Wayne Tennyson Blackburn (July 10, 1914 in

Mount Joy, Ohio Mount Joy is an unincorporated community in Scioto County, in the U.S. state of Ohio. History A post office called Mount Joy was established in 1871, and remained in operation until 1918. The community was named for Thomas Mt. Joy, a land agent. ...

– February 16, 2000 in

Portsmouth, Ohio Portsmouth is a city in and the county seat of Scioto County, Ohio, United States. Located in southern Ohio south of Chillicothe, it lies on the north bank of the Ohio River, across from Kentucky, just east of the mouth of the Scioto River. ...

) was a

major league baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (A ...

coach and minor league

player-manager A player-coach (also playing coach, captain-coach, or player-manager) is a member of a sports team who simultaneously holds both playing and coaching duties. A player-coach may be a head coach or an assistant coach. They may make changes to the s ...

. Blackburn was an

infielder An infielder is a baseball player stationed at one of four defensive "infield" positions on the baseball field. Standard arrangement of positions In a game of baseball, two teams of nine players take turns playing offensive and defensive roles. ...

nineteen years (1936–1956), all in the minor leagues, losing one year to military service and one year to inactivity. Blackburn drew over 1400 walks in 2016 minor league games. From 1948–56, he had 715 hits and 742 walks in 711 games. He led the 1936

KITTY League Kitty or Kittie may refer to: Animals * Cat, a small, domesticated carnivorous mammal ** Kitten, a young cat Film * Kitty Films, an anime production company in Japan * ''Kitty'' (1929 film), based on the Deeping novel; the first British talkin ...

with 124 runs, the 1943

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with 114 runs, and the 1951 KITTY with 116 runs. He also led the 1948

Southern Association The Southern Association was a higher-level minor league in American organized baseball from 1901 through 1961. For most of its existence, the Southern Association was two steps below the Major Leagues; it was graded Class A (1902–1935), Cla ...

with 36 SB. Blackburn was briefly a player-manager at the end of the season in 1937 for the

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of the Three-I League. Blackburn truly began his managerial career in 1951 with the

Owensboro Oilers The Owensboro Oilers were a minor league baseball club, based in Owensboro, Kentucky, from 1936 until 1955. The team was a member of the class-D level Kentucky–Illinois–Tennessee League (or KITTY League). The team was originally formed in 1935 ...

. He moved to the

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, where he was a player-manager in the minors (1952–54, 1956), minor league manager (1958, 1965–66, 1968) and major league coach (1963–64). From 1968–1969, Wayne coached the Panamanian baseball team in the Caribbean Series while living in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, with his children and wife. His Kinston Eagles had the best record in the 1952

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, as did the

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of the

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he took over in mid-1958. His teams also lost in the playoffs in 1953 and 1954. Blackburn scouted for the

into at least the mid-1980s. He married Jeanne Anderson on October 14, 1939. Together, they had six children: Joan Blackburn, Michael Blackburn, Rebecca Blackburn, Kevin Blackburn, Linda Marie Blackburn, and Timothy Blackburn. He served in the

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as a TEC 4 in 1945 during the World War II era. He died at age 86 at Hillview Retirement Center in Portsmouth, Ohio and is buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Portsmouth, Ohio. His legacy lives on through his contribution to Portsmouth, Ohio's baseball history, and he is memorialized on the Portsmouth, Ohio floodwall.

Year-by-year managerial record

References

*For a ful
Bibliography from SABR's The Baseball Index (TBI)
* *The Professional Baseball Players Database 5.0
All-time Tiger coaches
1914 births 2000 deaths Baseball player-managers Minor league baseball managers Detroit Tigers coaches Detroit Tigers scouts Caribbean Series managers United States Army non-commissioned officers United States Army personnel of World War II {{US-baseball-infielder-stub