YANKEES GREAT DIES
Mel Stottlemeyer, ace in mid-’60s, has died at age 77.
He was a New York baseball legend — on both sides of the Triborough Bridge.
Mel Stottlemyre, the lonely ace of the Yankee pitching staffs in the 1965-71 pre-George Steinbrenner lean years who then went on to an equally distinguished career as one of the preeminent pitching coaches in baseball with the world champion ’86 Mets and Joe Torre’s multiple-ringed Yankee staffs, died Sunday in Seattle after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. He was 77.
A five-time All-Star and three-time 20-game winner for the Yankees and later the tutor for Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens among others, Stottlemyre was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma, for which there is no cure, in the spring of1999, his third season as Torre’s pitching coach. He underwent an experimental treatment for the disease that included a stem-cell transplant, four months of chemotherapy, and as many as 24 pills a day, after which doctors told him there was still no way of knowing if or when the disease would come back.
Long after he retired from baseball, he nevertheless continued to fight the dreaded disease, out-living the doctors’ most optimistic prognostications. On Oldtimers Day, June 20, 2015, after getting his doctors’ permissions, he made the cross-country trip to Yankee Stadium where the Yankees bestowed a surprise honor on him — a plaque in Monument Park. In an emotional, heart-rending speech reminiscent of the doomed Lou Gehrig’s address to a packed-house Stadium crowd some 77 years earlier, Stottlemyre provided one of the great moments in the team’s storied tradition.
“Today in this Stadium, there is no one that’s happier to be on this field than myself,” he said, choking up. “This is such a shock to me because the era I played in is an era where, for the most part, the Yankees have tried over the years, I think, somewhat to forget a little bit. ... If I never get to come to another Oldtimers Day, I will take these memories and I’ll start another baseball club, coaching up there, whenever they need me.”
Stottlemyre grew up in Mabton (population 900), Wash., 150 miles southeast of Seattle and signed with the Yankees out of Yakima Valley Community College in 1961 for $400per month. It wasn’t until August 1964, however, after developing a new grip on his sinkerball, that Stottlemyre got the Yankees’ attention. In a desperate pennant race fight with the Chicago White Sox and their pitching beset by injuries, particularly a hip ailment to Whitey Ford, the Yankees reached down to their Triple A Richmond club where Stottlemyre was 13-3 after reeling off 10 straight wins.
It is not exaggeration that Stottlemyre saved the ’64 season for the Yankees. Starting with a 7-3 complete game victory over the White Sox in his first major league start, Stottlemyre went 9-3 with a 2.06 ERA in 12 starts down the stretch. He was almost as brilliant in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals after Ford developed an arterial blockage in his arm in losing Game 1. With Ford out, Stottlemyre had to make three starts in the Series against Cardinals’ future Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson. He won the first matchup with a complete game seven-hitter and was trailing 2-0 when lifted for a pinch hitter in the seventh inning of Game 5. With no other starter he could trust, Yankee manager Yogi Berra brought Stottlemyre back on two days rest to face Gibson again in Game 7, but this time he was KO’d in the fifth inning.
Stottlemyre is survived by his wife, Jean, and two sons, Todd and Mel Jr., both of whom pitched in the major leagues. A third son, Jason, died in 1981 of leukemia.
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