Wisdom from my Brother

A couple weeks ago, my brother Mark passed away quite suddenly, and very unexpectedly. Losing a loved one is always hard and my family has dealt with the shock with a lot of tears but also many smiles as we remember so many things about our lives together. Mark was a very hard working guy yet he loved his work. His life was baseball and he spent 50 years coaching and helping players develop into top notch contributors to their teams. The last 26 years of his career were devoted to a team he loved from the time he was 8 years old, the New York Yankees. His dedication to the Yankees could be witnessed through the hours he spent and the miles he traveled to find the best prospects possible to play in the Yankees system. Hall-of-Fame inductees Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera were two of the hundreds of ball players Mark helped bring into the Yankee organization.

Mark knew that just bringing a young player to the team did not mean that player would achieve success. Each new prospect would need time to develop their talents and skills. It would take years of hard work and dedication to reach the pinnacle of achievement in the highly competitive world of Major League Baseball. A constant refrain many heard from Mark was “doing your best is not enough! Too often when someone says ‘I’m doing the best I can’ what they’re really saying is I can’t do any better and as soon as you say that and believe it, you’re done. Our mission is to continuously improve; get better every day.” That philosophy helped the Yankees win 4 World Series Championships during a 5 year period, 1996 to 2000. They won one more during his tenure as Senior VP of Baseball Operations, 2009. During his 26 years with the Yankees, the team made the post season playoffs 18 times and had 7 trips to the World Series.

I was able to spend many hours talking with Mark about leadership. It was a passion we both shared. We read many of the same books and applied many of the same principles in our leadership careers. He lived his philosophy of always striving to get better. He would not rest, even after he retired from the Yankees in 2014. In retirement he created the Florida Baseball Institute. Players and coaches from around Florida, and beyond, came to his facility to learn from one of the best. His legacy will live on through the hundreds of players, coaches, managers and baseball executives that learned their craft, in part, from him. I will miss him dearly but so will countless others who grew to love him for the indelible impact he had on all our lives!