In Spite of the Pain, Stottlemyre Won’t Forget

You could never get a better line on Mel Stottlemyre than the one the New York Mets have on him in their new 1985 Information Guide.

It tells you everything you want to know about Mel Stottlemyre. Not as pitching coach for the Mets. Much more important, it tells you everything about him as a father and a man.

The line in the Mets’ booklet lists Stottlemyre’s children and reads like this: Mel Jr., 21, Todd, 19, Jason (deceased).

None of the other team guides include the names of family members no longer living. Stottlemyre, however, personally made sure the name of his other son, who died almost four years ago from leukemia, was recorded. The boy was only 11 years old.

No tragedy imaginable is ever more difficult for parents to bear than the death of one of their children and it certainly wasn’t any different for Stottlemyre and his wife, Jean.

Their other two sons, Mel Jr., and Todd, are both ballplayers and were selected in last month’s big league draft.

“At his age,” Stottlemyre says of the son he lost, he probably had at least as much (baseball) ability if not more than the other two. I’ve tried to be close with all my sons. We made an exception with the third one during the time of his illness. By that, I mean I tried to be even closer with him.

“An unfortunate thing like what happened to him can change your life. I know it did ours, mine and my wife’s, and I’m sure it changed our other sons’ as well. He took a piece of each of us along with him.”

Both of Stottlemyre’s surviving sons are pitchers just like their old man was with the Yankees for 11 years, during which time he won 164 games, compiled a 2.97 lifetime earned run average and was named to five All-Star teams.

Mel, Jr., drafted by the Houston Astros, signed with them. But Todd, who was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals, chose to finish his schooling in Yakima, Wash., where he lives with the family.

Stottlemyre’s sons are so much like their father, the three of them could almost be taken for brothers. The two young men go about whatever they’re doing with a quiet resolution of purpose and don’t believe in asking for any favors.

In his first year attending the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Mel, Jr., made up his mind not to try to get by on his father’s name. Because he was a Stottlemyre, everyone expected he’d naturally pitch. Instead, he caught. Until the coach asked him to pitch. Then he did both.

When he was pitching with the New York Yankees, for whom he was a 20-game winner in 1965, 1968 and 1969, the elder Stottlemyre always was considered one of the brainier members of the club and among the easiest for anyone to approach.

Nothing has changed since he was appointed pitching coach for the Mets in November of 1983.

Dave Johnson says Stottlemyre is entirely responsible for the spectacular success of the Mets’ pitchers last year, and the most successful one of them all, Dwight Gooden, the National League Rookie of the Year last season at 19, agrees completely.

“There isn’t the slightest question in my mind how much Mel had to do with whatever I accomplished,” Gooden says. “He didn’t try to hit me with a hundred different things at once. He made sure I learned one thing first before he went on to the next.

“The biggest thing is you’re able to talk to him. He doesn’t make himself out to be a god. He’s very approachable. You never have any trouble sitting down with him. He’ll listen to you.”