Inductees

The story goes that Ned Yost was enjoying “the quiet life” as a special adviser for the Kansas City Royals back in spring of 2010, traveling to minor league clubs and offering advice here and there. And then, set to check on the franchise’ Double-A Northwest Arkansas club for a series in Springfield, Mo., the call came in.

On the other end of the line was general manager Dayton Moore. The big-league club needed a manager.

“I had a sense of what it took to build a champion,” said Yost, part of six World Series clubs, either as a player or coach in the prior 30 years. “And I realized real quick that, with all the young talent on the way, they were going to put together a championship.”

Yost saw to it that the Royals did, and his body of work in a decade-long tenure – including guiding Kansas City to the 2015 World Series championship, its first in 30 years – is why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is proud to induct Yost with the Class of 2020.

Simply put, Yost is the winningest manager in Royals history, with 746 wins over 10 seasons (2010 to 2019).

The 2015 World Series title actually marked the first of the Royals’ back-to-back American League pennant-winning seasons. The 2014 team was only two runs from winning it all in Game 7, and had the tying run only 90 feet away. That October, the Royals set a big-league record by winning their first eight postseason games – beginning with the signature Wild Card rally against the Oakland Athletics.

The breathtaking sea of blue that gathered near Union Station for the 2015 World Series celebration? Yost is still in awe.

“In 2014, we had a nice rally with 8,000 people showing up at the stadium. The next year, 850,000 turned out,” Yost said. “That’s when you knew you were on top. It was huge.”

So much defined Yost’s Royals:

• Eric Hosmer racing home from third base to score the tying run in their Game 5 World Series clincher in 2015
• Salvador Perez’s foul-line hugging hit to win the 2014 Wild Card game
• Speedsters Jerrod Dyson and Terrance Gore both scoring from second base – and helping win a regular-season game – to fuel the Royals’ late-season push of 2014
• The 2013 team finishing 86-76 – only the second winning season since 1993 – and was in Wild Card contention in the final week.

To Yost, so many others made it all possible: owner David Glass bankrolling a ratcheted-up effort in scouting and player development and Moore’s early draft picks, international signings and trades, and the patience of both the owner and GM allowing Yost the time to develop players.

“They were huge,” Yost said, also noting his big-league staffs. “When you sit back and look at what we accomplished in Kansas City, I didn’t win a championship. Dayton put people in the right place. Mr. Glass supported us. In 2011 and 2012, when people didn’t believe, Dayton and Mr. Glass had the opportunity to pull the plug and didn’t.”

Still, credit Yost’s steady leadership. Mainly, he didn’t burden each player with unrealistic expectations.

His leadership skills had been formed over the prior 30 years. Drafted by the New York Mets in 1974 out of Chabot College in Hayward, Calif., he played six seasons in the big leagues as a back-up catcher, including four for the Brewers, including on their 1982 American League pennant winner.

In the late 1980s, he served as a player-coach on the Braves’ farm and then managed their Class A South Atlantic League club for three seasons, all before spending a dozen years on Bobby Cox’s big-league staff in Atlanta. Before Kansas City, he also managed six seasons in Milwaukee and retired in 2019 with a 1,203-1,341 record.

He counts his main influences as Ted Simmons, Cox and Dale Earnhardt. Simmons mentored him in Milwaukee, and Yost took daily mental notes of Cox’s managerial skills. He and Earnhardt became friends along the way.

“(Earnhardt) was a guy who, in baseball terms, if he was down 8-0 in the eighth inning, he was coming at you with everything he had,” Yost said. “That’s why he was the champion he was.”

For Yost, family support made him a champion, too. He and his wife, Deborah, are parents to Ned IV, Joshua, Jenny and Andrew.

“It’s a hard job. My wife had to raise four kids on her own,” Yost said. “And I wouldn’t have done this without them.”