I am sure you have heard the ages old adage, "If you can't play, coach." I have been hearing that from the time I followed the sport in the late 1950s.
Can it be true? I mean, you can look at teams all across the fruited plain who are replete with hitting coaches who barely batted above the Mendoza line .
I always wondered how Charlie Lau (may he rest in peace) ever got his first gig as a hitting instructor in the big leagues. He authored the book "How to Hit .300" which was highly successful.
I have an important question at this point. How do you write a book about something which you know nothing about? I am not knocking Lau here. He proved to be an excellent hitting coach throughout his career. I mean look at George Brett, Frank Thomas, Pudge Fisk, Hal McRae and even Mark McGwire. A pretty impressive portfolio, wouldn't you say?
Back to my question, as I have begun to digress. How can you tell someone how to hit .300 when you have never done it? How, when history shows that you are a career .255 hitter? That would be like a runner telling you how to run a sub-four minute mile when he hasn't broken five minutes yet.
Not picking on Lau, let's turn our attention to another great coach, Wally Hriniak . In a two-year MLB career with the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres, he only came to the plate 111 times. Like Lau, his average was an unimpressive .253 with not a single home run.
After Johnny Pesky retired as the Boston Red Sox hitting coach in 1984 Hriniak took over that slot on the payroll. He was undermined by Hall of Fame great Ted Williams about his teaching style. Teddy Ballgame thought Hriniak's method robbed the students of their ability to hit the long ball.
Hriniak moved to the Chicago White Sox in 1989 after the death of Charlie Lau. A short list of his students include Wade Boggs and Dewey Evans.
That is enough for hitters, let's move out to the mound.
One of the most revered pitching coaches of the last decade or so is St. Louis Cardinals coach Dave Duncan . Does it surprise you that Dave is a former catcher? Never threw a real MLB pitch in his life that I am privy to. Would that be the equivalent of a slugger trying to teach a young boxer how not to get hit?
That's not as much as a stretch as you might initially think. I mean, after all he (the catcher) does call the game that the pitcher throws. He probably knows which batter likes them high and which ones would put a low slider into the parking lot.
Duncan wasn't much at the plate either. He batted .214 but did have home run power. Some of his more prominent protege's are Dennis Eckersley, Dave Stewart, Bob Welch, and more recently Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainright.
It is interesting to note that all three men I have mentioned were catchers.
Let us now look at another great coach Leo Mazzone . He never threw a MLB pitch, however he did his time in the minor leagues. After his playing days he began working with minor league pitchers for several different squads. Eventually he got a call from the Atlanta Braves and the rest was magic.
Among the pitching performances he was in charge of were six Cy Young Awards, nine twenty-game winners and four ERA titles. That isn't bad for 14 seasons. Of course if you see what he had to work with it makes you wonder. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Steve Avery, Denny Neagle, Kevin Millwood and Mike Hampton. I think Rusty Kuntz could have done quite well with that bunch.
Although it isn't true that just because a player can't play he can coach. it does prove that many great coaches were less than significant (politically correct) players.
SOURCES:
Baseball-Reference.com
The Wikipedia
Cliff Eastham is a B/R Featured Columnist for the Cincinnati Reds
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
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