Jamey is a lifelong Rangers fan who has been blogging for nearly 20 years at newbergreport.com and traces his fandom back to the days of Bump Wills, Bert Blyleven, and the powder blues.
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
— A.E. Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young”
Most of us didn’t know a whole lot about Josh Hamilton before he emerged in high school as the favorite to be drafted first in the country. He probably doesn’t come to mind very often these days for those who knew him only as a ballplayer.
We all know how to spell “Leody Taveras,” even though most have yet to see so much as a photograph of his face.
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But you probably don’t know what Prince Fielder or Cliff Lee has been up to.
The reality is that as strong a bond as we feel with the athletes who wear our colors, as much as it seems that Elvis would smile at us the way we’d smile at him, they are ours only briefly, and once all but the most iconic ballplayers are away from the game, if we hear about them again the odds are the news won’t be good.
Darryl Hamilton. Harvey Martin. Lincoln Coleman.
Esteban Loaiza.
But there are some who defy the prototype, whose aura is bound to outlast their glory days. It was no shock that we’d maintain a fan’s connection with Roger Staubach, whether he stayed in the game or not. Dirk Nowitzki, probably no different. Pudge Rodriguez.
And the man whom one organization was willing to trade so they could put Loaiza in their rotation.
Not much was known locally of Loaiza when Texas acquired him from the middle of the rotation of that struggling franchise in that small market in that other league, sending local product Todd Van Poppel and fast-track prospect Warren Morris to Pittsburgh in July 1998 for the 26-year-old from Tijuana.
After Loaiza’s third and fourth Rangers starts, though, a complete-game four-hitter in Toronto and an eight-inning, two-run effort against those same Blue Jays six days later, he would have been trending if Twitter (or trending) were a thing back then.
His place in franchise history would have been etched instantly had a February 1999 trade with the Blue Jays gone through, with Loaiza and prospects Ruben Mateo and Jonathan Johnson heading to Toronto for Roger Clemens — but the Jays opted instead to send Clemens to the Yankees.
The following year, however, shortly before the trade deadline, Toronto re-engaged Texas and the Rangers did move Loaiza — who had reportedly clashed often with Rangers pitching coach Dick Bosman on his approach and with teammates on more than that, and had fallen out of the last-place rotation — for a AAA righthander named Darwin Cubillan and a AA infielder named Michael Young.
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For most Rangers fans, this is where the Michael Young story begins. Where the laurel begins to grow. But much of what made up the profile we all know him for — the toughness and the resilience and the leadership, and the knack for proving people wrong — was forged well before the trade that made Rangers history.
“I first saw Michael in a showcase event where there were 100-plus athletes,” recalls Bob Brontsema, then the first-year head coach of the UC Santa Barbara baseball team, busy scouting high school players heading into their senior year. “You try to see more than just the skills. I like to see how the athlete carries himself. . . . I basically fell in love with Michael that day and said that he was going to be my first recruit.”
Brontsema eventually landed Young, a center fielder from Bishop Amat High School just outside Los Angeles — moved off of shortstop at Bishop Amat by a younger player named Steve Medrano — and he enrolled despite being drafted by Baltimore in the 25th round. Young played right field as a UCSB freshman but decided if he was going to make himself more than a Day Three draft pick down the road, it was going to be as a shortstop. He approached Brontsema after the season to make his pitch.
“He thought it was a good move,” Young says. “The only problem was it didn’t really fit the roster. He had a high profile recruit coming to play shortstop.”
The recruit was Medrano, Young’s old high school buddy. Though Brontsema ensured him he’d have the chance to compete with Medrano for the Gauchos’ shortstop job, Young was all set to transfer to East Los Angeles College to continue his college career.
“I hated that, though,” Young admits. “I told [Brontsema] I felt so guilty. I was his first recruit and hadn’t lived up to my end of the bargain yet. I wanted to stay and be the player he wanted me to be. I felt I owed him. But I knew I couldn’t play shortstop if Stevie showed up.”
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Stevie didn’t show up. The Royals used a fifth-round draft pick on him that June and signed him. As a result, Young stayed at UCSB, “beat up the weight room,” and became the player Brontsema envisioned. At shortstop.
Young was pumped. “I could smell pro ball and had two years to make myself an infielder.”
