Obituary: Gene ‘Stick’ Michael - The Yankees executive who helped build late-1990s dynasty teams

What Stick lacked in muscle, he compensated with grey matter.

Baseball enjoys an intimacy with the real world that’s shared by few other sports. It’s an intimacy based on the accessibility of the players and management which developed at the foundation of the Major Leagues and been nourished ever since on a seasonal cadence of six-month sweltering summers and long days at the ballpark.

That allows plenty of time to get to know the protagonists, plenty of time for real and interesting people to emerge from behind the standard remoteness of the sports star.