Pat Gillick knows the thrill of being elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
There are phone calls that, particularly with today’s technologies, can be saved. Familiar voices and memorable events play to one’s emotions and accomplishments. Although he doesn’t have the recording of the call received on Dec. 10, 2010, from then-Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson, as he remembers that wintry day, Gillick, 87, summed up what was a brief conversation between the two. He says he was stunned.
“I didn’t think that I would get in,” Gillick tells The Epoch Times of when the Expansion Era Committee met at MLB’s Winter Meetings at Lake Buena Vista, Florida. “Marvin Miller, Billy Martin, and George Steinbrenner were in the same group as me. I figured the votes would be split, and I wouldn’t get the amount I would need.”
For election to the Hall of Fame, Gillick needed 12 votes, 75 percent, from the committee. He received 13 of 16 votes.
With 27 years leading four MLB clubs (Toronto, Baltimore, Seattle, and Philadelphia), Gillick became the fourth general manager elected to the baseball shrine located in Cooperstown, New York.
With the Hall’s Contemporary Baseball Era Committee (replacing the Expansion Era in 2022) adding Dave Parker and the late Richie Allen to the Class of 2025 for induction on July 27 in Cooperstown, in one week, it will be the players on the BBWAA (Baseball Writers’ Association of America) who will be hoping to be as fortunate as Gillick was more than a dozen years ago to received “the call.”
Next in Line?
Next week’s favorites to receive “the call” from BBWAA Secretary/Treasurer Jack O'Connell are Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia on Jan. 21. Then, there’s the induction speech to think of for the next six months.“I had a political speechwriter help me,” explains Gillick, whose baseball pitching days topped off at the Triple-A level. “When we worked on it, I wanted the speech to be brief, and to the point. I’m not a great public speaker. I was absolutely glad to have gotten through (the speech).”
Gillick remembers a bit “up tight” when at the podium on induction Sunday in Cooperstown with tens of thousands of people fixed on you and every word being said.
“Once I got there (grounds of the Clark Sports Center), I began to feel comfortable. I knew a bunch of the guys who had gone into the Hall of Fame before me, so I became more ready to speak.”
Having been around baseball his entire life—as a pitcher in 1958 for the NCAA National Champion USC team, playing in the minor leagues, working in clubs’ front offices, beginning in 1963 with the then Houston Colt .45s, building World Series champions in Toronto and Philadelphia—it would only be natural to assume Gillick would glide through a weekend of attention in the “Home of Baseball.” Becoming a Hall of Famer is arriving on MLB’s grandest stage. Coming to terms with the game’s highest honor can take time to absorb, even for the most celebrated participants.
When in Cooperstown preparing for induction, those elected for the Class of 2025 will no doubt have friends and family to accommodate. The logistics of shuttling loved ones to the Village of Cooperstown, and once assuring their lodging is set, the elected Hall of Famer has obligations with media requests, and social functions to attend. Family serves as a steady force throughout the Hall of Fame Weekend.
“I have a small family,” Gillick says. “There was my wife Doris, our daughter and her husband, and my grandson. There were people we knew from Seattle that made the trip. My friend [former MLB executive] Tal Smith, who I worked a long time with, came to Cooperstown, too.”
Recognized in Cooperstown for more than 50 years of leadership in MLB circles, including building a Seattle Mariners club that went to back-to-back playoff appearances, for the first and only times in franchise history (2000 and 2001), Gillick is still very much involved in the game.
When speaking to The Epoch Times this past weekend, Gillick was on the road from his Michigan home and in Clearwater, Florida, the spring training home of the Phillies. Among his responsibilities as the club’s senior advisor, Gillick offers trusted input to Philadelphia’s president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and other officials.
After next week’s Hall of Fame vote announcement is made live on MLB Network, just as Gillick successfully navigated, one or more newly elected to the Class of 2025 will begin the journey to induction. For those chosen, the process will become a family affair, a joint collaboration.
The end result in July will be one not forgotten, to which Gillick can attest.
“I think of it all the time, and how lucky I am to be associated with all the great players in the Hall of Fame. I’m honored and humbled.”