Brontsema saw the transformation and wasn’t surprised. “[Even in] his first year, he had a lot of the things back then that he showed as a big leaguer. He knew how to act, he knew how to compete. He had the respect of his teammates and he could play. The big difference was when he was a freshman, he did everything at 500 miles an hour. He couldn’t slow the game down enough, which is pretty common for a young player.”
After hitting .239 as a freshman, Young began to slow the game down. He would hit .373 and .359 his next two years, earning All-Big West shortstop honors. Toronto drafted Young in the fifth round at the end of his junior season in 1997, and he signed for $92,500. He was ready this time for pro ball.
The Blue Jays assigned Young to the St. Catharines Stompers of the Short-Season New York-Penn League. On his first day, the 20-year-old found himself taking ground balls alongside a 17-year-old shortstop from Venezuela named Cesar Izturis.
“I’d never seen hands like that,” Young says. “Soft and smooth as silk. I thought, ‘Are they all like this?!’” Young’s manager, Rocket Wheeler, told him to take some fungoes at second base. “I had never taken a ground ball there before. But it felt so natural. So instinctive. They laid out a plan for me and Izzy to switch every series. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would pay huge dividends down the road.”
Young also remembers Wheeler pulling him aside after his very first BP session with the club, and telling him: “I don’t do this with kids who’ve just signed — but those are some kind of quick hands. You’re a big leaguer.” It obviously stuck with Young.
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That same 1997 season, Toronto had its previous year’s second-round pick, Brent Abernathy, playing a level up with Low A Hagerstown, even though he was a year younger than Young. He was a full-time second baseman. “Abby . . . could flat out hit,” Young recalls. “In my mind, he was my competition.”
Toronto kept Young and Izturis together and promoted them to Hagerstown in 1998, with Abernathy staying a step ahead at High A Dunedin. Two months into the season, however, the Blue Jays used their first-round pick (eighth overall) on a hotshot high school shortstop named Felipe Lopez, paying him $2 million to sign. Lopez started his summer in the New York-Penn League, but finished it by leapfrogging Young, making a two-level jump to Dunedin.
Like Medrano and Izturis and Abernathy, it was another case of a younger player potentially standing in Young’s way.
Another motivation log tossed onto the fire. More fuel for Michael Young.
Toronto assigned Young and Izturis to Dunedin in 1999, continuing to alternate them between shortstop and second base. Abernathy held second base down with AA Knoxville. Lopez, judged not to be quite ready for AA in his first full season, slid back down to Low A with Hagerstown.
For the third straight of his three pro seasons, Young OPS’d over .800. Following the season, Baseball America ranked Lopez as the Jays’ number two prospect (behind outfielder Vernon Wells). Izturis was number three. Young was number four. Abernathy, considered to be limited defensively to second base, was number seven.
That spring, the Blue Jays broke the Young-Izturis tandem up, assigning Izturis to AAA without so much as a day in AA. Young would be the everyday second baseman in Knoxville — the first time he’d play one position exclusively as a pro — and Lopez would be the shortstop.
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Toronto’s big league season got off to a good start. The Rangers’ season did not. In June, Blue Jays General Manager Gord Ash — who was looking to pull 23-year-old Roy Halladay and his near-11.00 ERA from the rotation — called Texas GM Doug Melvin and said that he was interested in Loaiza, who had been so good in those two starts against his club two summers earlier. And that he would trade from his game-best inventory of middle infield prospects. The Rangers were running Royce Clayton out at shortstop at the time, with Luis Alicea holding second base down as Jason Romano was being groomed at AA.
Ash was reluctant to move Lopez and, according to Melvin, ranked Izturis and Abernathy ahead of Young. Melvin wasn’t interested in Izturis, and he was fairly clear on which of the other two he wanted. “Abernathy would have been loved by the new analytics groups,” Melvin says, “but he only played one position. Our scout [Rudy Terrasas] felt Young was the best athlete and had energy, and that he would be able to play a longer period of time because of his athleticism and versatility.”
July 19, 2000: Texas trades Esteban Loaiza to Toronto for Darwin Cubillan and Michael Young.
