ucantdoitdoggieSTyle2 wrote:A utility infielder, Vukovich was a career .161 hitter in 10 big league seasons.
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Wow. How the heck did he stayed employed for 10 years if he sucked that much at hitting?
Most utility guys can break .200
He must have been real good with the glove.
He also was one of the best bench coaches in baseball..few knew the NL as well as he did.
Good article from Stark-
Remembering a true gem of a manposted: Thursday, March 8, 2007 | Print Entry
CLEARWATER, Fla. -- The AP news story will tell you that a career .161 hitter died Thursday. But for those of us in this world who were lucky enough to have our lives intersect with a beautiful man named John Vukovich, it feels as if we just lost Ted Williams.
I've never spent a sadder day at any ballpark than I did Wednesday in Clearwater, because it seemed as if everyone I met knew the end was near for our good friend, Vuke, only 59 years old. And how could that possibly have been true?
"I keep hearing his voice," said his buddy, long-time Phillies broadcaster Chris Wheeler. And I felt the same way.
John Vukovich had one of those voices that rose above the din, even if you were sitting in a stadium with 40,000 people and he was down there on the field, in the third-base coaches' box, 100 feet below you.
It was the strong, tough voice of a sheriff in a 1960s western, with just enough edge to get your attention and just enough tenderness to let you know that the man you were listening to cared more than anyone else in the room, or the ballpark.
And it didn't even matter what the subject was.
Didn't matter if it was a baseball argument he refused to lose. Or a ball game it had just pained him to lose. Or a conversation about our families or our mutual friends in a sport that had been so good to both of us. You were always riveted by the passion that came pouring out of his vocal chords.
If you were fortunate enough to spend time with John Vukovich, it was the most memorable slice of your day. Guaranteed. You learned something -- always. You probably took some major abuse for something -- always. And you walked away laughing -- always.
Of the 31 years he spent with the Phillies, only one of them (1980) had the happy ending this man never stopped chasing. And those unhappy endings hurt him more than anyone else I knew -- anyone.
He took those losses harder than he took any out he ever made at the plate. And he had a tough time abiding the people around him who didn't ache as much as he ached. Every once in a while, those people heard about it, too. Imagine that.
Sometimes, he'd even let them know how he felt without saying a word -- like the night a few years ago he was so aggravated by one loss, he stopped the team bus, climbed off and walked back to the hotel, smoke bombs wafting out of his ears, unprintable bombs erupting out of his mouth, every stride of the way.
I covered John Vukovich as a player. I covered him as a coach. I covered him the last couple of years in a role he had a tough time adapting to -- "team executive." And as hard as I try to keep at least a little professional distance from the people I cover, it was impossible for me not to think of John Vukovich as a friend.
For most of the last 20 years, we stayed in the same building during spring training. We knew each other's wives and families. We met on elevators, in parking lots, in restaurants, even out on street corners.
And you could never just "run into" John Vukovich. You were going to have A Conversation. There was never a bad occasion to tap into this man's brain, because there was always something in there worth hearing.
I'm glad I soaked in as much as I did, because I still hear that voice, almost any time something unusual happens in a baseball game, explaining the way it's supposed to be done.
John Vukovich should have managed someone's baseball team. As recently as six months ago, his friend and mentor, Dallas Green, stopped me in the Phillies' press room to ask me, please, to get this guy's name out there last winter, to connect him with somebody's managerial vacancy.
But by November, our friend's health was already beginning to worsen. So he couldn't have taken one of those jobs even if he'd been offered one.
At least Dallas Green can say now he's the only man who ever hired Vuke to manage a big-league baseball team. That was in October, 1987, when Green was running the Cubs. If you don't remember how John Vukovich did in that job, well, there's a good reason for that.
Unfortunately for both of them, an hour later, Dallas Green and his bosses from the Tribune Company had a loud debate that was later described as a "philosophical difference." So Green wound up quitting, and John Vukovich's managerial reign ended before he even made it to the press conference.
It's still hard to believe he never got another chance to actually make it to some team's podium. Heaven knows the guy had enough friends in baseball. You'd have thought somebody would have hired him.
But he was just opinionated enough, just fiery enough, that, for two decades, GMs were too intimidated to hire him. It was pretty much that basic.
Yet there was such a soft, caring side to this man. Dodgers GM Ned Colletti couldn't help but wonder Wednesday if he ever would have gone where he's gone in life without John Vukovich, "always steadying me and prodding and instigating me to make myself better."
