MLB Deaths: remembering all around the game that we lost in 2018

January (22)

January 3 – A defensive stalwart for 9 seasons in the majors, Robert Picciolo spent most of his career with the Athletics organization. He then spent over 25 years in coaching when his playing career was done, 16 of those seasons in the San Diego Padres organization. He passed away of heart attack at age 64.

January 4 – An impressive football and baseball player at the University of Miami, Carmen Cozza chose to pursue baseball first, but it didn’t work out for him, and he left the game after two seasons in the minors. He retired in 1996 after 30+ years as the football coach at Yale with the most football wins in the Ivy League. He passed away at 87 years old.

Senichi Hoshino was one of the best pitchers in Japan for the decade of the 1970s. He managed in the NPB off and on over the next 28 years, eventually being elected to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017.

January 6 – Though he played minor league baseball for a decade, Wayne Norton’s baseball contributions were strong as a scout for multiple decades in Canada. He was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of fame in 2016.

January 7 – Dick Young only got two brief cups of coffee in the major leagues, but he spent 15 years as a player, amassing 61 career home runs in the minor leagues. He passed away just a few months short of 90 years old.

January 9 – The son of a former big leaguer, Bob Bailey was a bonus baby, receiving the biggest bonus the Pirates had ever paid in 1961 when he received $135K. He didn’t live up to that billing, but Bailey did have the first hit in Montreal Expos franchise history.

January 12 – Known primarily for his work in college football, Keith Jackson was a very good baseball broadcaster as well, broadcasting multiple All-Star, playoffs, and World Series games.

Cuban Rudy Arias signed with the White Sox in 1953 and spent the rest of the decade building up to his major league debut, but he picked a good time, as he was part of the 1959 White Sox club to make it all the way to the World Series before falling to the Dodgers. It would be his only season in the majors.

January 13 – In the modern era, whenever someone speaks of umpire excellence, the first name that comes to mind is typically Doug Harvey. Harvey retired in 1992 having worked over 4,500 National League games. He worked five World Series and six All-Star games, two of them behind home plate. He was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010.

January 14 – While he spent just one year in the minor leagues, Ramon Montoya spent 17 seasons playing in Mexico as an outfielder. He passed away in January at age 77.

While he never played in the major leagues, Ray Bellino impacted the game in many ways. He was a defensive wiz for a decade and a half on the field in the minors before moving into managing and coaching before moving into a role as a scout, primarily with the Detroit Tigers.

January 15 – Bob Barton closed out the final game of his first taste of the big leagues with a solid 3-4 performance, but that didn’t solidify his spot for the following season as he would spend the 1966 and 1967 seasons between the minors and majors. Barton played one season as a full-time regular, hitting .250/.317/.346 as the backstop for the 1971 Padres, but most of his 393 games over a decade of major league play were spent coming off of the bench.

Bursting on the Panama baseball scene at just 15 years old, Emilio Castro would go on to represent his country proudly multiple times on the world stage. He was also a four-time MVP of Panama’s league and regarded as one of the elite Latin players in the 1970s.

January 16 – A true baseball pioneer in the modern day, Syed Khawar Shah founded the first Pakistan baseball league in 1992. He helped to guide the league for the better part of two and a half decades. He was 68.

January 20 – With a tough decision coming out of high school as a legit three-sport star, Bill Johnson chose to sign with the Phillies. Traded in May of 1983 to the Cubs, he finally got his first big league shot in that same year with the Cubs. He ended up tallying 14 major league appearances in his career. He was just 57.

While he had time as a big league player and a manager, Moose Stubing neither had a hit as a big leaguer nor a win as a manager. He was a stocky man who passed up a chance to play football at Penn State and beat the snot out of the ball in the minor leagues, but his major league experience was limited to an 0-5 line with 4 strikeouts.

He worked his way up the coaching and managing ladder in the minor leagues to the point of the Angels third base coach for six seasons, including an interim stretch as the team’s manager in 1988 to close out the season, where the team lost its final 8 games under his direction.

January 24 – The victim of the political situation of his native Venezuela, Marcos Carvajal passed away at 33 due to complications from pneumonia because he could not get the medications needed in his country. Carvajal pitched just two seasons in the major leagues, but spent 6 years in the minor leagues and continued playing for a number of years in the Venezuelan Winter League.

A player with a number of unique attributes to his career, Julio Navarro spent just six seasons as a major league pitcher over his 20 years playing professional baseball, but he and his son Jaime are the only father/son combo to ever both record a save in the majors, and Navarro is the only player in MLB history from Vieques, a tiny island just east of Puerto Rico.

January 30 – Playing for farm teams of his hometown club, Ron Debus never made it to the major leagues with the Kansas City Athletics, topping out in AAA over a 9-year minor league career where he hit 60 home runs.

One of the more notable names lost to baseball in 2018 was former General Manager Kevin Towers. Towers was a minor league player in the Padres organization that pitched for 7 seasons in the Padres system before being hired as a scout in 1990. He worked his way up the system to scouting director and then the role of general manager from November of 1995 through October of 2009.

Towers then moved on in 2011 to the Arizona Diamondbacks as their General Manager. New team management came in to Arizona in 2014 and relieved Towers of his duties. He passed away at the age of 56 due to thyroid cancer.

January 31 – After getting a season in the minor leagues, John Alusik then left to serve in World War II, serving in France and Germany in field artillery. He struggled in his return to baseball after the war and left baseball behind. He had a brother George play in the majors and two brothers, Joe and Steve, play in the minors.

Known as much for his impressive afro as much as his incredible raw power, Oscar Gamble was a flashy player who knew how to play to the crowd well and could absolutely crush a ball, with legends of his balls traveling well over 500 feet.

Gamble spent 17 seasons in the major leagues, hitting 200 home runs. Incredibly, Gamble was traded six times over his career. One of those trades brought Bucky Dent to the Yankees before he became known for his big home run on the final day of the season in 1978.