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Larry Bird was asked by a reporter, before his first game coaching ... "Do you think it will be frustrating, coaching players who are less talented than you were?"  

To which Larry snapped, "All my life I played with guys less talented than me."  HEH!

And that was the key difference between Bird and Magic as NBA coaches:  Bird didn't expect other players to do what he did.  Not one time in Bird's coaching career did I ever hear him gripe about how one of his players failed to do something in the way that Bird would have done it.  

Magic did this on a nightly basis.  In particular, Magic's players bitterly resented his constant references to the 1980's Lakers.  "Okay," Magic told one TV host during his coaching career, "I won't bring that up to them.  But I told them, one thing you got to understand, the 80's Lakers All. Ways. made the playoffs."  The audience laughed and cheered.  But imagine Bird doing that.

For those who just joined us, Magic coached one training camp and then 16 games of one regular season before the Lakers powerflushed him.  Bird chose to coach three seasons, during which the Pacers played .687 basketball.

Matty sez,

Ryan pitched in a time when the world was much more cruel to pitchers.  If you didn't throw 300 innings ,you didn't make the big lagues as a star pitcher...so everyone threw a lot more.  This did two things:

1) It made the pitchers who could take the punishment a lot more durable at a younger age

2) It broke everyone else.

Not everyone can throw the way Ryan did as a kid.  He shouldn't expect it of them.  But if you find a kid who seems tobe more resiliant after throwing or has naturally graceful mechanics...he should be encouraged to test his limits.  ANd the way you do that is precisely how the Mariners did it with Pineda.  You watch his stuff game to game and pitch to pitch...you throw him as long as he seems fresh...and back off when he isn't.

Nolan Ryan's shtick annoys me greatly.  Like Bob Feller, he's going to spend the rest of his life issuing subtle little calls of attention back to how great he was.

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This is one paradigm through which you can evaluate the inner selflessness of coaches, I think.

MIKE HARGROVE - Mike's shtick was fairly dense with references to working the count, "pro at-bats," carrying oneself the right way, paying one's dues, etc.  I always got the feeling that, to some extent, this called attention back to his own game as a player and helped, in a limited way, to reinforce his rightful place as a dignified MLB(TM) icon.

Still, he seemed a nice man and he didn't seem to want to get in the way of his veterans.  I'd score him a 5 out of 10 on this meter.

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ERIC WEDGE - Wedge is a tough man, a drill sergeant by 21st-century MLB terms, but it's hard to think of anything he says or does that points back to his own playing career.  I score him 0 or 1 out of 10 on this meter.  This is one reason to admire Eric Wedge.

You know what, maybe this is one of the reasons that so many great MLB coaches were not very significant as MLB players; they don't spend the rest of their lives pushing a piece of paper at you to see if you want an autograph, as Ryan seems to.  Earl Weaver being the prototype.

Do you think this is one reason that Bill Belichick is such a great coach - that he didn't play AT ALL, which makes him a tabula rasa as far as biases toward "the right way to play the game"?

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LOU PINIELLA - Lou wanted everybody, hitters, and pitchers, to play the game like he did:  mano a mano, fiery and with passion ... woe betide the pitcher who wouldn't challenge the hitter...

Still, I never thought this was an attempt to justify his own playing career.  With Lou it hit you as 100% life philosophy and 0% ego.  But that's just me.

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Anyway, Nolan Ryan could throw three hundred innings a year.  Good for him.  He could strike out 6,000 batters a life, too.  Let's not spend the last 20 years of it asking if each new pitcher is going to do the same.