Former pitcher and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre died Sunday.

A five-time All-Star and three-time 20-game winner for the Yankees and later the tutor for Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens among others, Stottlemyre was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma, for which there is no cure, in the spring of 1999, his third season as Torre’s pitching coach. He underwent an experimental treatment for the disease that included a stem-cell transplant, four months of chemotherapy, and as many as 24 pills a day, after which doctors told him there was still no way of knowing if or when the disease would come back.

Long after he retired from baseball, he nevertheless continued to fight the dreaded disease, out-living the doctors’ most optimistic prognostications. On Oldtimers Day, June 20, 2015, after getting his doctors’ permissions, he made the cross-country trip to Yankee Stadium where the Yankees bestowed a surprise honor on him – a plaque in Monument Park. In an emotional, heart-rending speech reminiscent of the doomed Lou Gehrig’s address to a pack-house Stadium crowd some 77 years earlier, Stottlemyre provided one of the great moments in the team’s storied tradition.

NY Daily News

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

When I started watching baseball in 1969, Stottlemyre was one of my favorites. That turned out to be the second best year of his career, and the third and final time he posted an rWAR over five. He pitched the first baseball game I attended, and my main memory of that event was Stottlemyre hitting a triple.