Humbled Gillick holds off tears during HOF speech

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COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- At first, Pat Gillick wanted to get special permission to have someone else deliver his Hall of Fame induction speech. It was an odd request considering that Gillick was a public figure and had been a major league general manager for 27 years, but that was beside the point.

Gillick wasn't nervous and he certainly could come up with the words. That was the easy part. The part that worried Gillick was whether or not he could get through a 10-minute speech without breaking down.

He didn't think he could do it.

Certainly history was not on his side. Phillies fans remember watching Gillick break down into a mess of tears during the ring ceremony for the 2008 World Series title team. As soon as the ballplayers stepped onto the grass at Citizens Bank Park to receive their championship ring, Gillick was so overcome with emotion that he turned into a faucet.

In fact any type of ceremony to celebrate the good deeds of others usually ended with Gillick in a blubbering mess.

But on a sun-soaked Sunday afternoon with 49 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame behind him and thousands more sitting in the field behind the Clark Sports Center, located just a long fly ball from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Gillick did it. He delivered a heartfelt, and classy speech where he remembered his life in baseball and thanked those who helped him along the way. Moreover, he did it without crying.

But as soon Gillick stepped away from the podium to join the rest of his new fraternity of Hall of Famers, Gillick turned on the water works.

"Baseball is about talent and skill and ability," Gillick said. "But at the deepest level it's about love, integrity and respect. Respect for the game, respect for your colleagues, respect for the shared bond that is bigger than any one of us."

During his address, Gillick thanked his family, friends and employers. He also told stories of his days working as a scout for Houston and New York and the various stunts pulled in order to keep the competition off his trail. There were aliases for hotels and trips to remote places that barely measured a blip on the map all in search of a player that could help a team.

Once, Gillick said, he climbed a tree to watch a player through binoculars just so the other scouts wouldn't know he was on the scene.

Yet despite the cut-throat competition, Gillick said there was an honor and a code amongst the scouts and it was one that defined his ethos as a general manager. That's when he told the story about former big leaguer Willie Upshaw from tiny Blanco, Texas.

"It turned only three scouts knew about Willie, Dave Yocum and I, working for the Yankees, and a scout for the Braves named Al LaMacchia. Luck was on our side and we were able to get Willie in the draft. But Willie wasn't sure if he wanted to play baseball or football. We knew from his size he wasn't going to be a professional football player, so we really believed that baseball was the best thing for him and his family.

"Dave spent three days trying to sign him with the Yankees without any luck. We found out later that Willie was hiding from Dave, so I called Al LaMacchia with the Braves and asked if he would go with me to Blanco, Texas to help convince Willie that baseball was the best for him and his family. Remember, Al and I had been fighting tooth-and-nail over Willie in the draft, but he said he'd be willing to help. We sat in the living room, two scouts from rival teams, and talked with Willie and his dad about the pros and cons, and Willie ended up having a great career in baseball.

"He hit 123 home runs in the big leagues, played a couple more years in Japan and now is the manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish. But can you really imagine that happening today? A rival scout taking time out of his schedule to go to the middle of nowhere to help a competitor and to help a young man to make the right decision for his own future? That's just how we operated back then. We fought like heck for every advantage, but we knew we were a part of something bigger than ourselves.

"To me, that is what baseball is all about and I hope that is always what baseball is all about."

Eventually, Gillick ended up hiring LaMacchia in Toronto and the two were together when the Blue Jays won back-to-back World Series titles.

His successor and protege, Ruben Amaro Jr., said Gillick's induction into the Hall of Fame was a day to celebrate the behind-the-scenes folks in the game. It was a nod to the scouts and the grunts who first saw the players before they became big leaguers and set them on their path. If there is a legacy he'd like to leave, Gillick says he would like to be known more as a champion of the scouts instead of a team architect.

He'd prefer to be the guy in the trenches as opposed to the front office man pulling the strings.

"I think I represent the guys below the radar," Gillick said. "And I'm shocked by the number of general managers in the Hall of Fame. ... But again, I think I represent the guys in the trenchesthe scouts, players. The people below the radar don't get a lot of publicity, but they do most of the heavy lifting, a lot of the grunt work. So that's why I'm humbled by this award."

Still, Gillick's path to the Hall of Fame began differently than how he thought it would go. A left-handed pitcher in the Orioles' minor-league system following a national championship season with USC in 1958, Gillick wanted to get to the big leagues, but knew his left arm wouldn't take him there. When his playing days ended, he was hired as a scout, a decade after working for the Colt .45sAstros and Yankees, Gillick landed with the expansion Blue Jays where he was put in charge of building a team from the bottom up.

Twenty-seven years, 11 trips to the playoffs and three World Series trophies later, Gillick turned Toronto, Baltimore, Seattle and Philadelphia into winners and has a plaque bearing his name in the Baseball Hall of Fame forever.

"I'm here because nearly 50 years ago I realized my pitching arm wasn't going to get me to the major leagues," Gillick said. "I had to find another way."

What would have happened if he could have pitched?

"I may not be the most deserving, but I am the most appreciative," Gillick said.

E-mail John R. Finger at jfinger@comcastsportsnet.com. Follow him on Twitter @JRFingerCSN.

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