Ned Yost

Lore & Background

Yost was born on California's North Coast in Eureka. He attended and played baseball at Dublin High School in Dublin, California. He had significant difficulty hitting prior to his junior and senior years, yet improved after building physical strength by working as a pot-scrubber at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. After high school, Yost attended Chabot Junior College in Hayward, California, where he walked on to Chabot's baseball team after receiving no offers to play for other schools. He was selected twice in the 1974 MLB draft, first by the Montreal Expos in the second round (33rd overall) in January, but he signed his first professional contract with the New York Mets which picked him in the first round (7th overall) of the June secondary phase. He went to the Brewers in the Rule 5 draft on December 5, 1977. Yost, as a player, was used primarily as a backup catcher for the Brewers from 1980 to 1983 (which included the 1982 World Series), and then spent a year with the Texas Rangers (1984; he played a career-high 80 games with the Rangers, hitting .182) and played 5 games for the Montreal Expos (1985) before retiring. He never had more than 242 at bats in a season. He ended his career with a .212 batting average, and .237 on-base percentage, in 605 at bats. He had a .982 fielding percentage (the league average was .987). Yost briefly had a second career as a taxidermist in Jackson, Mississippi, in between his playing days and coaching days. After a brief stint managing in the minors, Yost joined the Atlanta Braves organization. He was the Braves' bullpen coach from 1991 to 1998 and earned a ring as a part of the 1995 World Series championship team that defeated the Cleveland Indians in six games. He also was part of the 1991, 1992, 1996, and 1999 National League pennant-winning teams that lost the World Series to the Minnesota Twins (1991), the Toronto Blue Jays (1992), and the New York Yankees (1996, 1999) respectively. In 1999 Yost became the Braves' third base coach, a position he maintained until the end of the 2002 season. On February 11, 2025, the Kansas City Royals hired Yost to serve as a senior advisor to general manager J. J. Picollo. On October 29, 2002, Yost was named the Brewers manager, succeeding Jerry Royster. National League manager Tony La Russa named Yost to be part of his coaching staff for the 2005 MLB All-Star Game.

Reader's Guide

Yost was born in Eureka, California, not Eureka, Kansas. He managed the Milwaukee Brewers from 2002 to 2008 and the Kansas City Royals from 2010 to 2019, leading the Royals to a World Series championship in 2015. He is known for his unconventional managerial style and rejection of sabermetrics.

Did You Know?

• Yost fell 20 feet from a tree stand in 2017 and credited his cell phone with saving his life.
• He wore No. 3 as a manager to honor NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt.