Most Ejected Managers in MLB History

by Jeremy Block - 5/19/2026

Getting thrown out of a baseball game is technically a consequence. However, for some managers, it was practically a career strategy. The dugout is the only workplace in professional sports where screaming at an umpire until your face turns purple is sometimes celebrated, and the men on this list turned that tradition into an everyday thing.

Some used ejections to protect their players. Some genuinely couldn't help themselves. A few probably enjoyed it more than they'd ever admit. Here are the seven most ejected managers in MLB history, ranked from least to most.

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7. Frankie Frisch (88 Ejections)

Before the era of replay, analytics, and challenging calls, managers were forced to operate almost entirely on instinct, reputation, and the willingness to fight for every inch. Few did that better than Frankie Frisch. After wrapping up his career as a Hall of Fame second baseman, the ‘Fordham Flash’ managed the Cardinals, Pirates, Cubs, and Giants across a 16-year career as a manager.

While Frisch knew the game inside-and-out, he was never afraid to hop out of the dugout and argue umpires' calls, racking up 88 ejections in his career, with 51 of them alone coming from his seven seasons with the Pirates.

What makes that total notable is that he managed during an era when the game moved at a different pace, rosters were thinner, and managers had considerably less leverage inside a franchise than they do today. He was an old-school baseball lifer who ran his teams the way he played the game: aggressively and with zero tolerance for what he viewed as bad officiating.

6. Bruce Bochy (89 Ejections)

Four World Series rings, 28 years in the dugout, Bruce Bochy was arguably one of the most decorated active managers in the sport. None of that stopped him from getting tossed 89 times. Bochy accumulated those ejections across his 28-year career, and unlike other managers on this list, he did it during an era when instant replay had already cut significantly into the arguments available to managers. Talk about voicing your opinion no matter what, right?

Before replay, a manager could argue a safe-or-out call at second base until an umpire's patience broke. After replay, a team challenges it and moves on. Bochy still found 89 reasons to give it a go. He was ejected six times in a single season during his tenure with the San Francisco Giants, which tells you something about how the Giants were playing that year.

Given that he's still active as of 2026, and the active leader behind him had less than half Cox's total, Bochy's place on this list is unlikely to change for quite some time.

5. Tony La Russa (93 Ejections)

Here's where the list gets a bit more interesting. There is exactly one manager in MLB history who holds a law degree. There is also exactly one manager in MLB history who holds a law degree and got thrown out of 93 games over his 35 years as a manager. That is Tony La Russa.

La Russa wasn't as animated as other managers mentioned on this list, but when a call went against his team, he could go from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye, and across four franchises and six decades, those moments added up. He won three World Series titles and is a four-time Manager of the Year, easily sitting as one of the more accomplished managers the game of baseball has ever seen.

La Russa understood ejections the way he understood pitching matchups: as tools. The fact that he posted 93 ejections while being one of the most detailed and analytically-driven managers in the game's history says something about what the job actually demands when you're sitting close enough to a bad call to make it personal.

4. Earl Weaver (96 Ejections)

If there is anything more impressive than 96 career ejections for a manager in the pros, it is doing it all with one franchise. Earl Weaver spent all 18 years of his managing career with the Baltimore Orioles and never passed up a chance to turn an umpire argument into something close to performance art.

Over 2,541 managed games, that works out to roughly one ejection every 26 games, meaning he was getting tossed basically once a month for 18 years. His arguments were famous for the hat-flip, the backward cap, the dirt-kicking, and a voice that could strip paint.

At his Hall of Fame induction in 1996, Weaver suggested that umpires got most calls right, except for the ones he disagreed with—which, by his logic, was not exactly a small number. That’s not a manager who thought he argued too much. That’s just a manager who thought umpires were wrong more often than not.

3. Leo Durocher (100 Ejections)

Leo Durocher did not coin 'Nice guys finish last' as a throwaway line. He managed 24 years in a major league dugout to back it up. With 100 career ejections, he trailed only John McGraw when he retired and still sits third on the all-time list.

Durocher managed the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs, and Astros, racking up over 20 ejections with every stop except Houston, and the guarantee was always the same: if a call went the wrong way, someone was going to hear about it.

Unlike others on this list, Durocher took things to another level entirely. One of his ejections came during a pregame meeting for arguing a call from the day before, which is the kind of grudge that most managers would have let go by breakfast.

Look, Durocher’s philosophy was simple: winning was the only thing that mattered, and if getting tossed was the price of making that clear to an umpire who got it wrong, he was happy to pay it every single time.

2. John McGraw (121 Ejections)

For the better part of three decades, the New York Giants were John McGraw's personal operation, and he ran them like it. Nicknamed 'Little Napoleon,' McGraw managed the Giants from 1902 to 1932, won 10 National League pennants and three World Series, racked up 121 ejections, and treated every umpire's call as a starting point for a debate rather than a final answer.

His most infamous ejection came when he refused to let his Giants take the field for 20 minutes, eventually resulting in a forfeit. McGraw also flat-out refused to play the World Series in 1904 out of contempt for the American League, which tells you everything you need to know about his commitment to a principle once he dug in.

McGraw held the ejection record for more than 75 years after his death, which says everything about how thoroughly he made umpires' lives difficult across three decades running the Giants.

1. Bobby Cox (162 Ejections)

One for every game in a full season. That is what 162 career ejections looks like written out, and no manager in the history of the sport has come close. To put that in perspective, Cox's record is 34% higher than McGraw's and nearly double that of almost anyone else on this list.

Cox spent 29 years in dugouts, 24 of them in Atlanta, won a World Series in 1995, led the Braves to 14 division titles, and did all of it while being one of the most genuinely beloved managers the game has ever seen. The umpires he spent decades arguing with reportedly loved him too.

While most managers on this list were known for their tempers, Cox was different. He was known for charging the field, but not to argue a call, but to absorb an ejection before one of his players could earn it. The arguments were not about demeaning umpires. They were about protecting players, and the umpires understood that, which is why a man who got thrown out 162 times somehow left the game without an enemy in it.

With instant replay having gutted the number of available arguments, Cox's record may be the most unbreakable one in baseball.

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Start:	May 19, 2026 @ 6:50 PM
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Most Ejected Managers in MLB History

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