Cito Gaston turns 81, deserves plaque in Cooperstown

March 17, 2025

By Kevin Glew 

Cooperstowners in Canada

He was the first Black manager to lead a major league team to a World Series title. 

And outside of Joe Torre, he is the only skipper to pilot a club to back-to-back championships in the past 45 years. 

Yet, for some reason, former Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston, who turns 81 today, has never received the respect he deserves. 

I was hoping that would change in the fall of 2023 when the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced that Gaston would be one of eight finalists considered by its 16-member Contemporary Era Veterans committee.  

Despite his trailblazing role and success as a Blue Jays manager, that was the first time Gaston had appeared on a Veterans Committee ballot. 

But alas Gaston came up short in the voting, with the committee opting to elect longtime manager Jim Leyland.

Leyland was a worthy inductee, but a contrarian might point out that he only led his teams to one World Series title (1997 with the Florida Marlins) while managing more than twice as many games as Gaston. 

(Writer’s Note: I’m not bashing the Veterans Committee here. They have a tough job and they do it well. But I’m told by others that I’m entitled to have an opinion.) 

Managed talented Jays teams

One knock against Gaston has been that the 1992 and 1993 Blue Jays championship teams were so loaded with talent that all he had to do was get out of the way. 

“A lot of people thought those teams were so good they were push-button teams,” fellow World Series-winning manager Dusty Baker told the Toronto Sun in June 2023. “I think that’s hurt Cito’s reputation – the belief that anyone could manage them. I can tell you from experience, there’s no such thing as a push-button team. It doesn’t exist. I don’t care how good your lineup is, there is still a lot to be done.” 

It’s puzzling as to why that criticism has followed Gaston, but not Torre, who managed four Yankees teams chock full of superstars to World Series titles. Torre was unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame by a similar Veterans Committee in December 2013. 

And if we do accept that Gaston’s 1992 and 1993 Blue Jays teams were stacked, it takes a skilled leader to convince a group of stars to set their egos aside and jell into a championship-winning club. 

Turnaround in 1989

But if you want evidence that Gaston could inspire a less than loaded team to the postseason, look no further than the 1989 Blue Jays. When he took over as manager from Jimy Williams on May 15 that year, the team was 12-24. Gaston proceeded to guide them to a 77-49 record and the division title, with veteran outfielder Mookie Wilson being the only notable addition. 

“Cito always had things in the proper perspective, and I think that’s one of the reasons that he was so good at passing along good advice because he wasn’t overreacting to whatever the situation was,” Rance Mulliniks, who played for Gaston from 1989 to 1992, told me in a December 2023 phone interview. “And that was a huge asset.”   

Didn’t manage long enough?

Some critics contend Gaston didn’t manage long enough. He posted an 894-837 record in 1,731 regular season games. As noted earlier, that’s less than half as many games as Leyland managed. But shouldn’t the fact that Gaston guided two teams to World Series titles in significantly fewer seasons make it even more impressive? 

In a five-year span from 1989 to 1993, Gaston’s Blue Jays clubs captured four division titles and two World Series. Outside of Torre with the Yankees, Bruce Bochy with the San Francisco Giants from 2010 to 2014 and Dave Roberts with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2020 to 2024, there has been not a more successful five-year period for any big-league manager in the past 35 years.  

Gaston, himself, has declined to speak publicly about his Hall of Fame chances in recent years.

Consistently underappreciated

Born on this date in 1944 in San Antonio, Tex., Gaston was signed by the Milwaukee Braves as an amateur free agent in 1964.  

But even during his playing days, he was underestimated. After competing in just nine big league games with the Braves, he was left exposed in the 1968 MLB expansion draft and he was selected by the San Diego Padres with their final pick. 

Gaston worked diligently to hone his hitting skills and in 1970, he batted .318 with 29 home runs and 93 RBIs and was selected to the All-Star Game.  

Unfortunately, he never came close to duplicating that season. He was dealt back to the Braves in 1974 and served as a backup outfielder before playing his final two major league games with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1978. 

Blue Jays hitting coach

Three years later, the Braves hired him as a minor league hitting instructor and when Bobby Cox was tabbed to manage the Blue Jays in 1982, he brought Gaston with him to serve as the club’s hitting coach.  

Gaston developed into one of the best batting instructors of his era, helping players like Mulliniks, Lloyd Moseby, George Bell, Jesse Barfield and Fred McGriff. 

“When Cito Gaston came to me and said that I needed better timing and rhythm and a better approach, it changed my life,” Barfield tweeted in May 2021.  

“Cito taught me how to hit at the major league level,” added Mulliniks. “It seemed like he always knew the correct advice to pass along.”   

With his strong rapport with Blue Jays hitters, it only made sense for the club to hand him the manager’s position in 1989. Gaston’s first tenure as skipper with the Blue Jays ended in 1997, but he returned to manage from 2008 to 2010. During that time, he helped Jose Bautista rejig his swing and transform the slugger into an American League home run champion. 

Gaston was added to the Blue Jays Level of Excellence at Rogers Centre in 1999 and inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002. Six years later, he received the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum’s Jackie Robinson Award. 

Since Gaston led the Blue Jays to their second World Series title in 1993, two more Black managers – Roberts (Dodgers, 2020, 2024) and Baker (Houston Astros, 2022) – have piloted big league teams to World Series titles.  

Ask either of them if Gaston is worthy of a plaque in Cooperstown.  

Their answer would be a resounding yes. 

I agree with them.