116
PITTSBURGH — Call it the ultimate 'Flashback Friday.'
The Toronto Blue Jays hired Cito Gaston as manager Friday afternoon, part of a house-cleaning of the teams coaching staff that cost manager John Gibbons his job and also saw the exit of hitting coach Gary Denbo, third base coach Marty Pevey and first base coach Ernie Whitt.
Gene Tenace will join the team as the new hitting coach, while Nick Leyva will be third base coach and minor league hitting coach Dwayne Murphy will serve as first base coach.
Bench coach Brian Butterfield, pitching coach Brad Arnsberg and bullpen coach Bruce Walton all retained their jobs.
"The toughest part of all this is that it doesn't only effect me, it effects the coaches as well," said Gibbons, who met with general manager J.P. Ricciardi Friday morning at the team hotel in Pittsburgh, where the Blue Jays opened a three-game series against the Pirates last night.
Former Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston laughs with the crowd during his guest coaching appearance at a spring training baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on March 5, 2007 in Dunedin, Fla. (Mike Carlson/AP)
Related Articles
Internet Links
"I spoke with all the coaches and apologized that it came down to this."
Gibbons was in the final year of his contract and his job status has been in question all year. The Blue Jays rallied from an 11-17 April with a 20-10 May, but they've run aground again in June and have lost 13 of their past 17 games, leaving them in the American League East basement with a 35-39 record.
"Nobody was happy with the way we were playing," said Gibbons, a minor league roommate of Ricciardi when the two were in the New York Mets system.
"From our standpoint we've underachieved," said Ricciardi. "We know we have a better team than this. Right now we want to see if we can spark this team and we think Cito is the guy to do it."
Gaston, 64, won two World Series in his previous tenure with the Blue Jays, going 681-635 from 1989-97. He becomes the fourth Blue Jays manager in seven years under Ricciardi. Carlos Tosca replaced the fired Buck Martinez, whom Ricciardi inherited from former GM Gord Ash, midway through the 2002 season.
"We're going to see if we can't start the season over tonight," Gaston told a news conference. "I think we have the hitters to do that and give the pitching staff some breathing room."
The question now is what the move means for Ricciardi, who is under contract through 2010 but is now squarely in the line of fire. Indeed, it will be hard for this decision to be taken as anything other than a move orchestrated by president and chief executive officer Paul Godfrey, who knows Gaston from his days with the Blue Jays and was responsible for Gaston being retained in an advisory capacity.
Gaston was not a candidate for the Blue Jays managerial job in the two previous moves made by Ricciardi.
Gibbons's exit was classy. He thanked Ricciardi and the organization for giving him a chance to manage and when asked for any special highlights from his tenure said: "There were some good things, but nothing great - and they (great things) were expected."
Since taking over from Tosca on an interim basis on Aug. 8, 2004, Gibbons compiled a 270-266 (plus this season) record. Only his replacement Gaston (683-636) and Bobby Cox (355-292) have had longer tenures than him in franchise history.
The Blue Jays' best season under Gibbons was 2006, when they finished second in the AL East at 87-75.