“We were in Greenville when I found out,” Young recalls. “It was in the afternoon, about 30 minutes before the bus left for the park.” Wheeler, who had managed Young in three of his four seasons in the Toronto system — and had put a “big leaguer” label on him the day they’d met — gave him the word. The news, understandably, was bittersweet.
“I was riding the emotional wave a bit. I loved the Jays organization. The instructors were unbelievable. . . . I was ready because of them.”
Still, Young wasn’t upset. Another organization had just traded a veteran pitcher to get him. “My goal was to be an impact big leaguer. It didn’t matter what team it was.”
“I knew Texas was coming off a string of division titles,” Young adds. “I regrouped and told myself I’d be the second baseman there in a year.”
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But there was Romano, three years younger and playing second base at AA Tulsa, where Texas was assigning Young. Like Medrano and Izturis and Abernathy and Lopez, yet another younger player muddying the path.
Except the Rangers told Young they were moving him to shortstop. Where Clayton was in Arlington, just a year and a half into a four-year deal. “Didn’t matter to me,” Young says. “The way I saw it: Hop on that flight to Tulsa, get heaters, and stick ’em.”
Young got heaters and stuck ’em right away, racking up multiple hits in six of his first seven games and 23 of 43 overall. He would hit .319 for the Drillers and join the big club for the final week of the season, making his Major League debut. But he let none of it go to his head. “Royce was the everyday shortstop in Texas, and I’m hearing they want me to replace him. That meant nothing to me. I was young, but I knew you only get what you earn. And I hadn’t earned anything.”
Two months later, the Rangers signed Alex Rodriguez.
Not a younger player, but close.
The phone rang. It was Young’s agent, Dan Lozano, telling him to be prepared to be traded for the second time in six months. Young wasn’t having any of it. “I said, ‘Hell no. They just got the best player in the world to play shortstop. I want to go back to second base. I want to play with that guy.’” He told Lozano to call Melvin. “‘Tell him I want to battle it out with Romano for the second base job. I want that job. May the best man win.’ I crossed my fingers for the rest of the winter that they wouldn’t trade me.
“I told Danny to tell them even though I knew my opinion carried little weight. I just wanted them to know I was down for some competition.”
Melvin laughs at the thought in retrospect. He was never going to trade Young. “No, the infield was going to be Young, Alex, and [eventually Hank] Blalock,” with Carlos Pena or Travis Hafner at first base. Mark Teixeira would be drafted that next summer.
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Texas assigned Young to AAA coming out of camp in 2001, and made him Oklahoma’s everyday second baseman. Romano returned to Tulsa. The Rangers had traded for veteran Randy Velarde to man second base temporarily in Arlington.
On May 24, Velarde pulled a hamstring running out a ground ball. Young was immediately lifted from the RedHawks’ game against New Orleans and put on a plane to Baltimore.
He would never see the minor leagues again.
Twelve days after the Blue Jays had traded Young in July 2000, they shipped Abernathy to Tampa Bay for rental pitchers Steve Trachsel and Mark Guthrie. The following year, they dealt Izturis (with Paul Quantrill) to the Dodgers for Luke Prokopec and Chad Ricketts. The year after that, they moved Lopez in a four-team deal for a pitcher named Jason Arnold who never made it to the big leagues.
None of those trades worked out particularly well for Toronto. None turned out worse than the Young deal. Loaiza posted a 4.96 ERA over two and a half Blue Jays seasons, and they made little effort to keep him from leaving via free agency after 2002. The White Sox signed him to a minor league deal for the next season that would pay him — if he made the big league roster — a mere $500,000, after Toronto had paid him $11 million for two-plus seasons.
Loaiza promptly went 21-9, 2.90 for Chicago, leading the American League in strikeouts and finishing second in the AL Cy Young vote.
That same 2003 season, Young posted the first of five consecutive years racking up 200 hits and batting .300. Those five seasons, Toronto’s starting middle infields were Orlando Hudson-Chris Woodward, Hudson-Chris Gomez, Hudson-Russ Adams, Aaron Hill-John McDonald, and Hill-McDonald again.
You know most of how the Michael Young story plays out, and this is not meant to be a definitive history. There were the two World Series and the seven All-Star Games and the batting title and the Gold Glove and the position changes and the insane durability and the franchise hit record and the career .300 batting average and the consistency of the tone he set and, yes, the chill between Young and management toward the end of his playing career in Texas that has long since thawed.
