RIP to Mike Brumley, a well-traveled infielder who became a successful hitting instructor who worked with some of the game’s current sluggers. On June 15, he was killed in a multi-vehicle car accident on I-20 near Edwards, MS. Brumley, who played for the Chicago Cubs (1987), Detroit Tigers (1989), Seattle Mariners (1990), Boston Red Sox (1991-92), Houston Astros (1993, 1995) and Oakland Athletics (1994), was 61 years old.
One of Brumley’s pupils was Austin Riley, Atlanta Braves third baseman. Immediately following Brumley’s death, Riley hit home runs in all of Atlanta’s three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays. “Throughout the whole at-bat, he was in the back of my mind the whole time, really all day,” Riley said after the game following Brumley’s death. “There are very few people that have been role models in my baseball career. My dad being No. 1 and Mike Brumley being No. 2. But this isn’t about me. I feel for his family, his kids and everybody that he was close to. It’s just a tragic day. Prayers go out to his family,” Riley added.
Anthony Michael Brumley was born in Oklahoma City on April 9, 1963. His father, Mike Brumley Sr., was a professional catcher who played for the Washington Senators from 1964-66 and who later became a minister in Tulsa. Mike Jr. went to Tulsa Union High School, and he was a wide receiver on the football team and an infielder on the baseball team. Being the son of a major-leaguer and an athlete in his own right didn’t afford Brumley much protection. As he explained in a Los Angeles Times article in 1989, he first went to Southeast High School in Oklahoma City, where there was considerable racial tension and violence. A friend of his was shot and killed when Brumley was in eighth grade, and he got into a share of fights. “I remember once I was caught after school with no protection and surrounded by this gang, but they let me go because I was a baseball player,” Brumley said. “A few minutes later, down the hall they grabbed a friend of mine and beat him so he needed about 170 stitches.”
Once he settled in at Tulsa Union for his senior year, Brumley demonstrated some solid baseball skills. He set several school records but was not heavily recruited. Brumley was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 16th Round of the 1980 June Amateur Draft but elected to attend the University of Texas in Austin. He said he chose Texas over closer universities “so that I could kind of cut the apron strings. I really liked Oral Roberts because Coach [Pat] Harrison is a great hitting instructor. But it was too close to home. I needed to get away.”
Brumley made a good choice, as it turned out. Texas went to the College World Series in 1981, and the elder Brumley got to watch his son play in Omaha. “It is the biggest thrill of my life to watch my son play baseball,” Mike Sr. said. “People ask me about the thrills of playing in the big leagues, but the biggest thrills have been provided by my children.”
In his first year at Texas, Brumley was an undersized, switch-hitting freshman who moved around the infield. But then he hit a growth spurt and was shifted to the outfield. He made the all-Southwest Conference team in 1982 and batted .346 while stealing 42 bases. Texas returned to the College World Series that year, and Brumley and his Longhorn teammate Spike Owen were named to the all-tournament team. The 1983 squad, which also included pitchers Mike Capel, Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi and Bruce Ruffin, won the College World Series. Brumley belted a grand slam against Michigan to put Texas into the finals against Alabama, and he scored the go-ahead run in the championship game. The Boston Red Sox picked Clemens in the First Round of the 1983 Amateur Draft and then took Brumley in the Second Round. He reported straight to Winter Haven in the Florida State League and hit well there, with a .314 batting average. He primarily played shortstop but moved to the outfield in 1984 for the New Britain Red Sox of the Double-A Eastern League. In 34 games, Brumley batted .231. Then on May 25, he was included in a trade that also sent Dennis Eckersley to the Chicago Cubs for first baseman Bill Buckner.
The Cubs moved Brumley back to the infield, and he had some decent seasons in the organization. He was an Eastern League All-Star with Pittsfield in 1985, when he hit .276 with 23 doubles. He upped his home run total to 10 in 1986 with Triple-A Iowa, but he batted .225. He improved his hitting with Iowa in 1987 and was brought to the majors by the Cubs, but the circumstances were less than ideal. The injury bug hit the Cubs particularly hard, and the team lost its starting second baseman Ryne Sandberg (ankle injury) and shortstop Shawon Dunston (broken finger) within weeks of each other. Suddenly, the team’s middle infield went from two All-Star caliber players to Brumley and Paul Noce, two prospects in their mid-20s with no major-league experience between them. Brumley made his debut on June 16 against Philadelphia, and I was at this game. He was 0-for-4 with a sacrifice fly, but the Cubs defense turned 4 double plays in the 7-2 win. He got his first major-league hit the following day, a single off Phillies pitcher Shane Rawley.
“I was just happy to see it go through and get that hit out of the way,” Brumley told reporters. “Now I can get started. I hope it’s the first of many.” Brumley added his first major-league home run, a 2-run shot off Ron Darling of the Mets, on June 23. The 12-year-old me was rooting hard for Noce and Brumley, because what a great story it would have been if they came along and played just as well as the stars they were replacing. It didn’t work that way, of course. Defensively, the rookies held their own, but the offense was a different situation. Brumley was returned to the minors in July with a sub-.200 batting average. He returned in September and got a few more hits to leave him with a slash line of .202/.278/.288 in 39 games. He had 2 doubles, 2 triples and the home run, and he stole 7 bases and scored 8 times.
