The baseball world lost a true hard-nose yesterday. Phil Garner—the guy everyone knew as ‘Scrap Iron’—passed away on Saturday at 76. His family shared that he’d been fighting pancreatic cancer for more than two years. You could still hear the grit in his son Ty’s voice when he talked about how his dad kept his spark for the game until the very end.
It’s the kind of news that hits the clubhouse hard. I still remember the smell of fresh-cut grass and old leather when thinking about guys like him; he was from an era where you just played through whatever hurt.
Garner put in 16 seasons as a player, bouncing from the A’s to the Pirates, then the Astros, Dodgers, and Giants. He was everywhere, honestly. But people really remember 1979. He was a machine that year for Pittsburgh, hitting .500 in the World Series as the Pirates climbed back from that 3-1 hole against the Orioles. He was relentless. Actually, I think his OPS was .800 that season? Yeah, looking at the stats, it’s wild how much he drove that team to win it all.
He wasn’t just a player though—or maybe he was a coach who just happened to wear a jersey, I don’t know. He managed for 15 years. Milwaukee, Detroit, and obviously Houston. He held the wins record for the Brewers until Counsell finally caught him a couple of years ago.
When he took over the Astros in 2004, it was like someone flipped a switch. They went 48-26 just to close out the year. It was a massive turnaround. He got them to the World Series the next year, though that sweep by the White Sox… that was tough to watch. Misryoum records show he had a 985-1,054 managerial record, which doesn’t even tell the half of it. He was a Tennessee guy, a Vol through and through, and his number 18 is up in the rafters there.
He was a hell of a competitor. Rest in peace, Scrap Iron.