Mike Quade is the fifth manager is major league history with a last name beginning with the letter "Q."
The first Q manager is someone I doubt any of you have ever heard of, Joe Quinn, who managed St. Louis in part of 1895 and Cleveland in 1899 (did you even know that Cleveland had a National League team?). The Cleveland Spiders owner also opened the St. Louis team, and he sent any of the decent Cleveland players to St. Louis. The fans stayed away from League Park, and with attendance so low, most other NL teams refused to play in Cleveland. That forced the Spiders to spend most of the season on the road, playing 112 of their 154 games away from Cleveland. After the season, the Spiders and three other NL teams were contracted.
Quinn's career record was 23-132 for a winning percentage of .148 That is the all-time worst for any manager with more than 100 games at the helm. I don't have a card of Joe Quinn to show.
It would be another 73 years before the next Q manager arrived....
....Frank Quilici of the Twins. Quilici was 280-287 in his 3 1/2 seasons as a skipper.
Mel Queen was the next Q, though he had just a temporary gig, taking over the Blue Jays in 1977 for the last five games of the season after Cito Gaston was fired. Queen's record was 4-1, but he didn't get the full time job the next season. Instead the Blue Jays hired Tim Johnson. Queen's playing career was a bit interesting, he broke into the big leagues as an outfielder and later converted to a pitcher. I wrote more about that here.
If we do a little math, the four Q managers before Quade had a combined record of 307-420. a .422 winning percentage. I sure hope Mike Quade can do better than that!
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