Gillick Provides Ties That Bind Gulls and Blue Jays to Southern California

The Toronto Blue Jays’ ties to Southern California, which will be renewed this season with their affiliation with the Class-A Ventura County Gulls, go back more than 30 years--long before the franchise was formed.

Their general manager, Pat Gillick, one of the most respected executives in baseball, is a 1954 graduate of Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks, where he played baseball and football. He was an All-Metropolitan Conference pitcher at Valley College and played for USC’s NCAA College World Series baseball champion team in 1958.

After signing with the Baltimore Orioles, he played his first professional season with the Stockton Ports of the California League, of which the Gulls are a member.

“I always thought that was a good league to play in--good weather, good ballparks, good playing conditions,” Gillick said.

Gillick, 48, never made it to the majors as a player, but in 23 years with Houston, the New York Yankees and Toronto--the last 10 with the Blue Jays--he has gained a reputation as one of the game’s most astute judges of talent.

He earned his nickname, “Yellow Pages,” because of his encyclopedic mind, and he is given credit for building the expansion Blue Jays into the American League’s Eastern Division champions last season in only their ninth year.

“I think the prototype for the way an organization should be run is Toronto, and the reason for that is Pat Gillick,” Texas General Manager Tom Grieve told sportswriter Peter Gammons. “I think you’ll find that he is the model for a lot of the young general managers in the game today. . . .

“What the game all comes down to is talent, and no one is more attuned to finding talent than Gillick.”

How thorough is Gillick?

According to one story, when Gillick was working for the Houston Astros, he wanted to find scout Gordon Lakey to tell him to drive to a game that night for a final look at a high school player named Lance Parrish. Lakey, though, was at a game at Cal State Northridge.

No problem.

In the sixth inning of the Northridge game, a grounds keeper made his way through the stands, asking for someone named Lakey. Finding him, the man directed Lakey to a small, wooden tool shed across another field.

“With classes out, that’s the only phone on campus,” the grounds keeper told Lakey. “I didn’t think anyone but my wife knew the number, but there’s some guy named Gillick who has it and he’s looking for you.”