Joe McDonald, the longtime baseball executive and scout who helped build the 1969 New York Mets and later served as general manager of the Mets, St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers, has died. He was 97.
McDonald’s son, Jody, a radio host in Philadelphia, confirmed his father’s passing during his show Saturday on WIP-FM.
McDonald spent more than six decades in professional baseball, moving between front offices, scouting departments and ballparks with enthusiasm. When he retired from scouting at age 90 in 2019, he had spent nearly 80 years around the game, beginning as a teenager working at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.
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Born in Staten Island in 1929, McDonald attended Fordham University and began his Mets career as a statistician in 1962, during the expansion franchise’s first season. He moved through the organization, becoming its minor league administrative secretary, director of scouting, director of minor league operations and director of player development.
In October 1974, he was named the Mets’ general manager. His tenure as a general manager in New York coincided with a difficult period for the franchise. McDonald remained with the organization through its 1980 sale, when Frank Cashen replaced him as general manager.
McDonald subsequently joined Whitey Herzog in St. Louis, first as an executive assistant and assistant general manager and then, beginning in 1982, as the Cardinals’ general manager. That season ended with St. Louis winning the National League pennant and World Series.
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McDonald later became a senior executive with the Tigers and served as their GM in 1991-92. But scouting remained his calling. He worked for the Angels and Rockies before joining the Red Sox as a professional scout in 2004.
In 2012, the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation honored him with its Legends of Scouting Award.
“He would always check in with me to see how some of his players like Lee Mazzilli, Dough Flynn Craig Swan and Joe Torre were doing,” former Mets public relations director Jay Horwitz wrote.
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