Miller Huggins

Who was Miller Huggins?

Miller James Huggins was an American professional baseball player and manager. Huggins played second base for the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals. He managed the Cardinals and New York Yankees, including the Murderers' Row teams of the 1920s that won six American League pennants and three World Series championships.

Huggins was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a degree in law from the University of Cincinnati, where he was also captain on the baseball team. Rather than serve as a lawyer, Huggins chose to pursue a professional baseball career. He played semi-professional and minor league baseball from 1898 through 1903, at which time he signed with the Reds.

As a player, Huggins was adept at getting on base. He was also an excellent fielding second baseman, earning the nicknames "Rabbit", "Little Everywhere", and "Mighty Mite" for his defensive prowess and was later considered an intelligent manager who understood the fundamentals of the game. Despite fielding successful teams for the Yankees in the 1920s, he continued to make personnel changes in order to maintain his teams' superiority in the AL.