Former Yankees general manager Gene Michael, who died Thursday at age 79, is being remembered—correctly—as the man most responsible for building the team's late-1990s dynasty through a series of shrewd drafts and trades. In the span of just a few years, he traded for David Cone and Paul O'Neill, signed Wade Boggs and Jimmy Key and, most significantly, drafted Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter and signed a teenaged Mariano Rivera out of Panama.
Even importantly, Michael resisted the pressure to get rid of those players for established major leaguers while they were still developing.