SEATTLE – Jim Slaton is traveling in style again.
He’s the Seattle Mariners’ new bullpen coach, and a huge perk is the first-class lifestyle that comes with a job at this level of the game. He works in the best facilities in baseball, has a first-class ticket to everywhere the next six months and stays in hotels that end with “Hilton” and “Hyatt” and “Carlton,” instead of “6” or “Court.”
It’s not that Slaton never knew what it’s like to be a major leaguer. Quite the contrary.
He spent 16 years pitching in the big leagues with the Brewers, Angels and Tigers, and rose through the minors so fast that he barely got to know the long bus rides and sometimes-sparse accommodations that are the dues nearly every ballplayer must pay. When the Brewers called him up in 1971, he heard all about it.
“I’d only spent a half a year in the minor leagues,” he said. “The other guys on the team were getting on me, saying, ‘You never had to live on a bus like we did.”
Slaton endured those quips and made a nice career for himself. He appeared in 496 major league games, pitched a now unheard-of 2922/3 innings in 1976, made the American League All-Star team in 1977 and won a World Series game against the Cardinals in 1982.
He retired healthy and happy after the 1986 season and spent the next few years pursuing business opportunities in California, but got the urge for baseball again and joined the Oakland A’s organization in 1992 as a minor league coach.
“It turned out that I was back on the bus for quite a few years,” Slaton said.
Slaton, now 54, spent 13 seasons on the minor league side of baseball, the past eight with the Mariners. He was the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers’ pitching coach for five seasons and worked last year as a special assignment pitching coach, spending much of his time on the road visiting each of the Mariners’ minor league teams.
The travel wasn’t grand, but Slaton got a kick out of watching pitchers develop.
“For the first three-quarters of the time, I never even thought about getting back to the big leagues,” he said. “I was learning something every day and I enjoyed working with the younger kids.
“But after a while, I realized I was getting a little older and I started thinking, ‘There’s a lot of ballparks I haven’t seen since I retired.’ I wanted to get back up here. I also knew the travel would be a little easier because it was starting to take a toll on me.”
Slaton hoped to get back to the major leagues, but it seemed certain this past offseason that it wouldn’t be with the Mariners.
The major league staff had been blown apart with the firing of manager Bob Melvin last October, and the organization was making changes elsewhere. Among them were the elimination of some minor league special assignment positions, including Slaton’s.
The Mariners offered Slaton another job, but he turned it down and, at the urging of his wife Kelly, he prepared a resume and mailed it to the other 29 major league teams.
“I’d never filled out a resume before,” he said.
Three teams offered him pitching coach jobs at the Class AAA level, including the San Diego Padres with the Portland Beavers.
“My kids and grandkids live in Bend, and I decided that would be a good place to work,” Slaton said.
The Padres mailed Slaton a contract to sign, and news of his hiring already had hit the transaction lists in the sports pages. Then he got a phone call from Mariners pitching coach Bryan Price, asking Slaton if he’d be interested in becoming the new bullpen coach in Seattle.
Slaton never signed that Padres contract and decided he didn’t want to, although he endured a nervous week when he didn’t hear back from the Mariners. Price’s inquiry had made Slaton realize he’d made a mistake leaving the Mariners in the first place, but he wasn’t sure they truly were interested anymore.
“That contract was sitting on the counter at my house, and I was thinking ‘Now what do I do?’” Slaton said. “I didn’t know how long the process was going to take.”
He called Price to see if the Mariners were still interested. Price called new manager Mike Hargrove, and Hargrove called Slaton and welcomed him to the job … if he still wanted it.
Let’s see. First-class hotels, charter flights, the best facilities in baseball?
Yeah, Slaton wanted it.
“It worked out very good for me because I thought I’d made the wrong choice in leaving,” he said.
Now that he’s back, Slaton can’t quite describe what it means to be in the major leagues again.
“It means everything,” he said. “There are quite a few (pitchers) on this staff who came up with me in Tacoma. I have a lot of respect for Bryan Price and from my experiences pitching in the big leagues and coaching, he also respects my opinions. We don’t step on each others’ toes. Bryan is the pitching coach and I’m another set of eyes watching.”
Price enjoys having the insight of a pitching coach in the bullpen job, which has been filled since 1995 by former catchers Matt Sinatro and Orlando Gomez.
“All three are really top-shelf people and they added something to our mix in the bullpen,” Price said. “But when you think about Jim’s credentials, you’ve got 16 years in the major leagues as a pitcher and all the time he spent in the minor leagues developing pitching.”
Plus, of course, all those bus trips.
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