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The Spectacle Blog
While watching the Boston Red Sox-Texas Rangers game, I learned that Baltimore Orioles legend Mike Flanagan had been found dead on his property this afternoon. His cause of death is unknown but authorities in Monkton, Maryland were contacted concerning a "suspicious death." Flanagan would have turned 60 in December.
My very first baseball book was Zander Hollander's The 1980 Complete Handbook of Baseball. Willie Stargell was on the front cover while Flanagan, a New Hampshire born southpaw, was on the back. Flanagan and the Orioles had of course faced "Pops" Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1979 World Series. In 1979, Flanagan won 23 games and was named the AL Cy Young Award winner while Stargell was named co-NL MVP (along with St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Keith Hernandez). Now both men are gone.
Flanagan spent most of his 18-year career with the Orioles and would earn a World Series ring with the team in 1983. After his playing career ended in 1992, Flanagan worked for the Orioles in various capacities. He served on two occasions as the team's pitching coach, three stints as a color commentator and from 2002 to 2008 was also the team's co-General Manager first with Jim Beattie and then with Jim Duquette. Since 2010, Flanagan alternated with Jim Palmer as a color commentator for Orioles games alongside Gary Thorne on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN). Palmer was overcome with grief when he learned of his former teammate's sudden death. I am sure Palmer is far from alone in his grief.
UPDATE: According to Gene Sandusky, Sports Director of WBAL-TV, an NBC affiliate, Flanagan's death was as a result of suicide. Sandusky stated that he had been informed by several sources that Flanagan had been "despondent over what he considered a false perception from a community he loved of his role in the team's prolonged failure." The Orioles have not enjoyed a winning season since 1997 and Flanagan had been part of the team's management for seven of those seasons.
Now local authorities have not yet concluded their investigation. However, if it is the case that this was a suicide then it makes this that much more terrible. It saddens me to think Flanagan thought this was the only way things could be resolved. In September 2008, I wrote this piece about suicide not long after writer David Foster Wallace had taken his own life. It's lengthy but under the circumstances I think it's germane to this tragedy.
UPDATE II: It has now been officially confirmed that Flanagan died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound. How absolutely awful.
UPDATE III: Here's a video from earlier this season of Flanagan talking to several bloggers in the Orioles broadcast booth about the preparation which goes into a telecast. If you watched it you wouldn't know anything was amiss. Nevertheless, I'm glad it's there for posterity's sake.
UPDATE IV: According to the Baltimore Sun, the local authorities in Monkton indicated that Flanagan had been "upset about financial issues." They learned this from his wife Alex who had been out of town and became concerned when she had not heard from him. This also differs from the assertion of Gene Sandusky who had stated that Flanagan's actions had been motivated by the "prolonged failure" of the Orioles. Whatever Flanagan's reasons, it is regrettable that he came to the conclusion that this was the only way to resolve what was troubling him.
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More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/08/24/mike-flanagan-rip
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PCC| 8.25.11 @ 12:00AM
Nice post, Aaron. Mike Flanagan was a class act. R.I.P.
JohnD| 8.25.11 @ 4:21AM
As a lifelong fan of my hometown Orioles I must express my sadness at the passing of one of our great pitchers, and a gret man. Flanny was an Oriole when being one meant something. RIP, Flanny. Sad day in Birdland.
JohnD| 8.25.11 @ 7:44AM
Two quick Mike Flanagan stories:
(1) When Flanagan started pitching for the Orioles, then-manager Earl Weaver criticized Flanny's delivery with regard to holding runners. One day in spring training in 1975 or so, Flanny was pitching from the mound on one of the practice diamonds when Weaver came along and stood on first base and took a lead. Flanny delivered the next pitch and Weaver took off running and slid into second. He turned to Flanny on the mound and said "See, I just stole 2nd off you!"
Flanny replied, "how did YOU get on base?"
(2) On a long flight back from a West Coast roadtrip in the 1980s (after Weaver had retired from managing the O's) one of the Oriole players was complaining about the quality of the in-flight meal being served. He asked, "where's the shrimp?'
Flanny replied, "down in Florida playing golf."
JP| 8.25.11 @ 9:12AM
I always remembered the 83 World Series. Pete Rose vs Earl Weaver. Its hard to believe Flannigan would have been 60. He was one of those non-flashy journeymen pitchers, who usually got the job done. RIP
Ken in People's Republic of MD| 8.25.11 @ 8:13AM
Palmer told the first story on MASN's post game last night, and I've heard variations of the second one many times. They both point to Flanny's playful attitude, his devil-may-care way. He wasn't afraid to give out a quip and he could laugh at himself. In the era before Chris Berman's nicknames, Flanagan came up with "Clams" for Minnesota 3B John Castino. His most enduring memory was his complete game win in the cold and the snow in Game 1 on the 1979 Series, beating the Pirates, 5-4. When asked why Weaver left him in the game, Flanny quipped, "Earl was too scared to get off the bench!" Weaver was a favorite whipping boy for all the Orioles back then, and Earl didn't mind, knowing that it built the chemistry so important. Of course, Earl also had great faith in his players, and Flanagan was no exception. During Mike's first full year, when he was plodding along with a 2-8 record, Weaver gave an interview in which he said, "Don't worry, this kid will win." Flanagan did, going 13-2 the rest of the way.
