Mike Gore's "40-for-40": Mike Shildt

It looks like I'll need to find a new favorite major league baseball team.

For the past two years, I have been a big fan of the San Diego Padres and that's been for one reason and one reason only. Our own Mike Shildt managed the Padres the past two years, leading San Diego to back-to-back 90 plus win seasons and two playoff berths. Last season, they nearly knocked off the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers before falling 3-2 in the best-of-five series.

Mike is a 1993 graduate of UNC Asheville and played for the Bulldogs in 1987, 1989 and 1990. He began his coaching career right at Greenwood Field where he was an assistant for the 1992 and 1993 seasons.

A few weeks ago, Mike texted me that he was going to retire. He was nice enough to let me know before he announced it publicly.

Mike said he was burned out and needed to take some time out for himself. I can believe it because nobody works harder and asks more of himself than Mike Shildt.

Mike and I started at UNC Asheville at the same time in the fall of 1986. I was a young Sports Information Director hired at the age of 23, while Mike was a freshman on a Bulldog baseball team that didn't have a home field.

We got to know each other while he was a player and even better when he served as an assistant coach and in my brief coaching career as head softball coach at UNC Asheville (that's a whole other 40-for-40).

Talking to Mike, I learned a few things and tried to transform that to the Bulldog softball team.

I also watched what an amazing, diligent worker he was. Mike certainly wasn't getting rich coaching at Asheville but that didn't stop him from working hard. I would often see him in the gym late at night, working with hitters on their swings.

After Mike graduated in the summer of 1993, he returned to Charlotte but then we called him the next fall to be our Interim Head Baseball Coach while we searched for a new head baseball coach. He was just a few years older than our players but he quickly commanded their respect. Mike's practices were organized and disciplined.

We hired a good coach in Bill Hillier from Duke and Mike went back to Charlotte and began coaching in high school at West Charlotte. His teams were exceptionally good and that got him back into college coaching at UNC Charlotte where the 49ers enjoyed incredible success.

A few years later the St. Louis Cardinals made Mike a scout and then put him into minor league managing. First in Rookie Ball in Johnson City, Tenn. He kept being promoted until being put on the major league staff as a Quality Control Coach with then Cardinals manager Mike Metheny in 2017.

And in the middle of the 2018 season with the Cardinals struggling, St. Louis turned to Mike Shildt to be their manager. He did a fantastic job with St. Louis in the second half of the season as the Cardinals nearly made the playoffs.

Mike told me when he got the job and after that first season that sometimes he just had to pinch himself to realize where he was. He had come along way from working late nights at Justice Center with Bulldog hitters.

And Mike has done nothing but win ever since he became a major league manager. The former Bulldog utility player first managed the St. Louis Cardinals from midway through the 2018 season through the 2021 campaign. He led the Cards to three straight playoff berths including a trip to the National League Championship Series in 2019. Mike was named National League Manager of the Year for his efforts in 2019.

But for some bizarre reason Mike was let go by the Cardinals after the 2021 season, a year that had the Cardinals win a franchise-record 17 straight games.

Mike was soon hired by the Padres in an administrative position and he worked for the club in various roles for two seasons. When San Diego decided to make a managerial change after the 2023 campaign, Mike was hired as the Padres skipper.

In two seasons, he has guided San Diego to back-to-back 90-win seasons, the first in franchise history. They are in the same division with the free-spending Los Angeles Dodgers and the Padres have come close to winning the division each year despite the Dodgers' deep pockets. Many in baseball believe the Dodgers-Padres rivalry is now the best one in baseball.

I got to know Mike first as a player, then as an assistant coach and then as a good friend. And the great thing about Mike Shildt is he is the same exact person he was when starting his coaching career more than 30 years ago at Asheville. I had the pleasure of interviewing him last spring before his first season in San Diego. He told me about what he expected from this year's Padres team. It was amazing. Mike was talking to me about Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis but he could have just as easily been talking about Bulldog players he coached like Kenny Hall, Chad Ballard, or Keith DiYeso.

Mike has been going hard for 34 years in baseball from his days helping build Greenwood Field to managing at the highest level in the "show."

Another great thing about Mike is he has never forgotten UNC Asheville. He is always checking in on the Bulldogs and rooting for all our teams to be successful. I remember how happy he was in 2016 when talking to him about both Bulldog basketball teams capturing Big South titles in the same year.

We put him in the Hall of Fame in 2019 and the toughest task for us was convincing him to accept the honor. He talked about other players that had way better careers than he had at Asheville who deserved to be in before him. We tried to tell him that it might be true but he was the one who was now UNC Asheville's most famous graduate and managing one of major league baseball's most prestigious teams in the Cardinals. He still wasn't sure he should accept. Finally, we told him that by him saying yes it might make it easier for some of his teammates to get in the future. He accepted and even though he couldn't be there as that year's Hall of Fame ceremony was in the fall, and the Cardinals were in the middle of a push to win the National League Central Division (which they would win), Mike made a beautiful acceptance speech from the dugout of the Cardinals Busch Stadium.

There are a lot of great success stories coming from UNC Asheville athletics in the Division I era and I plan to tell a few more in these 40-fo-40 stories over the next few months. But it will be hard to top the amazing story of Mike Shildt.

Mike Shildt may no longer be a major league manager but he got to go out on his own terms, which doesn't happen very often. He still wants to be in the game and some lucky team will hire him and be better off with him in their organization.

University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics

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