip’s words when I returned upstairs, “Bobby Cox wants all of the blame and none of the credit. Quite unlike Tommy Lasorda and my father (Harry Caray).”

As Los Angeles Dodgers scribe Gordie Verrell used to say, “I buried that line about the second graph” in the next day’s bugle.

* * *

Years ago, someone asked me to give them an illustration of baseball passion.

I told them about watching the Braves one night. Chipper Jones was hitting.

The Braves were being edged 11-1 with two out in the bottom of the ninth.

“C’om Chip,” viewers at home could hear from the dugout mike.

A called strike one.

“C’om Chipper,” the voice implored.

Fouled back, now it’s 0-2.

“Good one to come, c’om Chip,” the voice cheered.

Jones popped up.

Ball game.

Of course, the voice belonged to Braves manager Cox, who was inducted into Cooperstown along with his fellow managers Tony La Russa, Joe Torre and his starters Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, plus slugger Frank Thomas, in 2014.

It didn’t matter that his Braves were down by a touchdown and a field goal.

It didn’t matter that two were out.

Until the Braves made the 27th and final out, Cox still had hope.

Even down 10 in the bottom of the ninth.

* * *

Or the Jays. Best Toronto Blue Jays team ever? Well, you can pick your 1992 team that defeated Cox’s Braves in six games in the World Series. Or you can pick the 1993 team Cito Gaston managed to victory in six games against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Or you could pick the 1985 Blue Jays, which won a franchise-best 99 games over the regular season, despite carrying two Rule V players: Lou Thornton (72 at-bats, 16 starts) and SS Manny Lee (43 at-bats, six starts). So, basically he won 99 games with a 23-man roster.

“No one managed personalities better than Bobby Cox,” said his former Blue Jays catcher Ernie Whitt. “He ran the clubhouse, we had 25 personalities and he managed them. He put people in positions to succeed. If we went into a four-game series, we were trying to win three. A three-game series, we were going for two of three. Bobby loved to compete.”

It wasn’t to last though. After losing in seven games to the Kansas City Royals despite being up 3-1, Blue Jays executives were making the long ride from the Kansas City airport to their downtown hotel on a shuttle bus when an executive from another team said, “Sorry to hear about your manager.”

Ted Turner had hired Cox to be general manager of the Braves, where he had managed from 1978 to 1981, before heading to Toronto. Surprise. After the strike-shortened 1981 season, he fired Cox and replaced him with Joe Torre, a former Brave who struggled in Atlanta but was a genius at Yankee Stadium.

What if Turner, who fired Torre after the 1984 season, had hired a veteran manager rather than bringing in organizational man Eddie Haas, who lasted 121 games. Bobby Wine managed the rest of the season.

What if closer Bruce Sutter, coming off 45 saves, had not been injured and not gone 23-for-35 (66%) saving games?

Well, the Braves would not have had a need for a new GM and Cox would still have been in Toronto ... for a while.

Blue Jays Cito Gaston, left and Braves skipper Bobby Cox

“Bobby Cox would have managed this team for a long time,” said Jays broadcaster Jerry Howarth. “He had respect from the players, he had support of Paul Beeston and Pat Gillick. Moving into the SkyDome he could have been like Earl Weaver’s stay in Baltimore.”

Instead Cox was a GM for only 4 1/2 seasons, firing Chuck Tanner one Sunday night in Chicago in 1988 and then taking over for Russ Nixon for the final 97 games of 1990.

* * *

One day in the weather room, at the end of the dugout, Cox talked about the game with one eye on the Dobbler weather. Former Braves INF Mark Lemke was there. Finally, Lemke left.

Someone asked, “Bobby, what does Lemke do now?”

Cox replied, “Ah, I don’t know -- same as when he played for us ... a little of that, a little of this.”

Turned out Lemke worked some games on radio and some on TV. With the Braves, he was an infielder who played here. He played there.

* * *

EXOS scribe Pete Williams came up with Cox’s six managerial lessons in 2010, his final year: 1. Never Speak Poorly of Anyone, 2. Pay Attention to Detail, 3. It’s Not About Me, 4. I’ve Got Your Back, 5. Know How to Pick Up a Colleague and 6. Be Consistent.

Whitt moved on to his own managing chair, guiding Team Canada to a gold in the Pan Am Games in 2011 and 2015 and a bronze in the World Cup in 2011.

“Everything I ever did with Team Canada I’d usually think ‘what would Bobby do here?’” said Whitt. “I treated my players the way he treated his players to be successful.”

* * *

Cox managed future Hall of Famers Chipper Jones, Fred McGriff, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. He won the National League Manager of the Year Award four times and won more games than anyone except Tony La Russa, Connie Mack and John McGraw.

Cox reached post-season play 14 consecutive years, although everyone seems to forget about 1994 when the Montreal Expos were in first as the strike hit.

One night his No. 3 hitter was a late scratch after the lineup was posted. The Blue Jays were in town with Roy Halladay on the mound. I asked Cox how bad his player was hurt?

“Not bad, he’ll be in there tomorrow, he has Halladay-itis ... a lot of guys get it,” joked Cox.

He suffered a major stroke in April 2019, shortly after the Braves’ home opener that season. That left him with significant health challenges, including impaired speech and issues that required the use of a wheelchair. A couple of years later, the Braves were at Rogers Centre and we asked a broadcaster about his health.

“We found out the secret,” he said, “we were going to visit Coxie in groups of three and four. Too much conversation. Too confusing. Now, it’s 1-on-1 and the visits are better.”

Cox passed Saturday at age 84.

* * *

My favourite Cox memory isn’t of him hobbling into short right field to argue with an umpire in Kissimmee, Fla. at Wide World of Sports, or of him managing the Jays or sitting in the weather room.

Rather it’s of him sitting outside the third base dugout in Dunedin one morning in 2009 and he was asking questions about his Blue Jays friends.

All of a sudden, the sun was blocked out as two giants came up the dugout stairs.

“Robert, who the heck are those guys?” I asked.

“Well, you better learn their names, because they’re going to be around for quite a while,” Cox said.

Right again. Both were 19. It was 6-foot-5 Jason Heyward, who played 16 years and won a World Series with the Chicago Cubs and 6-foot-4 Freddie Freeman, who has won three World Series and is in his 17th season.

Elliott: R.I.P. manager Bobby Cox