LYNNWOOD — Chuck Cottier can talk baseball.
All day. And all night.
A captivating story teller, he can spin yarns about Hall of Famers such as Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn, men he played with on the Braves.
He played against Yankee slugger Mickey Mantle, the best player he’s ever seen. “He could do everything,” Cottier says.
The best manager he’s ever known? Someone you’ve likely never heard of. Fella by the name of Ben Geraghty. Never managed in the major leagues. Had no desire to. But Ben Geraghty knew baseball. And he knew when a player was ready for the big leagues.
He knew that Cottier was ready for the big leagues at the age of 23. A solid infielder who could handle second, third and shortstop, Cottier played parts or all of 11 seasons, for four different teams.
Then, one day in 1969, it all ended. His playing career was over.
But his baseball career kept going. And going. And going.
Seven decades later, it has yet to end.
He’ll soon be off to spring training, for the 55th time in 58 years, as a special consultant for the Washington Nationals. A longtime resident of Edmonds, the 74-year-old Cottier will evaluate all the players who come through Safeco Field to face the Mariners this summer.
Know something? It never gets old.
“I could play golf four times a week,” Cottier said, “but the reasons I love going to the game are, number one, it gets in your blood, and number two, something new happens every day.”
And, it keeps you young. Cottier looks the same as he did when he managed the Mariners in the mid-1980s. He’s also been a bench coach, a third-base coach and a scout during a career that started in 1954 in a Class D league in the South.
That’s fodder for thousands of memories, and on a cold, rainy morning last month, Cottier for three hours warmed a coffee shop near the Alderwood Mall with stories from hot summer days of long ago.
He remembered Spahn, the great left-hander of the Milwaukee Braves, sitting in a training room getting treatment before the first spring training exhibition game one year. The Braves’ manager, Fred Haney, ducked into the room, noticed Spahn’s swollen knee and suggested that he take the day off. “I want to see this young kid pitch anyway,” Haney said. “What young kid?” Spahn said, bristling. “You know, the kid (Juan) Pizarro,” Haney said. “Look,” Spahn, who won a Bronze Star in World War II, said, “I’m’ starting the first game of spring training and I’m starting the first game when the season starts. You’ll get a chance to see that kid. He ain’t gonna pitch and take my job.”
And that was that. “He always took the ball,” Cottier said.
A man who always seemed to hit the ball — in all the right places — was Mantle. ”In every situation, you always had to worry about him,” Cottier said. “In a close game, you always looked to see what had to happen to get him an at-bat, because you knew he was going to come through.”
The enormity of Mantle’s presence began in batting practice, when players from both teams would gather to watch No. 7 swat balls into the seats.
Speaking of No. 7, Cottier laments what he perceives as a lack of respect for the game by modern day players. “They don’t know the game, they don’t know the history of the game, they don’t know the integrity of the game,” he said.
As the Mariner manager in 1985, he had a player in spring training who had a pretty high opinion of himself. The kid wore No. 77, which tells you the opinion the Mariners had of him. One day Cottier asked him, so is No. 7 your favorite player?
Kid: Who do you mean?
Cottier: Number 7 for the Yankees.
Kid: Who was that?
Cottier: Ever hear of Mickey Mantle?
Kid: No.
History? We don’t need no stinking history.
Baseball, though, could use some Ben Geraghtys.
When Cottier was coming up, Geraghty was managing in the Braves minor league organization, and if he judged a kid ready to make the leap to the big leagues, that was like the official stamp of approval.
“You either played for him in Class A or Triple A,” Cottier said. “When a player got through Geraghty and into the big leagues, the major league manager didn’t have to worry about ‘Can this guy bunt? Can he hit-and-run? Does he know when to steal a base? Can a pitcher field his position?’ With Geraghty, it made no difference who you were or what you had done previously. If you didn’t execute all of the fundamentals, you didn’t play for him.”
Every organization, Cottier believes, needs a Ben Geraghty. “Somebody who doesn’t want to manage in the big leagues, for whatever reason (Geraghty had health problems), and there are a lot of guys out there who don’t want to manage in the big leagues,” Cottier said. “Have those guys, at least one, at either double A or triple A, and run your prospects through them.”
As a major-league coach, Cottier always felt a responsibility to the players not only on the field, but also if they were having issues outside the white lines. He recalled that when Bobby Abreu joined the Phillies in 1998, he came with a reputation of being hard to coach.
Upon meeting Abreu, it was apparent to Cottier that the young Venezuelan didn’t speak much English. It was also apparent that he was having trouble understanding the “fine print” on some papers that had to do with leasing an apartment.
Cottier told him not to sign anything, that he — Cottier — would go with him to the apartment manager the next day to make sure everything was done right.
“From that day on, he never forgot (what his coach had done for him) and he was an absolute dream to work with,” Cottier said. “We put labels on guys and it’s not fair. He had a label but he was a class guy.”
Remember Billy Martin? How could you forget him.
Cottier once had a “Martin moment” when, as the Mariner manager, he erupted over a call and got ejected from a game in Yankee Stadium. As Cottier was walking back to the dugout, he came upon Dave Winfield standing on first base. It was Winfield’s checked swing that had caused the ruckus. Winfield was a big guy, standing 6 feet 6 and weighing 220 pounds, most of it muscle.
“I smacked him in the stomach to get him to back off the bag,” which, looking back on it, Cottier admitted was not a smart thing to do. Winfield apparently took it good humoredly since Cottier is still alive. Then the M’s manager really went into action, grabbing the first-base bag and tossing it into right field. Reaching the dugout, he threw bats and balls onto the field.
Cottier had barely gotten back to the manager’s office when the phone rang. “Hey, Chuck, it’s Billy,” the Yankee skipper said, obviously about to plant his tongue firmly in his cheek. “Man, you’ve got to learn to control yourself.”
“Me control myself?” the flabbergasted Cottier said.
“Listen,” Martin continued, “we’re coming out to Seattle and I want to have lunch with you to talk about this.”
And you thought Billy Martin didn’t have a sense of humor.
Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson might have had a humorous streak, but he kept it well hidden, especially around opponents.
When he and Cottier were coaches on manager Joe Torre’s New York Mets team — Gibson’s title ironically was ”attitude” coach — Cottier asked him one day why he refused to talk to guys on other teams during his playing career.
“He told me ‘I never wanted them to think we were friends between the lines because they might dig in a little deeper,’” Cottier recalled.
Bob Gibson: just one more character in a long line of characters that Cottier has known in a long and, for the most part, fun-filled baseball career
When he was scouting for the Yankees, Cottier was sitting in manager Torre’s office before the Yankees left on a trip to Japan one spring.
One of baseball’s most colorful characters, Yogi Berra, was also in the room.
“You going with the team, Yogi?” Cottier asked.
Berra said he was.
“Wow,” Cottier said, “that’s a long trip.”
“Yes,” Berra replied, “it’s longer than it used to be.”
Yogi Berra.
You gotta love him.
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