Cito Gaston

Cito Gaston (born March 17, 1944, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.) is a former baseball manager who was the first African American to lead a team to a World Series victory.

Gaston’s father was a truck driver, his mother worked as a waitress, and he had five sisters. Cito, a nickname he was given by childhood friends, went to a Roman Catholic grade school and was an athlete at Holy Cross High School in Corpus Christi, Texas. He played minor league baseball from 1964 to 1968 and played in the major leagues for ten seasons, from 1969 to 1978. He was an outfielder for the San Diego Padres, the Atlanta Braves, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. His best season was 1970 when he had 186 hits, 93 runs batted in, and a batting average of .318 for the Padres. During winters he played for teams in Venezuela. He left the majors in 1979 and spent a season in the Dominican Republic and a season playing in the Mexican League. His friend, baseball legend Hank Aaron, then convinced Gaston to teach minor league baseball, and Gaston eventually returned to Texas as a minor league batting instructor in San Antonio.

When Braves manager Bobby Cox was hired by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1982, he brought Gaston with him as a batting coach. Gaston held that position for eight years. In 1989 Gaston was promoted to manager of the team. He was only the fourth African American manager in Major League Baseball. In four of his first five years as manager of the team, the Jays won the division crown, and in 1992 they won their first World Series, behind the play of first baseman John Olerud, outfielder Joe Carter, and second baseman Roberto Alomar. The following year, when Toronto defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, Gaston made the record books again, becoming the first manager since Sparky Anderson of the Cincinnati Reds in 1976 to lead a team to back-to-back World Series championships. (The Blue Jays beat the Phillies after a series-winning home run by Carter in the ninth inning of game six, which was only the second such homer, after Bill Mazeroski’s in 1960, in major league history.)

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Gaston managed the American League All-Star team in 1993 and 1994. However, after the 1993 World Series victory, the Blue Jays had four losing seasons, and Gaston was fired after the 1997 season. He interviewed with other teams for managerial positions but was not hired by any, and he had only a brief stint from 2000 to 2001 as a hitting coach for the Blue Jays. He returned to the Blue Jays as manager in 2008 for three seasons. After the 2010 season he worked as a consultant for the Blue Jays until 2015. He had spent 13 seasons in total as manager for the Blue Jays and had a record of 894–837.