They met each other 25 years ago, with the Cubs. Their bond was forever. So Ned Colletti has never erased the voice-mail message from his friend, Vuke, the day he got that GM job -- the one in which John Vukovich told him how proud he was, and that, "I love you, buddy."
I've known the guy even longer, more than 27 years. I only saw him get 13 hits in the three seasons I covered him as a player. But I'll never forget him.
When I was just a young guy, learning to cover baseball, I can't tell you how many times John Vukovich would take me aside, put his arm around my shoulder and start teaching. About how players think. About how coaches and managers think. About how baseball is meant to be played. About the life lessons baseball never stopped delivering.
There were many, many times we disagreed about the course of events in his universe. He let me know just about all of them, too. But he had a way of sending his messages.
He'd let me know exactly how wrong I was. But by the end of the lecture, he'd be telling me, "You're too smart to write that crap. You're too good to say that baloney." And I'd know the truth. The reason he just spent all that time yelling at me was the same reason he'd spent all that time teaching me the game when we were both a lot younger: Because he was too good, too caring, a human being to do anything else.
On New Year's Eve, 1999, my phone rang. It was a friend of mine -- and fellow John Vukovich fan -- in the baseball-writing business. He had just read my end-of-the-baseball-century column in that morning's newspaper. One of the items in that column was a rundown of The Five Worst Hitters of the 20th Century.
"How'd you leave Vuke out of that list?" he wondered, laughing.
Well, it took some doing. I admitted to that. I had to make sure I raised the minimum at-bats to qualify for the list above the 559 career ABs John Vukovich got. But I did that -- for him.
Not because I didn't want to subject myself to the earful his inclusion would have inspired, either.
It was because it didn't do justice to the great John Vukovich to sum him up as just some guy who batted .161. It didn't then. It doesn't now. And it never will. Ever.
Blog from Schilling-
Rest in Peace, Vuk
Mar 9th, 2007 by Curt Schilling
Philadelphia Phillies coach John Vukovich passed away this morning around 10am. I heard the news from a friend a few minutes after I finished my outing in Ft Myers. John Vukovich was the closest thing I had to a father since my dad passed away 19 years ago. I want to take a moment to let anyone who never had the pleasure of meeting him know what a truly exceptional human being he was.
I came to the Phillies via trade on the final day of spring training in 1992 after a tumultuous year in Houston as the closer, set-up and mop-up guy, sent down for a month early in the 1991 season.
I was heading to the bullpen in St. Petersburg on that final day of camp. We were playing the Cardinals when I was told, “Hold on a minute, you aren’t going to pitch today.” A few minutes later I heard, “I think we might have traded you.” Might? When? Where? For who? The only answer I could get out of our pitching coach, Bob Cluck, was, “If you tell anyone I’ll kill you, but I think you’re going to Philadelphia.”
In addition to the shock, (and the fact that my wife was halfway home on the drive back to Houston), my mind was spinning.
A year earlier I had been part of the mega deal with Steve Finley and Pete Harnisch in the trade to Houston for Glen Davis. Now I was being traded again? I soon found out that the teams had swapped “prospects.” Philadelphia was trading Jason Grimsley for me.
I arrived in Miami the next morning to meet the team and prepare for the final exhibition game of the spring. It was raining and the game was cancelled, but I went to the bullpen and threw a long session anyway. There I met John Vukovich for the first time.
To give you an idea of Vuk as a person, I’ll toss out a few words that capture him in a nutshell: old school, tough love, loud, passionate, devoted, loyal, and obsessed with winning. In addition to all of that John was the most respectful man I’ve ever met when it came to the game of baseball. He never let a day pass when he didn’t push himself at something. From hitting fungoes to working on someone’s base running to defense, John was about total commitment.
Things were rather calm early on, even though I didn’t have that fire or rage he wanted from players. What I did have was a consummate desire to be an ace, to win, and to be good. John was the scout who briefed the pitching staff before every series. We’d sit in a room, go down a team’s lineup hitter by hitter, and he’d explain how we were supposed to pitch each player. Vuk made it abundantly clear that if you listened to him no one would get a hit.
Things played out for the first few weeks of the season until Andy Ashby was hit with a line drive by Mackey Sasser of the Mets and broke his wrist. They decided to give me his starts and see how things played out.
