Bless You Boys: Former Tigers Coach Billy Consolo Passes Away

Bless you, indeed.  Billy Consolo.

Here’s some sad news for long-time Detroit Tigers fans.  Former coach Billy Consolo, who was a coach for the team from 1979 to 1992, and again in 1995, passed away yesterday from an apparent heart attack.  He was 73 years old.

In addition to his coaching career, Consolo played for 10 years in the major leagues.  The six teams he played for were the Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators, Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Angels, and Kansas City Athletics.  He played at shortstop, second base, and third base throughout his career.

You know, Mike McClary and I were just talking about Consolo a couple of days ago.  I was telling him about the article in last Sunday’s Boston Globe, in which Joe Torre claims that he was the first to employ a bench coach when he asked Don Zimmer to join his New York Yankees coaching staff in 1996.

That couldn’t be, Mike said.  Consolo was Sparky Anderson’s bench coach, but maybe they just didn’t call that job “bench coach” back then.