Healing A Mound

Monahan has been credited
with the Yankees success
as much as any player has.

When the 2012 Major League Baseball season begins there will be a different feel in the New York Yankee clubhouse. Long time New York head athletic trainer Gene Monahan is set to retire when the 2011 season comes to close. This is Monahan's forty-ninth-year in the Yankees organization and it has been an incredible ride.

    Monahan first joined the Yankees as a bat boy and clubhouse attendant in 1962. Now at age 66, Monahan can reflect on the wondrous things he has seen over almost five decades in the Bronx. Even though Monahan missed out on watching Roger Maris chase Babe Ruth's mythic single-season home run record in 1961, arriving a year too late,  he was greeted with a World Series champion in '62.  Monahan claimed the longest tenured Yankee spot in the organization with the passing of legendary public address announcer Bob Sheppard last July, who had been with the team since 1951.

    During his time in New York, Monahan has seen New York hoist the World Series trophy eight times, while capturing fourteen American League Pennants. The Yankees have made twenty postseason appearances in the trainer's forty-nine years in the dugout, including sixteen American League Eastern Division titles.

    Monahan has seen some of the greatest Yankees in history pass through the hollowed halls of Yankee Stadium over the years they include: Mantle, Maris, Berra, Munson, Jackson, Martin, Winfield, Mattingly, and most recently Rivera and Jeter. He became part of the training staff in 1973, also becoming one of only three members to survive the George Steinbrenner era in it's entirety.

Donohue, left and

Monahan embrace

after receiving their

'09 rings.

    Monahan was diagnosed with throat cancer following the Yankees 2009 World Series run causing him to miss his first spring training since he was hired on and undergoing treatment most of the '10 season. Monahan finally returned to the team in the middle of the season and continued his duty like nothing has happened. Following the season Monahan and assistant trainer Steve Donohue were named the best training staff in Major League Baseball by the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainer Society.

    Donohue looks to be the air apparent for the head training job when Monahan retires at seasons end. With the deaths of Steinbrenner and Sheppard last summer, the announcement of Monahans retirement, and the inevitable decline of Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter we are beginning to watch the end of an era in Yankee history.