Heart Phailure

Lee MacPhail, who slaked the nation’s appetite for more Ron Blomberg, has died at the age of 95. Other wizened decisions was helping add expansion teams in a city that had held a major league team for but a single season before it was scooped up to that mecca Milwaukee by a used car salesman in a bankruptcy sale and, in a betrayal of his nation and its national pastime, in a city north of the border – a team that would break a young boy’s heart, and on the day before his birthday, no less. And for these abominations, he was given a place in the Hall of Fame. After serving as farm director and assistant GM of the Yankees when their farm system was producing stars like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, and then building the Baltimore Orioles team that won the 1966 World Series, MacPhail helped the daft William Eckert, a retired Air Force colonel who had been named commissioner despite knowing less about baseball than its current idiot commissioner. He then rejoined the New York Yankees front office to ride herd over the end of the empire, but when the team was bought by the meddling George Steinbrenner, MacPhail left. He got his revenge as AL president in 1983, citing “the spirit of the rules” in overruling Tim McClelland’s decision to call George Brett out for having too much pine tar on his bat when he hit a 2-out, 9^th-inning game-winning HR in Yankee Stadium in what may have been the last educated decision by an official in MLB’s front office. A member of the only four-generation front office family, MacPhail’s father Larry introduced night baseball in Cincinnati before moving on to serve as GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees, his son Andy served as the president of both the Orioles and the Chicago Cubs to no appreciable benefit, but GMed the Minnesota Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991, while his grandson Lee IV is the Orioles’ director of professional scouting. Another son, Lee III, was GM of the Reading Phillies when he was killed in a car accident in 1969. Lee and Larry are the only father-son duo in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and at the time of his death, Lee was the oldest living Hall of Famer.