Stump'd!

Stump Merrill is a baseball lifer.

He has been in the Yankees organization ever since I was born, coaching at various levels of the minors leagues, and even serving as the Yankees manager in 1990 and 1991.

Times were different too. I couldn’t imagine a member of the current Yankees staff getting plucked mid-season to manage one of their minor league teams, but that’s exactly what happened to Stump in 1985 when he was the Yankees first base coach, but pulled down to Columbus to manage mid-season. It seems that nowadays, teams have a lot more staffing options versus pulling from the Big League club.

Merrill was kind enough to sign this card for me in about 10 days time in care of Yankees spring training. While he used pen, it does show up a lot nicer than other cards I have signed in pen. This particular card is from 1990 Topps Traded. Back then, Topps actually updated the card in the base set with the card in traded. In this instance, this card “replaces” Bucky Dent’s base set card. I’ve always found that to be an interesting concept.

Thanks to Mr. Stump Merrill for the autograph!