I figured he wouldn't want to be the long-term GM, due to his age. But I thought he could save the Yankees one more time.
I didn't know he was in ill health, and couldn't have done it.
Eugene Richard Michael was born on June 2, 1938 in Kent, Ohio, outside Cleveland, and grew up in nearby Akron. Nicknamed "Stick" because he was so thin, he went to Kent State University, as would his later Yankee teammate, Canton native Thurman Munson. He played baseball and basketball there.
He was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1959, but he was a typical "good-field-no-hit" shortstop of that era, and didn't reach the major leagues until 1966. In the off-season that year, he played minor-league basketball with the Columbus Comets. He was then traded by the Pirates, with Bob Bailey, to the Los Angeles Dodgers, for Maury Wills, who'd committed the unpardonable sin of being black and challenging team owner Walter O'Malley.
On November 30, 1967, the Yankees, still looking for a replacement for Tony Kubek, 2 years after his retirement due to a back injury, purchased Michael's contract. He didn't play much in 1968, 43 games at shortstop... and 1 as a pitcher, going 3 scoreless innings.
He was the Yankees' starting shortstop from 1969 to 1973, the last 5 seasons of the pre-renovation Yankee Stadium. He batted .272 in 1969, but never again topped .233 in a full season. For his career, he batted .229, had an OPS+ of 67 (so he wasn't just hitting poorly due to a pitching-friendly era), hit 15 home runs and had 226 RBIs.
He wasn't a great baserunner, either: In his career, he stole 22 bases, and was caught 18 times. Apparently, he was a great fielder, though playing shortstop in the American League at the same time as Mark Belanger of the Baltimore Orioles prevented him from winning any Gold Gloves. On 5 occasions, he pulled off the hidden ball trick, something that should embarrass any major league baserunner, making me wonder how he was able to pull it off more than, say, twice.
In 1974, now 36 years old, he went into decline. The Yankees moved him around the infield, but the writing was on the wall. Just as the Yankees were getting good again, he was no longer with them: They released him on January 21, 1975. The Detroit Tigers signed him, and he played 56 games for them, before being released after the season. He signed with the Boston Red Sox, and, while they didn't let him get into a game, they kept him on the roster until May 4, so he could qualify for a boost in his pension.
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It seemed like it was all over for him, and that he would be a halfway decent player from an era that Yankee Fans would, then as now, prefer to forget.
But Stick was just getting warmed up. In 1977, he was the Yankees' chief scout, and Reggie Jackson credited his scouting of the Los Angeles Dodgers' pitchers for helping him hit 3 home runs in the deciding Game 6 of the World Series. After 19 seasons in professional baseball, Gene Michael had a World Series ring.
In 1978, he was the Yankees' 1st base coach, and received another World Series ring. In 1979 and 1980, he managed in the Yankees' minor-league system, and in 1981 was promoted to manage the Bronx Bombers themselves. In that strike-forced split season, he won the AL Eastern Division in the 1st half, then was fired by team owner George Steinbrenner after going just 14-12 in the 2nd half, replaced by Bob Lemon. It was Lemon, who had also taken over for Billy Martin in the 1978 title season, who managed the Yankees into the postseason, getting to Game 6 of the World Series before losing.
But 1982 was the worst Yankee season since 1967, and George went through 3 managers. He fired Lemon, and brought Stick back. Then, after a 44-42 record, which was an improvement on what Lemon had been doing, he fired Stick again, and let Clyde King see out the season before hiring Billy Martin for a 3rd time.
Michael stayed in the organization, because, as George said, "I never really fired anybody. I just moved them around." Stick became one of what George called "my baseball people," until 1986, when he was offered the chance to manage the Chicago Cubs. George let him go, and he managed most of that season and most of the next season before being fired.
He never managed at the major league level again. But George brought him back into the Pinstriped fold. And it's a good thing he did. In 1990, when George was banned from baseball -- with a chance at reinstatement for the 1993 season, which he got -- the organization, on the field and in the boardroom, was in tatters.