Less well known about Mike Flanagan was involved in the first natural test tube birth in the U.S. Mike's his first wife, Kathy, was unable to have children and the went to see the pioneers in in-vitro fertilization, Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Jones. The process worked, and Mime and Kathy had their first child. Mike had such a sense of humor that for years after, he would often joke about it. That was in 1981-82. Mike did a promotion poster for the process, with him, his wife, and their child. He always found a way to succeed.
JohnD| 8.25.11 @ 11:31AM
"The Orioles have not enjoyed a winning season since 1997 and Flanagan had been part of the team's management for seven of those seasons."
If this is true, it is an indictment of Major League Baseball. Flanagan (and now McPhail) have been tasked with competing with two behemoth markets (Boston, NY) without a salary cap (like every other pro sport). Both teams have payrolls at least triple (yes, triple) that of the Orioles. The O's have had offers rejected from free agents for more money, so we not only compete with these spendthrifts, we have to pay more then them to get talent (see Mark Texiera).
MLB is dead. Stone dead. Fans in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, KC, know they have no (as in none) chance of competing, and MLB has basically given these fans the finger.
Look around the league. No pennant races. Philly (again), Texas (again), the Yankees (again), Boston (again), Detroit (again) are running away and hiding from the rest of the league. Even the fans of these teams are even getting bored (expect empty seats in the postseason like in Atlanta when the went to the playoffs for the 10th year in a row). Yawn.
In 1901 Ban Johnson's newly created American league was competing for fans and players with the National league. The American League owners had a plan - they'd steal players from every National League team except Pittsburgh. By August 1, the Pirates were 25 games on top of the League, while the American league featured a pennant race between several teams that went down to the wire. The result: packed houses at American League games, empty seats at national league games.
Now MLB has done to itself what Ban Johnson tried to do to them in 1901.
MLB needs a salary cap or its days are numbered. I love baseball, but I have been to no games this season, only one last season, whereas in prior years I have attended upwards of 30 games a season.
ejp| 8.26.11 @ 12:53AM
Give me a frigging break. First off, it's disgraceful that you would exploit Flanagan's death for this purpose but as long as you have chosen to do so, may I kindly give you a reality check of the kind that fans like you try to ignore with your incessant whining about the "unfairness" of things in MLB? Try looking at the number of DIFFERENT championship winners in the last decade. EIGHT different teams have won the last ten World Series. And in that time we saw "small-market" teams like Florida win, we saw Detroit go from 119 losses to a pennant in three seasons, and we saw first time champions or long-time drought teams like Boston, Anaheim, Chicago White Sox, San Francisco, Philadelphia, St. Louis come through. Yet evidently there is some inability to grasp this point among the eternal apologists for such incompetently run organizations like Baltimore (and I mean Peter Angelos, not Mike Flanagan), Kansas City and Pittsburgh who already get millions of dollars of luxury tax money off the backs of the paying fans of other teams and who then in the supreme act of corporate welfare use that money not to improve their teams but to paper over their financial mismanagement and give dividends to their investors instead. It's "fans" like you with your eternal whining who bear more of the blame for why baseball gets it's reputation trashed nationally while free passes are given to other leagues where competition has always been a perpetual joke even WITH a salary cap (try looking at the NBA some time and tell me that no more than three teams ever have a chance of winning there!)
ejp| 8.26.11 @ 12:58AM
I stand corrected. It's NINE different teams that have won the last TEN World Series. The only people who would call that symptomatic of a problem in competition are people who aren't willing to look in the mirror and get at the real source of the problem, and in the case of Baltimore, your problem is a disgraceful joke of an owner named Peter Angelos. Ever occur to you that maybe the big name free agents just don't want to play for him? And you know something else? And maybe instead of whining about your not getting any big name free agents, you try to develop some quality young talent instead? Oh, right I forgot, Baltimore has the dubious distinction of not having developed a bona-fide star player since Cal Ripken out of their own organization. This from the team that in the 70s used to pride themselves on the quality of their farm system.
Ricco| 8.25.11 @ 12:43PM
Gee wiz. A man is dead, a wife is without a husband, children are without a father and all you can yap about is how MLB needs a salary cap because you don't like the state of the pennant races?
Please think before you write next time.
JohnD| 8.25.11 @ 12:49PM
I stand by my post. I take it you are a Yankee or Red Sox fan. MLB is seriously broken and losing a generation of fans by excluding the small market fan and teams. Maybe now MLB will fix itself.
Ricco| 8.25.11 @ 1:40PM
"I stand by my post."
Res ipsa loquitur
Occam's Tool| 8.25.11 @ 2:44PM
Superb player. Very sad.
JohnD| 8.25.11 @ 9:55PM
This story was heartbreaking enough before the suicide angle. As a kid, I lived and died with those Oriole teams and loved every player. Flanny had been very visible around Oriole baseball as a coach, GM, and announcer. We can never really know why he did this, but I almost feel like I lost a family member. On top of 14 straight losing seasons, this incident has made it even tougher on Oriole fans. Thank God for the Ravens.
Bob Grant| 8.25.11 @ 11:47PM
Sad loss. God bless his soul...
Flanagan, Palmer, Martinez, Stone, McGregor. What a great pitching staff!
Free agency today would prevent a pitching staff this deep from being assembled on one team. Even the Yankees couldn't afford this group.