I haven't read it yet, but I would characterize this NYT book review as "glowing":
The Banty, Blustering Genius of Earl Weaver
This is from the review; hopefully the writer was inspired by similarly excellent prose in the book:
Quote:
The greatest sight in Major League Baseball during the 1970s was almost certainly this one: the Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver storming out of the dugout to remonstrate over some perceived injustice to his players. He would be so incensed at the officiating — or he pretended to be — that it was if he’d been eating chilies and was excreting flames.
If you were holding a hot dog, this was dinner and a show. Weaver was short and a bit tubby; he resembled Archie Bunker’s better looking, harder-drinking younger brother. He would kick dirt on a base, or yank it out of the ground, or lie down on it, or sit on it like a Buddha. Like Redd Foxx, he faked heart attacks. He performatively tore up rule books. He mimed throwing umpires out of the game. Officials got so upset when Weaver “beaked” them in the chest with the bill of his cap that he was forced to flip it around when arguing. He was ejected repeatedly, and fans ate it up. In Baltimore’s old Memorial Stadium, one sportswriter commented, he was like Elvis playing Vegas.
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EDIT: This portion of the review,
Quote:
Baseball managers today, in interviews, dispense clichés until you want to double Van Gogh yourself. Weaver liked to hold court after games while nude, drinking beer, smoking and eating fried chicken; sometimes he’d keep talking while at the urinal. He’d say things like, “We’ve crawled out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi.”
Miller catalogs a lot of Weaver’s best lines. He liked to comically hassle players he considered overly religious, for example. When one told him to walk with the Lord, he replied: “I’d rather you walk with the bases loaded.” When the same player hit a home run and commented that the Lord had been watching out for him, Weaver replied: “We better not be counting on God. I ain’t got no stats on God.”
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sparked memory of the Earl Weaver quotes in the OOTPB hints file. I found these:
"The only thing that matters is what happens on the little hump out in the middle of the field." (Earl Weaver)
"You know Earl. He's not happy unless he's not happy." (Elrod Hendricks, on Earl Weaver)
"Do the dull things right so the extraordinary things will not be required too often." (Earl Weaver)
"We hit the ball right where they could show off their defensive ability." (Earl Weaver, after losing to the 1969 Mets)