Seattle Sports Insider

Bird and Magic in the baseball dugout

Posted by

2/13/12

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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.

Comments

Good...glad I'm not the only one who hates Ryan's comments

He reminds me of the stubborn scientists I work with on a daily basis who think that their way of studying is the only way to learn something valid. My own boss/adviser thinks that because when he was angry, he worked harder, that everyone should work harder/better when angered...so he goes out of his way to tick his students off. It fails miserably with most of us who need positive reinforcement to thrive. But hey...what do I know...
*rolls eyes&
Agreed 100% Doc...Ryan is an egotist in the extreme...and his comments about demanding more pitches from his staff are grating.

Regarding Piniella

I agree that he wasn't a manager so that people could revel in his greatness, but I do think he did the M's a disservice by being so adament about player personality.
In fact, it parallels what I had to say about the Faces post from a few days ago. If what you want is performance, why select off criteria other than performance? You had to make it through the Piniella hazing to pitch for the M's. The question is how many pitchers failed the Piniella hazing that could have passed the true test -- getting batters out in MLB?
In defense of Piniella, and others I suppose, you are trying to determine future success and present results only give you a partial picture for the future. My guess is Piniella figured if you couldn't handle his yelling, how could you handle Yankee stadium in October. Some people truly have a devil may care attitude, but some people can do great things if they know someone has their back in a time of need, but struggle with self doubt if they feel they are going it alone. Us versus them provides powerful motivation, motivation that internal hazing and foxhole politics can significantly undermine.

Team coaching vs. individualized coaching

Athletes are a mixed bag. Some need to be yelled at to get the best work out of them, others need a kind word, others need their special Batman socks, or whatever.
Is it better to coach a team with the same standards, approach and methodology for everyone, or is it better to approach coaching on a case by case basis?
If a coach coaches for individualized success, he may risk creating jealousy and dysfunction. If he coaches from a set bar standpoint, he may risk losing some of the best work from individual players, who may not jell with his style.
I've heard a lot about Pinella liking pitchers who throw strikes, no matter what, and going ballistic on pitchers who nibble and give up walks. Is Wedge like that? Does he have a set game, where he envisions the game scenario he wants, or does he take what he can from each of his players?
The Mariners had a lot of strikeouts last year. Was that Wedge's legitimate attempt to coax power out of a team when it didn't have any, or is Wedge too biased against the small ball OBP game? Or, maybe he was trying to teach power, in hopes that it would materialize the hitters he wanted in the future.
Just noodling.

Hazing is a good way to put it

The destruction of Paul Spoljaric was a particularly appalling example. He came over here as a 10K lefty and Lou would go to the press and talk about Spoljaric, quote, "spitting the bit" if he got behind a hitter in a tight game. The media would then put this in the next day's paper... arrrgggghhhh...
Lou's sticking with Bobby Ayala, despite the blizzards of HR balls on fastballs out-and-over, is another case in point...
His biases cost the M's large and often. On the other hand, the pre-1993 Mariners were wussies plain and simple, and I'll always be grateful to Lou for grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and teaching them to fight.

GREAT followup

Wedge obviously wants hitters "attacking" the pitcher, and by "attacking" he does NOT mean "get him early in the count." He means go up there looking for a way to hurt the pitcher.
Still, as you point out, this one-size-fits-all approach could work to some players' disadvantage. Kyle Seager comes to mind as one possible. He's a stealthy hitter...
I'd like to think that Wedge is flexibly minded. Dustin Ackley came up and took lots of close pitches, but Wedge raved about him and put him high in the lineup LONG before other managers would have. And wound up batting him 3, whereas the rest of the world seemed to think 2 was a given.
I think that the blog-o-sphere at large did not perceive the systemic problem that Wedge was facing to start the 2011 season.