Arbuckle’s Winning Ways Trace To Trenton Roots

By Seth Herrold
R-T Sports Editor
Where Mike Arbuckle goes, winning follows. The 2014 Kansas City Royals run to the World Series was the latest of payoffs for a man who has helped build winners in baseball from the ground up.
Arbuckle is no stranger to winning. He did so in Philadelphia before he came to Kansas City and in Atlanta before that. So where did Arbuckle’s winning ways develop? Looking back to the Trenton American Legion teams of his youth is a good start.
Trenton’s baseball history is a rich one despite the fact that the high school in town has never fielded a baseball team. In Arbuckle’s younger days, Trenton was a hotbed of baseball talent. Players developed through the Trenton Ball Association and then went on to play at the American Legion level.
“There was a time when baseball was a big deal here,” Arbuckle said of Trenton’s past. “The American Legion state tournament was held right here in Trenton numerous times. It was kind of automatic that we were winning districts every year.”
In what can be looked back on as a ‘Golden Age’ of baseball in Trenton, the talent on the field was tremendous. Trenton’s American Legion teams were some of the most successful in the state. Individuals like Bob Johnson and Arbuckle were talented enough they ended up drafted by Major League Baseball teams. Johnson was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers and played several years in their minor league system. Arbuckle was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals, but never signed due to shoulder issues that arose.
“Bob signed in ’65 and that was my first year of playing American Legion baseball,” Arbuckle recalls. “He signed in June and I had to move into his spot. We played together for one month there.”
Two individuals good enough to be drafted by Major League Baseball teams playing on the same team – in Trenton. That was baseball in Trenton. Talented players and great teams. And they had to be great. The competition was tough across the board. American Legion baseball in Missouri was enjoying a ‘Golden Age’ as a whole.
“I remember one year we played Independence and they had nine guys drafted off that one team,” Arbuckle said. “The Joplin team we lost to in the championship game in 1968 had a catcher named Steve Patchin. He played at Missouri and then was drafted and made it to AAA. Steve Rodgers played here, too. He was a pitcher who was a big time winner for the Montreal Expos; an all-star. He pitched here for one of the Springfield teams. You can go back and there were a lot of really good players that played here through that stretch.”
Trenton’s baseball success wasn’t just something that started with Arbuckle, however. The Legion team had built a winning tradition even prior to Arbuckle’s arrival.
“Even preceding me, going back to when I was little league age, Trenton was winning district championships,” Arbuckle said. “The Michaels boys, Dave and Dick, both played on a national championship team at William Jewell in 1968. They were from over around Gilman City and they had both played Legion ball during that stretch. So, even going back before my time, Trenton had a lot of baseball success. By the time I got to Legion ball there was already a history there of winning.”
Without a high school baseball team, Trenton’s success on the diamond was built through various summer league programs. Little league teams and pony league teams were a big part of children’s lives through the summer.
“For me it all goes back to the coaches,” Jerry Lafferty, a Trenton alum and part-time scout for the Kansas City Royals, said. “In Mike’s and my era, a great deal of the credit goes to Bill Simmons. His time in Trenton and how he ran the summer baseball program were very instrumental in teaching fundamentals of all aspects of the game for me. It was a very unique approach, but now in reflection, I think it would be great for today’s kids. Bottom line is he taught the game. He made players responsible for all aspects and how to compete. Best of all, though, there were no parents involved.”
The leagues were a far cry from today’s TBA in Arbuckle’s and Lafferty’s day. Rather than parents volunteering to spend a little time with the teams in the evening, it was a full-on program. Individuals were responsible for coaching – really coaching – the kids on the teams. That was a role Arbuckle spent some time in during his high school and college years.
“Back then the little league was strong and then kids continued to play pony league,” Arbuckle said. “There were always six or eight pony league teams in town. That was played during the day. Coaches in the school system and others coached the teams in the summer. I worked through high school and my first three years of college and part of my job was not only getting the fields ready for games, but we coached teams all day. We would have practices for each team and Rich Griffith and I did that. You always had people with athletic backgrounds and playing knowledge coaching and developing kids at a young age.”
It was during this time that Burleigh Grimes was a fixture at baseball games in Trenton. Grimes, a Hall of Fame inductee in 1964, had bought a farm near Hickory and settled in the area. The presence of a Hall of Fame pitcher in the area only furthered the baseball mystique that shrouded the community during that era.
When Arbuckle left, Trenton’s Legion teams continued to have success under Lafferty.
“After we finished playing, Jerry continued with the Blue Jay program and they had very competitive teams for a number of years,” Arbuckle said.
Eventually Lafferty and Arbuckle both moved on to Major League careers. While times changed in Trenton and baseball slowly declined in the city, Arbuckle continued winning.
Arbuckle got his start in Major League Baseball as a part-time scout for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1976. He quickly moved up the ranks and joined the Atlanta Braves in 1980 as an area scout. When Arbuckle joined the Braves in 1980, the team was coming off an 81-80 season that saw them finish fourth in the National League West. By the time Arbuckle left Atlanta, he was a regional scouting supervisor and national cross-check scout. The Braves? They went to the World Series in each of Arbuckle’s final two seasons in Atlanta, falling to Minnesota in 1991 and Toronto in 1992.
Having helped the Braves turn into a perennial contender, Arbuckle went back to Philadelphia, where he joined the Phillies as their director of scouting. Philadelphia went to the World Series in 1993, Arbuckle’s first year, but the team was made up of veterans. The minor league system was bleak and Arbuckle was eyeballing a large rebuilding project after the Phillies fell to Toronto in the 1993 World Series.
