PEORIA, Ariz. — Ask Alan Cockrell about the art of hitting a baseball and he’ll talk about things like back-side weight distribution, separation in time to see the ball, palm up-palm down.
Cockrell, the Seattle Mariners’ new hitting coach, can speak of his craft like a rocket scientist describing the principle of thrust.
It’s hardly the way he was introduced to pro ball in 1984 as a 21-year-old outfielder for the Class A Everett Giants. His manager then was Rocky Bridges, one of the game’s all-time great characters and a great communicator … in his own way.
“I remember coming up for my first at-bat in pro ball, runners at first and third, one out,” Cockrell said. “I look down to Rocky for a sign.
“Rocky looks at me, then he looks at the guys on base, and then he does this.”
Then Cockrell performed a reenactment from nearly 25 years ago. Using his right hand to shield himself from the crowd in the stands at Everett Memorial Stadium, Bridges flashed the sign with one finger of his left hand — the middle finger.
“That’s the first sign I ever got in pro ball,” Cockrell said. “I started cracking up.”
That crude introduction began a pro career that took Cockrell on a meandering course through minor league cities like Fresno, Shreveport, Phoenix, Calgary, Charlotte, New Haven and Colorado Springs. Along the way, there were coaches who taught him the craft of hitting — Jim Lefebvre, Amos Otis, Don Baylor, Charlie Manuel and Clint Hurdle.
“I stole a little bit from all those guys,” he said.
It never got Cockrell to the big leagues — he played only nine games for the Colorado Rockies as a September callup in 1996 — but the hitting lessons he learned taught him that he wanted to stay in baseball when his playing days were over.
“In 1993 when I was with Cleveland, they talked to me about staying with the organization,” he said. “When they started saying ‘after my playing days,’ I started thinking about it. I realized then that my playing days were coming to an end.”
He wasn’t ready to get off the field then, but he went back to the Rockies organization the following year and heard the same thing from them.
“I started thinking about it more and more and as we got to ‘95 and ‘96, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “I still wasn’t done playing in my mind. I didn’t want to go into coaching and feel like I still wanted to play. I wanted to make sure I had that out of my system.”
He played in Taiwan in 1997, “and when I came back, I knew I was ready.”
It’s never easy for an athlete to decide in his own mind that he’s finished on the field, especially one as decorated as Cockrell.
Few high school athletes in the state of Missouri were as accomplished as he was. His main sport was football, and he led Joplin Parkwood High School to a 31-3 record and the 1980 state championship as their quarterback. He also starred at baseball and, despite being recruited heavily by major colleges nationwide, he sought a school that would let him play both sports.
“Bear Bryant told me, ‘Son, quarterbacks don’t play baseball at the University of Alabama,’” Cockrell said. “Same with Tom Osborn at Nebraska. That made narrowing down the choices a lot easier.”
He went to Tennessee, became their starting quarterback as a freshman and thought all along that he’d have a career in football.
“Then the fifth game of my freshman year, I blew out my knee against Auburn,” he said. “I started to not so much think differently, but I had to take a step back and slow it down and think a little more clearly. I still learned much more about football early on than I did about baseball and I was able to come back and play a couple of years.”
Cockrell led the Vols to a 9-3 record in 1993 and a Citrus Bowl victory over Maryland. Six months later, the San Francisco Giants drafted him with the ninth overall selection and he signed with them.
“I was a pretty high draft pick and I was coming off the knee thing,” he said. “I felt like this was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn my nose at.”
It wasn’t the easiest transition. He played only two games for Everett before being promoted to Shreveport, and he was introduced to the intricacies of hitting that he’d never been exposed to in college.
“To be honest, it didn’t click for me for four or five years,” Cockrell said. “When I was playing in college, it was hit the ball to right field. They didn’t break it down like they did in football. We would have written tests the night before games — downs and distances and what defenses liked to do, what plays we wanted to get out of and what plays we wanted to get into at the line, running option routs, blitz series, routes we were trying to get into.”
Cockrell said it took him 10 years to evolve as a hitter. His best years were his last, when he batted .313 with 13 homers and 60 RBI with Class AAA Colorado Springs in 1995, then .300 with 14 homers and 60 RBI in 1996. By then, his career path had steered him toward coaching.
He spent eight years managing and coaching in the Rockies’ system before becoming their big-league hitting coach in 2007. The Rockies led the National League with a .280 team average and .354 on-base percentage in 1997, when they reached the World Series. Last year, they stumbled to a middle-of-the-pack .263 average and, beset by injuries, the Rockies finished third in the NL West. It cost Cockrell his job.
The Mariners hired him early this year with what Cockrell calls his 26th consecutive one-year contract. The job security is as solid as the won-loss record, but There are other jobs with better security, but Cockrell embraces it.
“It’s a little tough when you’ve got two more kids you’ve got to put through college,” said Cockrell, who has four children. “But it’s the only way I’ve known, so I just do it.”
With the Mariners, Cockrell’s baseball career has come full circle geographically, a half-hour from where it began in Everett almost 25 years ago.
He played only two games there before they moved him up, but he’ll always remember Rocky Bridges.
“I’ll always remember Rocky had a chew in his mouth 24 hours a day,” Cockrell said. “The first day, we were getting ready to hit and we couldn’t find any pine tar.
“Rocky goes, ‘Aw, come on guys, you don’t need any pine tar.’ Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a pack of Red Man chewing tobacco. ‘Here, rub some of this on your hands. It’s a lot better than pine tar.’”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog from spring training at www.heraldnet.com
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