Who is Tom Giordano?
Well, if you have worked in baseball for the last 70 years you know who he is. T-Bone was a player. He hit his first major league home run off of Virgil Trucks and actually beat Hank Aaron in home runs during the 1953 minor league season.
His claim to fame however came as an executive for the Baltimore Orioles, under the great general manager Hank Peters then decided to get his hands dirty and became one of baseballs all-time great super scouts.
His baseball genius helped to discover some of the best baseball minds in the business today including Atlanta Braves President Jon Hart, who is probably one of the most respected general managers of all time. Hart’s innovative ways in Cleveland became the manuscript for how teams were run throughout baseball and through it all T-Bone was always there for him. Hart has always said that T-Bone’s baseball genius runs second to the love that he and his family and all people in general feel for him.
When Ted Williams museum head Dave McCarthy and Claudia Williams (Ted’s daughter) told me that T-Bone was being enshrined for his lifetime achievement it was one of the great moments of my life. What people don’t know about Tom Giordano is that he was the first executive to help players go to drug and alcohol counseling, during a period when it was very taboo and in turn led to the denial by lots of players with issues. Giordano would be my first mentor in the subject, which would later help me in my assistance to Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry when with the Yankees. When Gooden went to Cleveland, T-Bone insisted that I be allowed to help Gooden there.
At the age of 91, T-Bone is baseball’s senior full-time scout and still one of the best. Congratulations to Tom “T-Bone” Giordano, for your great achievements in a great game and congratulations to the Ted Williams Hall of Fame for acknowledging the greatness and true soul of a good man. I also congratulate Jon Hart: You never forgot where you came from which is why T-Bone wants you to make the presentation on February 18th at the Ted Williams Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg Florida.