That decision marked the beginning of a relationship between John and me that endured over the next 16 seasons. Every game we’d hold our own meeting before my start, and he would keep notes on hitters exclusively for me. I started to learn that pitching in the big leagues was far from what I imagined it to be. I also began to see how much John cared about me and my family. We talked often, a lot of times about nothing but life, but there was always some message he was trying to send whether I recognized it or not.
“Keep pushing, Schill. No matter what happens, keep pushing.”
That’s it. In his mind, life really was that simple. No matter what you were up against you just kept pushing. Whatever happened, things would work themselves out if you kept pushing yourself.
We had run-ins . . . many. Vuk was the first person to get in my face when he felt I wasn’t pushing myself. He was also one of the few men - like my father - who, if he gave you a pat on the ass or said, “Great job,” made it clear you’d really done something special. He made you earn his praise. Cal Ripken Sr. was the same way. That’s how my dad was.
I imagine thousands of former players could tell Vuk stories, and every one of them would have this same message in their story somewhere.
Two events with Vuk really stand out for me.
Marquis Grissom flat-out owned me. I couldn’t get him out no matter what I threw or where I threw it. Vuk would tell me day after day, “Fastball in Schill. He can’t hit it.” I tried, but nothing seemed to work. One day in Montreal I throw a fastball in on his hands, explode his bat, and he grounds out. I peek at the bench and Vuk stands up, bows, and doffs his cap.
We’re in Three Rivers Stadium playing the Pirates. Jason Kendall has had some success off me, and Vuk keeps harping, “He can’t hit a curveball, Schill.” We’ve argued about this at least 50 times. Seventh inning, Kendall at the plate, first pitch curveball, home run. I look over at the bench, and Vuk is shaking his head. I am so mad I can’t see straight, blaming Vuk for throwing a bad pitch. . . .
The inning ends. I walk into the dugout, pass Vuk without looking, and hear, “I said curveball. At no time did I say the word HANGING curveball.”
I was so pissed I laughed.
In 2000, after I was traded away to Arizona, I would call Vuk the day before every game I pitched. I would go over my notes and compare them with his, and we’d come up with a game plan for the next day. This went on for a good, long time. When it got to the point where I felt I had notes upon notes, I’d still call Vuk just to talk. My father’s passing had left me with a need for an older male figure to help me navigate life’s tough stretches, and Vuk was always there for me.
I learned of Vuk’s initial cancer diagnosis soon after he did. He was very stoic about it when I called. “I’ll just keep battling, Schill. This thing won’t beat me.” He had surgery, got better, and returned to the field well before anyone in the medical world wished he would, but anyone who knew John knew that was exactly how he wanted it.
He had some vision problems but nothing major. He spent a bit more time on the field, but eventually the Phillies moved him into an assistant to the GM position. This had to kill him internally; the field was his office and home and the only place other than the clubhouse he wanted to be. We spoke every time my team played the Phillies. He was always a friendly, familiar face, and his smile was infectious. “C’mere, big boy!” That was Vuk.
Late last winter I learned he’d had a relapse of cancer, and it was incurable. No one could reach him. He didn’t want to talk to or see anyone. Vuk was going through massive chemotherapy, and I heard he looked like a shell of himself. Mike Ryan, the bullpen coach in Philadelphia known to us as “Irish,” drove from Maine to see him. John refused to come to the door. Irish sat on his porch for five hours until Vuk finally opened up.
I heard from a lot of former teammates that no one could reach Vuk, so I called him. I was in the middle of leaving a long voice message, telling him that Gehrig and my other kids were thinking of him and that Shonda and I were praying, when he picked up the phone. I couldn’t even recognize his voice.
“Hey, big boy, how ya doing?” he asked. We spoke for a few minutes, and I could tell it was an immense strain for him to even talk. “I’m gonna beat this thing, Schill. No one thinks I can, but I’m gonna keep battling and beat it.”
A few days later I got word that Vuk had fallen and seriously hurt himself. He was going in and out, some good days, many more bad.
There is no doubt in my mind that my career would have been over ten or more years ago without John Vukovich. I often tried to but there was no way I could ever repay him for his commitment to me and the devotion and love he showed me throughout our 15+ years together. John Vukovich was the very person my dad was referring to when he called someone, “good people.” It was the highest compliment my dad could give. John was good people every day of his life, and the game and I will miss him greatly.
Shonda and I, our sons Gehrig, Grant, and Garrison, and daughter Gabriella want to extend our deepest sympathy and prayers to the Vukovich family, the Phillies family, and the family that is baseball.
Thanks for everything, and God bless, Vuk. Keep pushing.
Curt