2024: Passages

Once, during a Yankee Stadium ceremony paying tribute to former Yankees who'd passed on that year, Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra turned to his Hall of Fame battery mate, left-handed pitcher Whitey Ford, and said, "Boy, I hope I never see my name up there!" Unfortunately, the laws of human mortality are inviolable. As Berra and Ford themselves learned soon enough en route their places in the Elysian Fields.

No year passes without a few too many baseball people passing. If you're my age, you, too, saw a lot of people who affected your viewing of the game joining Yogi and Whitey in those heavenly bleachers this year, including three members of the Hall of Fame. (For the morbidly curious, that has left shortstop/stolen base legend Luis Aparicio baseball's oldest living Hall of Famer — for now.)

Willie Mays (93; June 18) — It's not unfair to say that it's all been said and written about the greatest all-around center fielder who ever hit the field or stood in at the plate. But then I unearthed this from a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, Murray Kempton: The one thing the greatest athlete of our generation could not do to us was to quit on himself and his team for as much as one second of his professional life, and that is the promise Willie Mays has kept.

That was written for the New York Post in October 1962. A Giants fan displaced when the team moved from New York to San Francisco, Kempton kept his eye on Mays regardless, to the end, when Mays's spirit couldn't quit until his body began to tell him, "Not so fast, Willie." Maybe nobody loved Willie Mays being able to play baseball at the top of the line as deeply as Mays. Maybe that's why it was so difficult to near impossible for him to obey Father Time.

Perhaps the weight of our sorrow even losing a 93-year-old legend was that there was still something precious about America with Mays still in it. Just as we believed about Yogi, and about Jackie Robinson, and Roberto Clemente, and Stan Musial, and Buck O'Neil, and Henry Aaron, and Tom Seaver, and a very few others who were men equal to and often better men than than they were Hall of Fame players.

Bud Harrelson (79; January 10) — He only looked like my paternal grandmother's "little cream puff" until he hit the field at shortstop and refused to back down to anyone, even Pete Rose in the 1973 National League Championship Series. Or, anything, as he fought back against the obscenities of Alzheimer's disease from 2016 until his death in January.

He could barely hit his weight, but at shortstop Harrelson was a study in raw consistency whom some (including Rose) believed the real heart and soul of his Mets.

Al McBean (85; January 31) — The first Virgin Islands native to play major league baseball. McBean was a classic class clown and a sharp relief pitcher whose big moment in the sun was winning The Sporting News's Fireman of the Year award for 1964 . . . getting his shot when the Pirates' long-established relief-meister Elroy Face went down for the season with an injury. (Codicil: Face and McBean were friends, the older man acting as the younger's mentor, as well.)

McBean also used his wit to defuse racism: once, drinking from a "whites only" water fountain, he faced his accuser and shot back, "I just took a drink of that white water and it's no damned different from ours!"

Don Gullett (73; February 14) — A key if injury-plagued left-handed pitcher for the classic Big Red Machine of the early to mid 1970s. Signed one of the prize post-Messersmith free agency contracts with the Yankees — whom his Reds had just swept out of the 1976 World Series. Led the American League in winning percentage in year one of that deal.

The next year: Double-torn rotator cuff. Pitching career over. Took a year to play in the short-lived Senior Professional Baseball Association, then worked as the Reds' pitching coach from 1993-2005. Later worked in the Reds' player development division while also running a tobacco and cattle farm in his native Kentucky.

Jerry Grote (81; April 7) — The anchorman behind the plate for the 1969 Miracle Mets and the 1973 You Gotta Believe Mets. Grote was well respected for handling the superbly-structured Mets pitching staffs of the time and for a fine throwing arm; no less than Hall of Famer Lou Brock praised him for having the most accurately quick release.

Back troubles eventually ground him down, as did a divorce from his first wife. Known to be cantankerous as a player, Grote in retirement became a successful San Antonio businessman, a happily remarried man, and a favorite instructor in Mets fantasy camps.

Whitey Herzog (92; April 15) — A Hall of Fame manager, Herzog almost didn't get to managing: he might have taken the Mets' bridge after Gil Hodges' death but for a deal he tried to broker a few years earlier that would have involved moving a management pet in a bid to get outfielder Tommie Agee. (Agee eventually became a Met in a different deal.)

The White Rat would manage the Rangers, the Angels, the Royals (to several division titles), and the Cardinals (to three World Series and one Series ring). Then, in 1990, discovering his team quitting on him, Herzog decided to quit on them — essentially, firing them. He remained both an acolyte of baseball and a tireless critic of what he saw as the game's foolishnesses.

Carl Erskine (97; April 16) — Right-handed pitcher who had Hall of Fame talent and 2 no-hitters on his resumé. He also had career-long shoulder trouble after his early manager Burt Shotton insisted he pitch through a serious shoulder injury. Oisk (as Brooklyn fans called him) was probably more famous for two things: helping shepherd Jackie Robinson's way early; and, lifelong work with the Special Olympics and other programs for Down's syndrome.

Erskine's youngest of four children, Jimmy, was a Down's child who lived 63 years and worked in the restaurant business, defying most predictions for his life when he was born. The Hall of Fame recognized Erskine's works: they handed him the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 ceremonies.