After extended periods with the Red Sox and Cubs, Brumley became a baseball nomad, starting with a trade to the San Diego Padres on February 12, 1988, along with third baseman Keith Moreland for closer Goose Gossage and reliever Ray Hayward. He spent the entire season at Triple-A Las Vegas, where he batted .315 with 41 stolen bases. In March 1989, the Padres sent him to the Detroit Tigers for veteran infielder Luis Salazar. Aside from 9 games in the minors, the Tigers kept Brumley on the roster for the entire season, and his primary job was to back up injury-prone shortstop Alan Trammell. He made a few early appearances as a defensive replacement or pinch-runner, but he didn’t actually bat until Detroit’s 22nd game of the year, on April 30. Naturally, he singled in his first at-bat as part of a 5-run inning that led to a 7-2 win over Baltimore. “I was pretty excited about getting a chance to hit,” he said. Brumley appeared in a career-high 92 games, playing games at all three outfield positions and every infield spot except first base. He drove in 11 runs and scored 33 times, both of which are career bests, but he hit .198 and had an OPS of .506. Detroit traded him on January 20, 1990, for Larry Sheets, but he was released in spring training after hitting .143 in 4 games. It was by his own request, as Brumley knew there were not going to be many chances to play shortstop as long as Baltimore had a guy named Cal Ripken on the roster.
Right around the time Baltimore was cutting him loose, Seattle was losing starting shortstop Omar Vizquel to a sprained knee. The Mariners signed Brumley and started him at shortstop while Vizquel recovered. While he batted .224 in 62 games for Seattle, his defensive excellence was a huge asset. “Mike Brumley has been a great addition under very difficult conditions,” said general manager Woody Woodward. Brumley fielded at a .983 percentage at shortstop, above the league average, and at one point had a 35-game errorless streak. At the end of the season, Seattle released him, and he went back to his original team, the Boston Red Sox, as a free agent. He was sent to Triple-A Pawtucket and hit .271 there until Red Sox rookie shortstop Tim Naehring was placed on the disabled list. Brumley returned to the majors in late May and spent the rest of the year in Boston. He didn’t play often until he got hot in August, batting .343 for the month. He played regularly over the final two months of the season and ended up in 63 games with a .212/.273/.254 slash line. In 1992, he spent almost the entire season at Pawtucket and batted .263. His MLB time consisted of 2 games in May, and he was hitless in his only at-bat.
After some seasons as a well-used utility infielder, Brumley only picked up a handful of major-league games over the remaining years of his playing career. He signed with Houston for the 1993 season and played in 8 games with the team — 7 as a pinch-hitter and one as an outfielder. He had 3 hits in 10 at-bats, and one of the hits was a 2-run pinch-hit single that gave Houston a 3-1 win over Cincinnati on October 2.. Brumley was claimed off waivers by the California Angels after the season, released during the 1994 spring training and signed by Oakland. He started the season with the A’s and had 5 hits and 2 RBIs in his first 3 games. But he only got one more hit after that hot start and was released at the end of May with a .240 batting average in 11 games. He signed with the Florida Marlins and hit well for the team’s triple-A affiliate in Edmonton, but the players’ strike ended any chance of returning to the majors. “I saw it as a chance to come here and have a good season, then go up in September and set myself up for something in spring training,” Brumley said of signing with the Marlins. “That seems pretty much out the window now. It’s upsetting.”
Brumley re-signed with Houston in 1995 and joined the team in June. He was hitless in 9 at-bats and was sent back to Triple-A Tucson. He made his last trip to the majors in September and finished the year with 1 hit in 18 at-bats. That one hit was the third and final home run of his major-league career, and it came in the 11th inning of a September 28 game against the Chicago Cubs. Brumley connected for a solo homer off reliever Mike Walker, giving the Astros a 11-10 lead. Then the Cubs scored twice in the bottom of the 11th to win 12-11. The Cub who started that game-winning rally with a single was Shawon Dunston, whose broken finger in 1987 started Brumley’s major-league career in the first place. Brumley rejoined Tucson in 1996, but with no call-up to the majors on the horizon, he decided it was his final season. “For the last nine years, I’ve said the year I don’t go to the big leagues, I retire. This may be the year they call me on it,” he said. Brumley retired at the end of the season, at the age of 33.
Brumley played in the majors for parts of 8 seasons and appeared in 295 games. He had a .206/.261/.272 slash line, and his 131 hits included 17 doubles, 8 triples and 3 home runs. He scored 78 times, stole 20 bases and drove in 38 runs. The only two positions that Brumley never played in his major-league career were pitcher and catcher.
Brumley was hired as the manager of the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings of the independent Texas-Louisiana League in 1997. After a season, he became a manager in the Diamondbacks organization, and he also coached or managed for the White Sox, Angels, Rangers and Dodgers through 2008. He said he turned down opportunities to coach at the big-league level because it would have meant too much time away from his wife, Dana, and four children. Later on, Brumley spent 2010 through 2013 as the first base coach for the Seattle Mariners, and one of the perks of that job was that he was able to spend time with his son Logan, who was an infielder for the independent Everett Merchants. Everett was close enough to Seattle that Logan could work out with his father at Safeco Field when the teams were home. “It’s awesome to be around him and be at the ballpark,” Logan told the Kitsap Sun in 2010.
Brumley left Seattle to spend 2014 as the assistant hitting coach with the Chicago Cubs. He and hitting coach Bill Mueller were praised for their work with Cubs All-Stars Starlin Castro and Anthony Rizzo, but the Cubs re-assigned Brumley after the season, and Mueller resigned in protest. Brumley later served as a minor-league hitting coordinator for the Atlanta Braves, where he tutored Riley and other Braves’ prospects. He left the Braves organization in 2022 but still offered private lessons from his home in Dallas and continued to work with Riley right up to his death. “I can send him stuff through text message and video that he can walk me through, and I know exactly what he’s talking about,” Riley told The Athletic‘s Dave O’Brien.
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