Fire and ice.  I remember an interview back in the early 90s when he described his musical preferences for the drive to the game and after the game, an upbeat tune on the way down (Earth, Wind and Fire?) and something to cool him off afterwards (the Association?). 

There aren't too many managers who I would be interested in having a dinner out with.  Cito Gaston would be one of them.  I wish him well in his retirement.

Thanks for all the memories Cito. Lots of good times, some not so good times, a few scratch my head times but IMO the good far outweighs the not so good. The 2 world series will be etched in my mind forever and they alone are worth the price of admission. Thank you Cito. :)

Don't tell my friends and family, but Carter's homer in 93 was the high point of my life, and Cito played a huge role on those world series teams.  He's always been a class act and openly expresses his love for Toronto, living here for many years.  He's presided over the recent turnaround and leaves after the most positive Jays season since 93. 

And of course, historically, he's the third winningest African American manager, and the only one to ever capture a World Series ring.  For that alone he might merit HOF consideration.

Congratulations Cito, I hope you enjoy your retirement.   

To me the word for Cito is R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

The guy respected his players - especially his veterans, he respected the game - playing his veterans against the Twins 'cause they are trying to clinch a home spot in the playoffs.

Cito's a great manager, a great coach, a great guy - a class act. The team - we fans and each of the men he's taught and managed are better for him having been here. Good bye Cito, good luck - to me you're the MAN! 

He could be infuriating in his conservative approach to game tactics and he certainly didn't do himself any favors by letting himself take the blame, as often as he could, for the shortcomings of his players. But those facts serve also to reveal the inner strength and purpose that were Cito Gaston's greatest strengths as a manager.

He was a great leader of men, a great teacher of hitters, a truly great manager of pitchers, and absolutely uncompromising when it came to establishing his vision of his ballclubs. I just hope that every minority manager - no, make that every manager in years to come, will understand the debt they owe to Cito Gaston.

He was old school when being old school wasn't cool. And he was awesome. He's a great reason to be proud of the Blue Jays and their history.

Thanks, Cito.

Its been a long time since I haven't wanted a season to end...hopefully it is  a quick and exciting offseason.

I wonder if the jays might struggle under a new direction...Cito is a throwback to the age of the three run home run and many players this year benefited to the see it hit it philosophy..if we get a new manager with AA's philosophy it might be a change that is reflected in the hitting strategy...maybe the only way is to clean house and have a charismatic leader type who will take charege and implement his own philosophy...this should be a very interesting offseason.

choclatethunder says:  Cito is a throwback to the age of the three run home run and many players this year benefited to the see it hit it philosophy..

Actually, Cito is sadly a throwback to the age of the solo homer.  The Jays this year have had far too little in the way of baserunners on base when the ball left the yard.  Hence, the large number of games where they hit more homers than their opposition, but still lost.

My man Earl was pretty clear that the formula included pitching, defense and the three run homer.  The latter idea breaks down into two ideas - lots of sluggers, yes, but also high on-base guys, too.  Cito had the first two legs of the stool this year, plus one half of the third leg of the stool.  If he had had both halves on his roster, we would be in the post-season already.

Thank you Cito, thank you very much.

As a manager people had many question marks about you. Your success in wins answered that for me in the positive.

As a hitting coach... Well you are absolutely fantastic. I say that because before your 2nd term of duty, I painfully watched what to me was utter futility regarding our RISP.
You predicted a lot of HRs this season and you were right. I had serious doubts about JB,A Hill and A Gon achieving the power numbers that they did. You and your staff, I believe brought out everything they had in them.

In your 50 years of baseball experience I imagine you must have seen a few or many hotshot hitting prospects fail. I have seen a few Jays hotshot prospects fail too. You know why much better than me.

I very much hope that you can help our minor leaguers hitters develop into great hitters in the near future. It can't hurt if you see some correctable faults in other teams minor leaguers also, thereby targeting some acquisitions.

Craig says uncompromising, I say stubborn.  Cito knew what his vision of a manager was and he stuck with it and he didn't care what anyone else thought about it.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't but when it worked it worked really well.

He was a great hitting coach.  The Jays haven't said what Gaston's consultant job will entail, but I hope he gets to pass his knowledge of hitting onto the younger Blue Jays.

And through it all Cito was gracious and stayed on an even keel.

Best wishes in your retirement, Cito.

