WINNING LOOKS GOOD ON HIM
Cito Gaston on two World Series wins, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and more
The first thing you notice when you meet Cito Gaston for the first time a couple of years is that he still looks fantastic. Gaston, 74, dropped into a Toronto hotel late Friday afternoon, in advance of the Blue Jays’ 25th anniversary celebrations of the 1992-93 World Series championships:
We doubt these celebrations ever get old, but what goes through your mind and your heart when you attend one of these trips down memory lane?
“Well, I’m always happy when the organization does this … I don’t think we’ve had one for a while, I can’t remember. But I always look forward to it because all the guys who played for me then were great people to be around. I still see some of them now and then, and it’s always great to catch up to the ones I don’t get to see enough of. I wouldn’t miss this for the world, they’re just a group of winners. And when you think of it, between ’92 and ’93, we had 14 players swapped out. But we picked up 14 new guys who were winners too.”
Which championship was more difficult to achieve?
“They were both equally hard. You’re playing against two of the best teams in baseball, and you look at the Braves (in ’92) and all they were doing is winning. The Phillies, you know, a lot of people were surprised by them, but if you look back to spring training that year, we didn’t beat them. So there were some details that people don’t think about a lot.”
Did you ever have any doubts about the outcomes in either of the championship years?
“No, never … they were two different teams we were playing, and the first year, we had about as complete a team as you could have. Offence, defence, starting pitchers, relievers, it was a pretty good team front to back. The next year (’93), we just outscored teams. With guys like John Olerud, Robbie (Alomar), and Paul Molitor, as you know, they finished 1-2-3 in the league (batting race), so we scored a lot of runs. We had two veteran starting pitchers in Jack Morris and Dave Stewart, and they battled you every day. The first year, we didn’t have to score all those runs every night, the second year, we did. I’m just very privileged to have man- on two different teams.”
What are you doing now?
“The last two years, I kinda retired. When Paul (former Jays president Beeston) left, I left. I spend time in Florida and, about four months a year, I’m in Boyne City, Mich., on the water. I still love golf, I go to a few tournaments ... Robbie’s, Joe’s (Carter) … I’ll be up here for the Blue Jays next week, too, and then I’ll be in St. Catharines for Fergie Jenkins’ golf tournament. I really shouldn’t play so much, my back (which gave him problems years ago) is fine, but it can still get sore if I play too much.”
The Blue Jays are on the verge of bringing up Vlad Guerrero Jr. to the big leagues, most likely, next year. What’s the right thing to do with a 19-year-old player who is a phenom?
“He’s in (Buffalo) now, so see what he can do there. He’s gonna see guys (pitchers) who will work him, change speeds on him, so see how he handles that. If he does well, and they don’t like to rush kids in baseball sometimes, get them closer to free agency and arbitration years, but if (Guerrero) does well in Buffalo, then it might not hurt to have him up here at the end of the season to have a look … you’d expect he’d be in the major leagues next year, for sure.”
How tough was it for you to break into the big leagues, full time, in 1969, and, to mention as part of that, the racism you dealt with at the time?
“It was tougher in the minor leagues than the major leagues ... We couldn’t get off the team bus to get food, some of our teammates would get food and bring it to us. We had myself and a couple of Latin American players, and we’d have to stay at different motels, away from the rest of the team. I remember at one park, this guy yelled out to our manager, “Where did you get the three monkeys from.” We used to get called all kinds of names, but I was raised in Texas (native of San Antonio), and my mother used to tell me, she said, ‘Son, I’d rather be saying, there you go than there you lie …” You can’t win some fights.”
Final question: name three people, dead or alive, who you’d like to have dinner with ?
“Hank Aaron is one of them, and I see Hank, I got a humanitarian award from him … Jackie Robinson, for sure, and Martin Luther King.”