Orlando Cepeda (86; June 28) — Arguably the first San Francisco Giants idol. (Willie Mays, after all, was seen at first as purely a New York import.) Battled with fellow Hall of Famer Willie McCovey for time at first base until he was traded to the Cardinals in early 1966. A year later, Cepeda found himself owning first base and tagging the team El Birdos en route a World Series championship and the National League's MVP award.

After a none-so-great 1968, Cepeda found himself traded to the Braves for 1969 and played well for the champs of the newly-minted National League West. Ruined as a player when his good knee went bad. A post-career marijuana arrest cost him his money, ten months in prison, and a job as a minor league manager. Discovering Buddhism after that, he remarried happily, took responsibility for his formerly chaotic life, and re-connected with the Giants for the rest of his life.

Denny Lemaster (85; July 24) — Talented, hard-luck left-hander. A rotation mainstay for the Braves and the Astros in the 1960s; transitioned to relief near the decade's end. Feuding with Astro skipper Harry Walker and Expos skipper Gene Mauch led the California native to retire to Georgia and a life of home building and prize-winning wood carving, especially for his intricately-detailed duck decoys.

Five years after his first wife died in a car accident, Lemaster remarried happily and eventually took up woodcarving full time following his home building retirement.

Ed Kranepool (79; September 8) — An $80,000 bonus baby with the newborn 1962 Mets at age 17, Kranepool played 18 seasons with the team including their 1969 World Series triumph. He earned late-career respect as a pinch hitter, though he also criticized the Mets for not letting him develop more properly in the minors during his first few seasons.

The twice-married Kranepool, a longtime fan favorite, also joined several Mets alumni in zoom calls with patients in elderly care facilities during the COVID-19 pan-damn-ic.

Joey Jay (89; September 27) — First Little League alumnus to play major league baseball. A 1950s Braves bonus baby, Jay struggled to find a full place on the Braves staff . . . but the Braves trading Jay after the 1960 season made the Reds' 1961 pennant possible. The Reds were badly overmatched by the Yankees, but Jay was the only Reds pitcher to record a win in that Series.

After leading the team with 21 wins each in 1961 and 1962, Jay fell prone to shoulder issues and tussles with Reds management. He ended his career in 1966 and became a business success in oil, transportation, and building maintenance, staying away from baseball entirely with no regret. The Reds elected Jay to the team Hall of Fame in due course.

Pete Rose (83; September 30) — The scrapper who barreled his way to baseball immortality, crowned by breaking Hall of Famer Ty Cobb's career hits record . . . and threw his post-playing managing career plus his likely election to the Hall away when he was banished permanently for violating MLB's Rule 21(d), as a player as well as a manager, prompting the Hall itself to enact a rule barring the banished from appearing on any Hall ballot.

"I was raised, but I never grew up," Rose once said. When he said it, it drew more than a few laughs. In the long, long, long wake of his permanent banishment over Rule 21(d), that remark became more, more, more telling as each year passed, without his reinstatement, but with more than a few revelations that ran a route from saddening to disgraceful.

Luis Tiant (83; October 8) — In the Year of the Pitcher, 1968, Denny McLain hogged the headlines for being credited with 31 wins . . . but colorful El Tiante actually led the American League with a 1.60 earned run average and a 2.04 fielding-independent pitching rate. Injuries with the Indians and the Twins the next two years, alas, left enough people believing this son of a Cuban-born Negro Leagues pitcher was finished.

Not so fast. The Red Sox offered the recovering Tiant a shot. The portly righthander with the corkscrew delivery and herky-jerky hands coming to the stretch repaid them with interest, becoming one of the teams' arguable two best pitchers for eight seasons, especially in the 1975 World Series. (He led the entire Show with his 1.91 ERA in 1972.) He went on to pitch for the Yankees and, briefly, the Pirates and the Angels, before calling it a career.

El Tiante may yet earn Hall of Fame enshrinement, albeit posthumously: he's one of eight whose cases will be reviewed by the Classic Baseball Era Committee this week.

Fernando Valenzuela (63; October 22) — The rookie sensation of 1981 (split season or no split season), Valenzuela gripped the nation with his skyward windup eyes, his broad smile, his boyish enthusiasm, and his pitching ability. The bad news: overwork, and overthrowing his heralded screwball, reduced him to journeyman status before that decade ended.

He became a respected commentator on the Dodgers' Spanish-language game broadcasts. Last fall, he took time off to concentrate on his health; we learned subsequently that he may have died of septic shock and cirrhosis of the liver. But in almost divine coincidence, the Dodgers' World Series celebration parade just so happened to occur on what would have been Valenzuela's 64th birthday.

Rico Carty (85; November 23) — I wrote of the Beeg Boy (his self-designated nickname) last week. Suffice to say here that, whenever he got out of his own way or avoided illness or injury, Carty could be and so often was a force in the batter's box . . . and had one of the most joyous smiles in the game.

May one and all of them have been welcomed home joyously by numerous former teammates, no few family members, perhaps, and the Lord in whom they devoutly believed.