Craig says uncompromising, I say stubborn.  Cito knew what his vision of a manager was

I say the word to describe his vision of a manager is "modest." Gaston managed as if he believed that any game was going to be decided by the guys on the field, not by the man in the dugout. And all that strategizing and plotting, and pacing and fretting was highly overrated. I think he was a little suspicious of it, in fact.

Cito Gaston is a classy man, and never is this more evident is his willingness to keep his issues with his players private, between the two of them.  If he supported some players long after people like me would have lost faith, that is definitely the side I would want him to err on.

I think he was particularly blessed in this last year with AA, who got him players that Cito and his coaches could develop into something more than they were when they arrived.  I also think that AA established the kind of environment in which Cito could shine.  For me, it is no coincidence that Cito's season this year has been way better than last year.

From Cito, I have seen real evidence that a player's history does not have to be their destiny.  Bautista, Buck, A-Gon, even Johnny Mac all rose above their previous expected performance.  I very much hope that this kind of experience of players  surprising on the upside carries on in the post-Cito period.  (For example, if the next manager finds the key to EE performing at the top of his potential, that would make this team truly devastating at the plate.)

Thank you, Cito, and I do hope that the club retains all your insight on hitting, and all your judgement about how to use your rotation.  That is a wonderful foundation we can thank you for.

A bit of a long ramble, I fear.

One of Cito Gaston's greatest gifts was his ability to project absolute composure. He gave the impression of being - and probably is - a person who knows exactly who he is, who is comfortable in his own shoes, and who is fazed by little or nothing that life can throw at him. Part of this has to be due to his history: CIto is one of the last of the African-American players who came of age in the 1960s who is still around. These men were only a generation or less younger than Jackie Robinson, and were the last players who had to deal with the sort of old-school racism that Jackie and his contemporaries had to face. (Note that Cito once roomed with Hank Aaron, who was one of the last players to play in the old Negro Leagues.) After having lived through that, anything else would have seemed like a piece of cake.

This composure, combined with his ability to read people well and treat them appropriately, made him the ideal manager for the sort of player who doesn't need to be motivated but just needs the opportunity. Cito behaved like an adult, treated his players like adults, and demanded that they behave like adults in return. The only players that Cito had trouble with were players who didn't behave like adults - many of these were abruptly shown the door, even if they had talent. (Though CIto, to his credit, never ripped a player in the press.) Fortunately, most major league baseball players are self-motivating - otherwise, they wouldn't be major league baseball players - and these players appreciated Cito's candour, his straightforwardness, his hands-off attitude, and his willingness not to worry about the small stuff. (Both at the beginning of his career and at the end, Cito was given a talented player who had been widely slagged for having a bad attitude, and got no trouble out of either of them. That would be George Bell and Yunel Escobar, for those of you keeping score at home.)

Cito also was good at handling pitchers. His starters didn't get too tired, and his bullpen didn't get overworked. His approach to building a bullpen was simple:

 - Find the best guy, and make him your closer.
 - Find the second-best guy, and get him to pitch the eighth.
 - Find one or two other guys who are pretty good, and get them to pitch the sixth and/or seventh. These guys also back up the other two guys.
 - Everybody else pitches in when needed.

It seems obvious when you write it out this way, but how many managers can't do this? Carlos Tosca changed pitchers twice an inning. Jimy Williams tended to ride the hot hand. Jim Fregosi regularly overworked his bullpen. Cito got through 2010 with a healthy bullpen that pitched better than expected (recall that Kevin Gregg was widely condemned as a bad signing).

Cito also was a tremendously gifted hitting coach, especially if the goal was to improve performance in the short term. His philosophy was the same in the 1980s and when he was hitting coach for Jim Fregosi as it is now: make a plan, figure out what pitch you want to try to hit, and swing as hard as you can at it. The results, then and now, have been obvious: lots and lots and lots of home runs, and lots of unexpected improvements in performance from players who looked like they had maxed out their ability years before. Even John McDonald is starting to look like a hitter who can be useful in certain circumstances. I can only think of two other men, in all of baseball history, who made such an impact on the game as a hitting coach: Charlie Lau, and his disciple, Walt Hriniak.