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This is more about the prologue.
And the promise of an epilogue that we’ll be able to celebrate, well beyond the Rangers Hall of Fame induction.
Young is now a Special Assistant to Rangers GM Jon Daniels, and by all accounts gets after it in that role just as he used to in the weight room and the batting cage and between the lines. His and Cristina’s community efforts are tireless, and — like Medrano and Izturis and Abernathy and Lopez and Romano — now he’s got another three younger kids to chase, in Mateo and Emilio and Antonio.
Young’s Twitter bio samples Jay-Z: “drove by the fork in the road . . . and went straight.” (Loaiza’s own recent road encounter was something different altogether.) Young hasn’t always taken the conventional path or followed someone else’s blueprint.
In many ways, for Rangers fans, Young has long been the picture of stability. But he nearly changed colleges, before he didn’t have to. He changed positions, over and over and over, as far back as high school, and made it work. He was traded, and not by choice. He saw his new team go out and sign the greatest shortstop in the world, months after he’d been told he was its shortstop of the future. No problem.
He didn’t get to choose the team that drafted him or the one where he would build his legacy.
Like clockwork, Young took advantage of his opportunities, sometimes creating his own, and charted a course that, in retrospect, just feels like it was meant to be.
There are people who think Young has a whole lot more to give baseball, whether that’s back in a big league dugout or in the offices upstairs. For one, the man who asked him to come back to the organization.
“Michael can do just about anything in the game he wants,” Daniels says. “GM, hitting coach, manager. I have no doubt he could do it.
“He likes players. He believes in players. He relates to them. And one of my favorite things about Michael is he’s curious. He listens. He has really good judgment. He doesn’t wear his resume on his sleeve — like he could — and doesn’t feel the need to show everyone in the room how smart he is.”
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That’s sort of how you’d draw it up.
Young is going to have opportunities if he wants them — if he’s down for a little more competition — and chances are better than zero that, whatever’s to come for the man, baseball fans will get to settle into front-row seats.
And whatever that is, whatever the heaters look like next, Michael Young will almost certainly stick ’em. That laurel’s not withering anytime soon.
EXIT VELO
- The two-year, non-roster deal Texas struck with righthander Edinson Volquez on Friday gives Texas another starting pitcher it can move forward with in 2019 — or choose not to. The Rangers have club options in 2019 on Cole Hamels ($20 million/$6 million buyout), Martin Perez ($7.5 million/$750,000 buyout), Matt Moore ($10 million/$750,000 buyout), and Doug Fister ($4.5 million/$500,000 buyout), but are locked into none of them. (The Hamels option vests at $24 million if he pitches 252 innings in 2018, but he’s never logged that many in a season — nor has any Rangers pitcher since 1992.) As far as rotation pieces go, only Mike Minor’s contract ($9.5 million in 2019 and in 2020) is guaranteed past this season. Texas has 2019 control over Hamels, Perez, Moore, Fister, and now Volquez (plus Matt Bush, as long as we’re talking about potential starters), but also has the flexibility to walk away from any of them at a significantly reduced cost.
- Daniels told MLB Network Radio that Texas did have an interest in bringing Yu Darvish back, and had an open dialogue this winter with the right-hander and his agent — but he characterized the concept as the Rangers providing a “soft landing” for Darvish in the event that a bigger deal didn’t materialize for him.
- Interesting piece by The Athletic’s Eno Sarris, which finishes this way: “But use the entirety of your eyes, and you’ll see that the Brewers, Cubs, Yankees, Rangers, and Mets all have done real work during a quiet offseason. Sometimes work around the periphery is even more important than the big moves.”
- Notable in the back of the Rangers’ 2018 media guide: Jairo Beras is now listed strictly as a right-handed pitcher, while Royce Bolinger, Preston Beck, and Brett Eibner, despite dalliances on the mound, are listed as outfielders — as is Yanio Perez, who spent two-thirds of his debut season with the Rangers on the infield corners after arriving from Cuba.
- On the subject of position changes: University of Central Florida tight end Jordan Akins is projected by some to go as high as Round 4 in April’s NFL Draft. A third-round pick of the Rangers in 2010, he spent four years in the system as an outfielder but didn’t progress past Low Class A.
