CALLAWAY TOOK AMAZIN’ PATH:
Family and friends say new Mets skipper has what IT takes to lead
Following a tough loss his junior year of high school, Mickey Callaway took the defeat so hard, felt so bad about not getting his Germantown Red Devils deeper into the state tournament, that he called his teammates, especially the seniors, all summer to say he was sorry for losing the game.
“Mickey was really special,” Germantown teammate Collins Day tells the Daily News. “He took that loss pretty hard. Probably harder than he should have.”
Mets fans: this is your new manager. A hyper-dedicated team guy who obsesses over every detail of the game, including losses in high school that gnawed at him well after the final out was registered.
“He had a gift of just making people feel really awesome, which is what I think he’ll bring to New York,” says Day. “He’ll make people feel like they should feel, and they’ll want to play for him.”
From a young age, Callaway had an infectious personality. Even on his high school baseball team, he was a hardthrowing people person — a no-nonsense winner and a tough competitor.
“He was always good at relating to people,” says younger brother Casey. “As a big brother, he was always very aware of the types of things that would help me out or situations that might be tough for me, growing up and going to the same high school, he was mindful and was always giving me advice.”
Callaway carried himself the same way around teammates. He was Mr. Positive, always picking up other players and leading by example. Day isn’t surprised his old friend is a big-league skipper. In many ways, Callaway was destined for this, he says.
“He has that ‘it’ factor,” says Day. “You can’t really describe it. He’s always had it.”
“He’s always had that leadership quality,” Casey adds. “People in the sports world, we call it that ‘It’ factor where you have those guys on your team who, for one reason or another, everyone is attracted to. He doesn’t repel people.”
Callaway grew up a multi-sport star in Germantown, Tenn., just outside Memphis. Even at 5-foot-10, Callaway could dunk a basketball, but his first love, passed down from his father, Mike, was baseball.
“Our family has always been a baseball family,” says Casey, who is five years Mickey’s junior. “My grandfather, my mom’s dad, coached my dad in American Legion ball growing up. My dad played a little bit of college ball for a year or two for a local small college here. And then me and my brother were introduced to it and we just fell in love.”
Baseball was a part of Mickey and Casey long before they ever played their first game of catch in the backyard. Mike named his sons after Yankee Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Casey Stengel.
Says Mike, “If I had another one, he would have been named Yogi.”
“My dad was just a big baseball fan and he knew that Casey Stengel and Mickey Mantle were two baseball personalities,” says Casey. “I don’t think it mattered who they were playing for as much as both of them were Hall of Famer-type names. That’s who we were named after.”
Mike Callaway gave his kids the gift of baseball, but he also instilled in his kids the leadership qualities they took with them out on the field. As a strategic planner in the Army Corps of Engineers, Mike worked amongst generals and men of high character. He says he made it a point to bring the lessons he learned at work home to his family at the end of the day.
“I naturally came back to the kids and said, ‘This stuff makes sense,’” he says. “The values are really core values: being loyal, modesty, integrity, that type of stuff. All for one, one for all-type stuff.” “Me, my dad and Mickey talked a lot about values and leadership that my dad got from interacting with those generals,” says Casey. “You see a lot of those personalities within Mickey as well.” Casey Callaway may be the brother named after the legendary manager of the Yankees and Mets, but he says Mickey is the perfect man to lead the Mets into the future. “I think he’ll do good,” he says. “I’m sure there will be times when there’s some-thing new for him, but Mickey’s never been a person that got too caught up in what other people were saying and doing. He’s been in the spotlight ever since I’ve known him; when he was in high school and I was in the fifth grade, I remember every single night we had a Major League Baseball scout in the house eating dinner with us. Every major college was coming to eat dinner with us. So he’s always been in the spotlight, although it’s not New York City.” Now Mickey has one of Casey Stengel’s
old jobs, a twist of fate everybody back home could see coming a mile away.
Mickey Callaway got here thanks to his successful run as pitching coach with the Cleveland Indians. Cleveland led the American League in strikeouts the last four years and Callaway mentored 2014 Cy Young winner Corey Kluber. Kluber is the front-runner to win a second Cy Young after a brilliant 2017.
Mickey was a pretty good pitcher himself growing up. He left Memphis to pitch at Ole Miss. He was drafted in the seventh round in 1996 by Tampa Bay and mostly played in the minors. He is the winningest pitcher in Durham Bulls history, a dubious distinction, but found his calling as a coach while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery in 2007.
Callaway took a job as the interim head coach of the baseball team at Texas A&M International University in 2008 because the position, selfishly, allowed him to hold a job and rehab his arm at the same time.
“The only other thing around here would have been a substitute teacher or something like that,” says Casey. “He knew at some point, he was eventually going to move on. But he found a job that was only going to be six months, and he took it.”
This is where Mickey Callaway first got the coaching bug.
“You could tell he was getting into it,” says Casey. “To keep his pitching career going he took the job, but once he got in the middle of it, he was talking to me about recruiting players for the next year. You could just see he saw the value in coaching … he was dedicated to those guys.
“I think he finally realized it might be his alley.”