(In the longer term, things get a little trickier, as pitchers figure out where a player wants to hit the ball, and stops pitching it there. Then, the adjustments have to begin. As an example, compare the 2009 Adam Lind with the 2010 Adam LInd: the skills are all still there, but the pitchers are behaving differently. But, in the longer term, we are all dead - and no one can take those home runs and wins away.)

Cito had noticeable weaknesses as a manager: he didn't seem to have that extra level of tactical capability that Earl Weaver, Davey Johnson, Casey Stengel and Billy Martin had, which was the ability to steal an extra run here and there by coming up with some clever strategic move. (Actually, now that I think of it, Cito is almost the exact polar opposite, in every respect, of Billy Martin.) Cito preferred consistency and routine: for example, if a player was given a day off, his replacement usually inherited the incumbent's slot in the batting order as well (which is how Kevin Millar, who was hitting slightly worse than Travis Snider's grandmother, wound up batting cleanup). But, in my opinion, this was more than offset by his ability to relate to his players and get the most out of them. The 2010 Jays won about 15 games more than expected, were a lot of fun to watch, and seemed to be enjoying themselves tremendously. Cito did a great job managing them, and they allowed him to end his career on a high note, on his own terms. He will be missed.

I will perhaps go off pattern hee a bit, but I think I would be fair to acknowledge the places I have, and still do, criticize Cito for:

1. apparent (we can't really know, we can only judge from the outside) over-attachment to certain players above and beyond their talent level

2. apparent ease with which he let a player get (and stay) on his bad side. Don't blame him for "putting a guy in his place " - for instance, Accardo may well have asked for it somehow - but at some point if the guy can help your team, let it go.

3. public comments about his decisions that do not appear to line up with what he actually does, and public comments which seem far too ill-informed or short sighted for someone of his experience (for instance, that there's any value in trying to be sure Buck reaches 20 homers). It's not that i think he lacks for intellegence, I simply think that sometimes his comments can often be ill-advised, not unlike JP's problems in that area.

That's pretty much it - anything else i might say is just a variation on those.. In his first go around, he seemed to have a problem leaving his starters out there "one batter too long" but this go around he's seemed to be far far better in that regard.

Now, with those out of the way, what i like:

1. Overall positivity - he always seemed to me more inclined to say good things than bad, and had a very good sense of "we lost tonight, oh well, we'll try again tomorrow"

2. even keel - Has anyone ever seen him remotely melt down over any circumstance, even a little? The end of season stress last year would have sent a great many good managers into a rage, however he might have felt, we didn't see that from Cito. An occasional (usually appropriate) low-key jab (like the digs at the Mussina incident) is as bad as it got.

3. Humility - a strange thing to say given that i think the man is altogether too enamorated with his own conception of what is the "right" thing to do, but he's always very defferential to his coaches and players and management when there's credit to be given, and the comments he made today regarding soul-searching last off-season are a good example of that too.

4. people skills - at least as it applies to other baseball players. Cito has famously been on the outs with a few journalists, the famous implication of racism by McCowan perhaps the most obvious (and my reaction in the other thread is an exact mirror to McCowan's feelings about Gaston) but a manager's primary job isn't getting along with every last journalist, it's to get the most out of his players and to a high degree, he's done that.

5. hitting coach - while there are some abberations (the inability to come to a happy ending with Olerud perhaps the most obvious example) by and large, Cito's conception of how to be a good hitter, and his ability to recognize untapped ability in hitters is akin to the mythology of Dave Duncan turning around under-achieving pitchers.

6. relying on his pitching coach - he had this all along but he seems to do it even better now than he did in the old days. But in both cases, we seem to be aware of the contributions of the pitching coach under Gaston much more than is typical around the league. We remember still the influance of Mel Queen, for instance, and I still remember thinking well of Galen Cisco.

7. respect - sometimes it worked out in ways i didn't like (respecting the race this month, and the whole bsiness of respecting his starters too much to play young hitters behind them) but overall, his sense of respecting the fabric of the game was an asset.


bottom line - If I had to choose between the next manager doing things pretty much exactly like Gaston, or doing things like a more historonic sort (Pinella maybe?) I'd go with the former. while I reserved the right to b***h about various things on a individual incident level, on balance the overall result was positive and my overall sense of the man is positive. I think it's a very good thing that he got to come back and not let '97 be his last hurrah and, upon reflection, as much as i hated it last year, it's a good thing (even though I think there has been a price to pay) that the "rebellion" last September wasn't his coda either.