Former Orioles pitcher Mike Flanagan found dead

[PrinceEatMeat]

http://aberdeen.patch.com...d-dead-near-monkton-home

 

 

Very sad news. Thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family. RIP.

[WV Brew]

According to WBAL, it was suicide. Possibly due to guilt feelings over his part in the demise of the Orioles, which would be tragic. It's not worth your life. The Washington Post used to call his tenure as GM with the O's along with Jim Beattie as "Beat again". Makes you think twice about these throw away lines that may seem clever but are hurtful.

[joepepsi]

BeatAgain was actually a phrase coined by folks on an Orioles board I visit. The frustration level was so high-still is- that Flanagan's quotes were referred to as Flansturbations.

 

It's too bad because the guy was one of the most beloved Orioles ever. He was very funny as a commentator on broadcasts. Of course his tenure as part of the advised tag team GM concept was hardly his fault. Beattie was a bean counter that was supposed to work Flanny into his role as GM. In the end, they hands were always tied by Angelos. They made a big splash signing Tejada and extending Mora-rising to 78 wins in 2004 and looking like things were on the upswing. The next year Palmeiro tested positive for PEDs, Tejada was linked to steroids, the young players who looked promising regressed. Two years later it was all a mess again.

 

 

Flanagan was a funny guy, quick witted and made for lively broadcasts. Former Cy Young lefty, who had a solid career as a starter, then reinvented himself late in career as a quaility LOOGY for a year. A good team player, represented the organization is a positive light, not always easy with the Orioles. RIP. I hope the demons that haunted him give him peace.

[RockCoCougars]

Flanagan was one of the last in a great line of Orioles pitchers. Tough to imagine now, but the O's were probably baseball's best franchise overall during the periods of the mid 60's to the mid 80's.

 

This is a really sad story, but I have to think there is much more to it than the simple fact that he was despondent than his job performance as co-GM.

[pingman]

The Orioles were never quite the same after Harry Dalton left for the Brewers.....and George Bamberger had a little to do with it too

[gregmag]

Joe, that was a very nice tribute. Very well said. For those of us over a certain age, Mike Flanagan definitely brings to mind those great Oriole teams of the late Weaver era. RockCo is exactly right -- they were a class organization all the way, and he was a big part of that, sort of the unglamorous counterpart to Jim Palmer. Sad ending.

[RockCoCougars]

The more details that come out, the sadder this story is.

 

Regarding the Orioles, right you are, greg. The O's were kind of a hybrid of the 90's Braves and the modern day Cardinals. For about 20 years they built a rotation around a 2-3 homegrown guys (most notably Jim Palmer) and some castoffs who came up big for them. Bamberger and Ray Miller were kind of the Dave Duncans of their day. One year, I believe that they had 3 Cy Young winners in their rotation (Palmer, Flanagan, Steve Stone).... plus Dennis Martinez and Scott McGregor (no slouch either). They also had the year where they had 4 twenty game winners.

 

They definitely did it with pitching- heck one year I believe they won like 102 games with Kiko Garcia starting at SS. With Belanger before him, they never had a SS who could hit. Earl Weaver was pretty much the grandfather of a lot of the modern strategists- very anti 'small-ball', brought platooning into fashion, etc. One of his big platoons that I remember was Gary Roenicke and John Lowenstein. The year after Weaver left, they won a World Series with those two platooning and a platoon at third base (Wayne Gross/Todd Cruz) fashioned with castoffs from the A's and Mariners- in those days, a bad thing. Weaver came back in the mid 80's, but the pitchers had aged and things fell off fast. I remember going to a weekday matinee at County back in the mid-80's. Both teams pretty much stunk, but there was a loudmouthed O's fan decked out in jersey and all (back in the day where you rarely saw them on adults). I remember him screaming, 'then you've got Shelby out there picking his butt' after the Brewers scored a run. I never forgot that for whatever reason, and now I laugh every time they show John Shelby on TV.

[mothershipconnection]

My clearest memory of Flanagan is having his "Baseball Talk" card as a kid and the story he told about how he had a deal with Mizuno and they spelled his name "Franagan" on his glove.

 

http://wfmu.org/MACrec/images/SPTALK1.jpg