Yastrzemski wakes Boston memories
Outfielder’s pedigree starts with Hall of Fame grandpa, but dad was top teacher
“He was a better teacher than my grandfather. ... (My grandfather) would say that to me even when my dad was alive. If I worked with my grandfather, he’d say, ‘Don’t listen to me. Listen to your dad. He knows better than I do.’ ” Mike Yastrzemski, Giants outfielder, talking about his dad, Michael, and grandfather, Carl
BOSTON — One of Mike Yastrzemski’s earliest memories is knocking an orange Wiffle ball around his backyard. He had an aptitude. At 5, he was playing Tball with kids three years older.
Why wouldn’t he? He had a great coach, though it’s not who you think.
Everyone who writes about Yastrzemski’s unorthodox rise from career minorleaguer to impact rookie at 28 builds a connection with his grandfather, longtime Boston outfielder Carl Yastrzemski, and the influence the Hall of Famer had on his grandson’s career. They are not wrong. Mike would have been foolish not to listen to grandpa Carl.
But Mike had a more important coach, a onetime minorleaguer who taught him more about hitting than Carl did, who died too young and usually rates no more than a footnote in the Mike Yastrzemski stories. Those will be amplified this week when Yastrzemski jogs to the
outfield at Fenway Park during the Giants’ threegame series against the Red Sox, which begins Tuesday night.
The coach was Mike’s father, Carl Michael Yastrzemski Jr., who did not live to see his son play at Vanderbilt, much less pro ball. He died of a heart attack at 43 after getting his hip replaced in 2004, a few weeks before the Red Sox began the playoff run that ended with their first World Series title in 86 years.
Sunday marked 15 years since the death of Carl Jr., whose family called him Michael. Mike was 14 when it happened.
“He was a better teacher than my grandfather,” Mike Yastrzemski said in the Giants’ clubhouse at Oracle Park last week. “I actually learned that from my grandfather more than anyone.
“He would say that to me even when my dad was alive. If I worked with my grandfather, he’d say, ‘Don’t listen to me. Listen to your dad. He knows better than I do,’ which I think speaks volumes, as a Hall of Famer saying that about someone.”
Great hitters rarely make great hitting coaches because their natural gifts are hard to convey in words. Lesser players often can explain things better.
Yastrzemski said his dad “actually had incredible insight because he wasn’t as naturally gifted as my grandfather. My dad had to work a little harder. It’s one of those things where he started to understand the mentality of baseball and the grinding aspect of how much hard work there really is, and he helped me understand that.”
Not that Michael was a slouch. The switchhitting outfielder was a .300 hitter at Florida State and spent five seasons in the minors, reaching TripleA with the White Sox before he retired in 1988. Mike was born two years later.
Mike Yastrzemski’s mom, Anne Marie, said that shortly after her husband decided to quit baseball at 27, he got word that he might be the White Sox’s next callup. He retired anyway. He had a produce business on the side and realized that was more lucrative.
“It was really doing well,” she said. “I think he just decided that it was getting to be that time. He was getting older. He was married. He had responsibilities.”
Did Michael ever seem wistful that he never got even a day in the big leagues? Sure. But imagine the pressure he would have felt coming to Boston with the White Sox as Carl Yastrzemski’s son. He felt it even in the minors.
“Oh yeah. It was everywhere he went,” Anne Marie said. “Even when he wasn’t thinking about it or feeling it, people reminded him. There was no getting around that one.”
Michael needed a new hip at a relatively young age. The surgery was planned for the summer of 2004, but there was a complication. The old hip was infected and doctors had to remove it and treat the lingering infection in his body before installing the new one.
For several weeks, Mike said, his dad tooled around with one hip but still managed to crouch behind an L screen and toss him baseballs. They even played golf together, with dad swinging on one leg.
The eighthgrader was walking home from school when his maternal grandfather intercepted him. Together they drove to the grandfather’s house near Boston, where Mike learned that his father was gone. A blood clot developed postsurgery and he had a heart attack.
On Sunday, the 15th anniversary of his dad’s death, Mike scored the winning run against the Marlins on a gutsy dash home on a short wild pitch in the eighth inning.
The family kept Mike out of school for two weeks, clutching him close to ensure he did not enter a darker place, and he stuffed his feelings within.
“I didn’t talk about it,” Mike said. “Anytime I went to visit his gravestone, it was always by myself. I never wanted anyone to be there because I didn’t want to feel vulnerable to letting that affect me.
“I think some of that comes from being an only child where I had that innate ability, when things would go wrong, I would go to myself as opposed to try to go to someone else. I needed time before I could let anyone else in.”
By the time he got to Vandy, he did.
He had no shortage of coaches after his dad died. Imagine this scene: Carl Yastrzemski, onetime Red Sox hitting coach Walt Hriniak and Dave Bettencourt, the respected owner of a baseball and softball clinic in North Andover, Mass., standing around a cage at the facility every Sunday watching Mike hit.
Even then, Mike said, grandpa Carl told Mike to listen to Bettencourt, a local coaching legend. Carl was not a silent partner, though. A Boston Globe story from 2009 recounted the advice he shouted to Mike from behind the cage. “Relax. Drive it. Don’t lift it.” “Perfect. Perfect. That’s great.”
At 16, Mike had his own key to the building, where he honed the skills that got him to Vandy and ultimately pro ball. But it wasn’t the same without Michael around.
“His dad was his biggest influence,” Anne Marie said. “Mike would agree a lot of his coaches were kind of intimidated to coach him because they knew the strong influence his father had, the good, solid information that was given to him. They didn’t want to ever counter the influence that Carl and his dad had on him.”
Mike’s path to the big leagues was slow. He toiled in the Orioles’ system for six seasons without getting the call he received from the Giants just before Memorial Day this year. He phoned Anne Marie at 3 a.m. Boston time to let her know he was a big leaguer headed to San Francisco.
“I couldn’t stop saying, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ ” she said. “Mike said, ‘Mom! Stop!’ ”
A large contingent of family and friends will attend the GiantsRed Sox games this week to see Mike play. It won’t be his Fenway debut. He manned left field, in front of the Green Monster, in local allstar games and as part of the Cape Cod League.
He will be pulled this way and that. A news conference is planned Tuesday. Carl has promised to appear. And Mike is looking forward to every bit of it.
“There aren’t too many people who get to follow in family footsteps in significant places like that,” Mike said. “It’s going to personally be really special no matter what the outcome is or whoever is there. It will probably be one of the better moments of my life. I really couldn’t express how cool and unique it is.”
He promised he will feel no pressure being a Yastrzemski playing at Fenway, not like his dad felt.
“It was probably way harder on him,” he said. “I’m so far removed. There’s not a whole lot of people who watched him that are coming to games now. There’s enough separation where, it’s not lost, but it’s not as dramatized on me as it would have been on my dad.”