Minority partner Robert Nederlander, of one of Broadway's top theatrical-producing families, appointed Michael to be the general manager. In my lifetime, there have been 3 incredibly important decisions regarding the Yankees: The 1972 deal negotiated by Mike Burke, then operating the team for CBS, and then-Mayor John Lindsay to keep the Yankees in a renovated Yankee Stadium; the sale by CBS to George the following year; and the appointment of Stick Michael to be the GM.
Had someone else been appointed, what happened thereafter might not have happened. The Yankees might still, in 2017, be looking for their 1st Pennant since 1981 and their 1st World Championship since 1978. It may have made the difference between the Yankees being baseball's version of the Toronto Maple Leafs, once a great franchise but letting that tradition recede further and further into the background and becoming a joke; and being the Yankees that people now under the age of 30 came to grow up reveling in their success.
Without George around to interfere, Stick rebuilt the team from top to bottom. He hired the scouts. He assigned managers and coaching staffs to the team at all levels, from The Bronx all the way down to the Rookie League. He oversaw the drafting and grooming of rising players like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Jim Leyritz. He traded for established veterans Wade Boggs, Tim Raines, David Cone, Paul O'Neill, Jimmy Key, John Wetteland, Tino Martinez, Mariano Duncan, David Wells, Jeff Nelson, Graeme Lloyd, and a good-field-no-hit catcher named Joe Girardi.
He also brought in Bob Watson to succeed him as GM, the 1st black person to hold that title (though not the 1st to operate as one) in Major League Baseball History, while he continued to oversee the whole personnel operation as "vice president of major league scouting" -- or "superscout," as the term became.
Result: By the time George came back for 1993, the Yankees were ready to contend again. From 1994 to 2012, 19 seasons the Yankees made the Playoffs 18 times, won the AL East 14 times, reached the AL Championship Series 10 times, won 7 Pennants and 5 World Series.
Reggie Jackson and Gene Michael,
during the 2009 World Series
When introduced in uniform on Old-Timers' Day, first at the old Yankee Stadium, then, from 2009 onward, in the new one, Gene Michael was overwhelmingly cheered by fans, most of whom never saw him play, many of whom never even saw him manage.
"What can you say about the Stick?" Bill Madden wrote in the online edition of today's Daily News. "That when it came to player evaluations, he was always the smartest guy in the room."
One of the guys who worked under him was Brian Sabean, who has gone on to build 3 World Championships with the San Francisco Giants.
But Stick also mentored Brian Cashman, who succeeded Watson as Yankee GM in 1998, and has been hailed time and time again as a "genius." He's not. From 1996 to 2003, he was benefiting from Stick's transactions. The 2009 title was mainly due to Hal and Hank Steinbrenner spending their dying father's money like cray to get 1 title. Since they've been in full charge since their father's death the next year, they've tightened the pursestrings, and Cashman hasn't built another Pennant-winner.
Stick was married twice, and had 4 children, living in Bergen County, New Jersey, first in Norwood, then in Upper Saddle River.
His death today, from a heart attack at age 79, in the Tampa Bay suburb of Oldsmar, Florida, was apparently unexpected, and many are shocked, although he apparently underwent a heart procedure earlier this year. Madden's column describes Lou Piniella, also a former Yankee player, coach, manager and GM, as "devastated"; and his Daily News obituary refers to David Cone as "crushed," and Cashman as "heartbroken."
Sweet Lou also called him "one of the smartest baseball men I ever knew."
The Yankees played the Baltimore Orioles today, in Baltimore, and wore black armbands, and will for the rest of the season. The Orioles are currently managed by the 1st manager that Stick hired for the Yankees, Buck Showalter.
"He was the best baseball executive I ever saw," Buck said.
The Yankees should have given him a Monument Park Plaque while he could still accept it. Without him, they'd be looking at nearly 40 years without a title, and they'd probably be playing in some antiseptic dome in New Jersey or Westchester, one that makes the new Yankee Stadium look like the Louvre.
UPDATE: Gene Michael was buried at Curlew Hills Memory Gardens in the Tampa suburb of Palm Harbor, Florida.
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