“I went to the Phillies before the ’93 season,” Arbuckle said. “We were in the series that year, but it was with all of those veterans. We had Lenny Dykstra, we had (John) Kruk at first, we had “The Wild Thing” Mitch Williams as our closer, we had (Curt) Schilling. It was a veteran club. In ’93 it all came together and we were good that year. We were good in ’94 up until the work stoppage and then from 1995 on the real world hit. I was at spring training in 1993 and I looked out on those minor league fields and I thought, ‘oh crap.’ There wasn’t anything coming. So, the process I had gone through with the Braves we had to go through again with the Phillies. It took us until about 2005 or 2006 before we really were able to be competitive. It was an eight-to-10-year period where we were building our system.”
Arbuckle would be able to see that journey to fruition. He became the assistant general manager in 2001 and helped get the Phillies back to the World Series in 2008. This time, Arbuckle got his ring. Philadelphia beat Tampa Bay in five games and Arbuckle was a world champion.
After helping to turn a second club into a winner, Arbuckle was on the move again, this time coming home. Arbuckle had called Liberty home for a while so a move to the Kansas City Royals organization was a homecoming. It also put him closer to Trenton, his true hometown.
With the Royals, Arbuckle is the senior advisor to the general manager. Like Atlanta and Philadelphia, there was work to be done in Kansas City. The Royals were in the midst of what would end up being a 28-year playoff drought. General Manager Dayton Moore had laid the groundwork, but Arbuckle helped put them over the top.
“When I got here they had already started,” Arbuckle said. “They had guys like Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Salvy Perez in the system, but there was no depth. You keep piecing it together and you draft guys and sign guys and develop guys and you get your core to get you there. It’s the same process that I have done three times now over the course of my career. It takes time and Dayton (Moore) got criticized big time for talking about ‘The Process,’ but that’s what it is, it’s a process. There is no way around it and it takes a minimum of seven to eight years to build it from the ground up.”
Last fall Kansas City broke through, not only making the playoffs, but making a memorable run to the World Series. Arbuckle had helped build another winner. Winning is something Arbuckle knows a lot about. He has experienced it in every city he has been in, including Trenton.
“After the Wild Card game it was like we just couldn’t do anything wrong,” Arbuckle said. “Everything fell in line the rest of the playoffs and I think had we won game four of the World Series we would have been World Champions.”
Comparing his multiple trips to the World Series, Arbuckle hesitates to rank any one particular trip ahead of another. They are all special to the man who helped make each one possible.
“Any time you make the World Series it’s special,” Arbuckle said. “And, like I’ve said, each time I have been a part of one it’s been the result of years of work getting there. Atlanta was special because it was my first one in ’91. I’d never been a part of a team that made it to the World Series. Of course ’08 was special because I had been the one in charge of scouting and development and putting those players together, where in Atlanta I was a scout in the field. I had contributed by cross-checking these guys, but I wasn’t the one who had actually drafted these guys. It was special here (in Kansas City) because I had known what a long, long dry spell these fans had endured. When I came here I was amazed at how much support there was for the Royals. They had been bad for so long when I got here but the fans always found the positives. The mindset was so different from what I had experienced in Philadelphia so I was so happy for the fans that we were able to make that run for them. They actually got a chance to experience what it was like to be winning and go to a World Series again. So, each World Series was special to me, but for different reasons.”
Through all his success, however, Arbuckle hasn’t lost sight of what’s important. He remains humble through the success he helps build, falling back on the core values he had instilled in him during his younger days in Trenton.
“I guess I’ve done this so many years it’s not a big deal,” Arbuckle said. “I tell people that I work at a business, that because it’s so public, it’s a big deal. But, in reality, we’re not doing brain surgery. To me the real people out there are the doctors, the nurses and the teachers. Those are the people that change society. I just work in a celebrity business, that’s all. It’s a big deal to a lot of people and because of the money involved it’s high pressure and high stress. If you’re a brain surgeon and screw up you kill somebody. If we screw up we just waste a bunch of money.”
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Lafferty Enjoys Title Run
Some time ago the Kansas City Royals passed on a local player by the name of Albert Pujols. Pujols had played baseball in Kansas City for a while, first with Fort Osage High School in Independence, then with Maple Woods Community College. But, despite local ties, the Royals passed on him in the 1999 draft – 13 times.
The St. Louis Cardinals finally selected Pujols in that 13th round and the rest is history for the nine-time all-star that won three MVP awards and two World Series.
The Royals needed someone to keep an aberration like that from ever happening again. Just so happens that person is Jerry Lafferty, a Trenton High School graduate.
When Mike Arbuckle first joined the Kansas City Royals, the team was looking for a part-time scout to cover the metropolitan area and make sure no true talents in the greater Kansas City area got away again. Arbuckle knew Lafferty was just the guy for the job and the hire was made.
“Technically my title is part-time scout,” Lafferty said. “My area of major responsibility is the greater KC metro area, both sides of the state line. I cover the colleges and high schools and in the summer I’m covering the Ban Johnson and MINK leagues and the summer programs. I report directly to our area supervisors for Kansas and Missouri. Occasionally I will get sent to a game further away at the University of Kansas, K-State, Mizzou or Nebraska as well.”
Lafferty, like Arbuckle, grew up in a time when baseball was king in Trenton. He had dreams of catching for the St. Louis Cardinals and winning a World Series. While his playing dreams never panned out, Lafferty did win his World Series with the Phillies in 2008 alongside Arbuckle. Lafferty scouted and helped draft Ryan Howard, a key component to that 2008 team.
With the Royals, Lafferty made it back to the World Series this past season.
“Both World Series runs were very exciting to me,” Lafferty said. “Nothing else comes close to the thrill of the battle, especially if some of your signings or recommendations help the team win.”