A part of Yankees lore, Nevin finally a Yankee
TAMPA — The legend goes that if only the Houston Astros had listened to their old scout, the Hall of Fame pitcher, baseball history — Yankees history, for the parochial sorts — would have been irreparably altered.
Phil Nevin knows all too well about the legend, which happens to be largely true. He shouldn’t and won’t apologize for being the lesser entity in the story.
And in a nice twist of baseball fate, Nevin now finds himself working for the same team that benefited most from that fateful Astros decision nearly 26 years ago.
“Derek, we were always good buddies on the field,” Nevin, the Yankees’ thirdbase coach, said Friday of Derek Jeter. “We got along great. I respect the heck out of everything he did in his career, obviously, and what he’s doing now. He’s good for the game of baseball. So whenever your name is mentioned with somebody like that, it’s great.”
In 1992, the Astros held the first pick in the amateur draft by virtue of their National League-worst 65-97 record the previous season. Hal Newhouser, who would be inducted into the Hall of Fame that summer, worked as a Michigan-based scout for the Astros and developed a player-crush on Jeter, the skinny shortstop at Kalamazoo Central High School.
“Hal Newhouser was about as firmly as committed on behalf of Derek as a scout could be, and was very firm in his belief about the type of player he’d ultimately become,” Dan O’Brien, then the Astros’ scouting director, said Saturday in a telephone interview. Houston’s choice, O’Brien said, came down to Jeter or Nevin, a third baseman at Cal State Fullerton.
“When you have the first pick in the country, clearly there are other individuals who are at least informed in the process,” O’Brien said. “Ultimately, the Astros decided that Phil was closer to the big leagues than Derek would be. … That was the factor that tipped the scale in favor of Phil.”
Newhouser retired shortly after — not, O’Brien said, out of frustration that the Astros didn’t heed his advice, a detail the legend often features. Newhouser’s retirement at age 71, O’Brien said, “was preplanned and already in place long before the decision was made on draft day.” Newhouser died in November 1998, shortly after Jeter — who fell to the sixth slot before the Yankees popped him — won his second World Series ring as a Yankee.
Nevin proceeded to put up a very respectable career, tallying a career 114 OPS+ in 1,217 games, with most of his success coming as a member of the Padres. Nevertheless, the 47-year-old routinely fields questions about his draft classmate, as do the men selected second through fifth: right-hander Paul Shuey, a successful Indians reliever; southpaw B.J. Wallace (selected by the Expos), who never made the big leagues and wound up imprisoned; outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds, who had a decent career and now works for the Players Association; and outfielder Chad Mottola, a busted Reds pick who now serves as the Rays’ hitting coach.
Referencing the ESPN documentary “The Brady 6,” about the six quarterbacks picked ahead of Tom Brady in the 2000 NFL Draft, Nevin said, “Some- body wrote an article about how the five guys drafted in front of Jeter were such a failure. No, we didn’t get 3,000 hits. But we did OK.”
He has done better than OK since his 2006 retirement. Nevin managed seven years in the affiliated minor leagues plus one in independent ball and worked as the Giants’ third-base coach last season. After the Giants let him go, Nevin received a phone call from his longtime friend Aaron Boone, who had been exclusively a broadcaster since his own retirement.
“When he first called me and said he was going to interview for the [Yankees] job, he was asking me how the interview process goes,” said Nevin, who has interviewed for multiple managerial openings. “He mentioned, ‘Hey, if I get this, I’d like you to come.’ At first, I was like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ But then a few more phone calls later, it starts becoming real and you start thinking, yeah, it’s exciting.”
Nevin and Boone met as teenagers in Southern California, as Nevin attended El Dorado High School with Boone’s older brother Bret. When they became major leaguers, Nevin would drive from California to Phoenix and pick up Aaron Boone, then they would continue onto Florida, where Boone trained as a Red and Nevin as an Astro and Tiger.
“He’s done a lot in this game,” Boone said of Nevin. “He’s someone I respect from a baseball standpoint. … He’s a big leaguer. That comes out when you’re in the midst of a game.”
Together, Boone and Nevin hope to lead the Yankees to their next title. They need five to match Jeter.
“I’m hoping to start with one this year,” Nevin said, smiling and knowing that all legends remain open-ended.