EDMONDS — Life will be different for Don Long this summer.
For the first time since the early 1980s, he will not have a job in baseball.
He’s taking a year off to “kind of re-group a little bit.”
The Snohomish County native will still give some hitting le
ssons to youngsters and instruct at baseball camps, but his only connection to professional baseball will be the checks he receives from the Pittsburgh Pirates fulfilling the final year of his contract as the team’s hitting coach. He and three other coaches were let go after Clint Hurdle was h
ired to replace John Russell as manager at the end of the 2010 season.
After Russell was fired, management told the coaches they were free to seek jobs elsewhere, but Long felt committed to the Pirates and hoped he would be retained. “I wasn’t looking to go, there were other jobs
open,” he said. “It just didn’t feel right to me to go out and make a bunch of phone calls.”
By the time the Pirates hired Gregg Ritchie as their hitting coach, it was late November and most of those jobs at the major-league level had been filled. Long did interview with the New York Mets, but that coaching job went to Dave Hudgens, whom Long called a “good man who’ll do a good job.”
That’s Don Long for you. No bitterness about not getting the job, but some kind words for the man who did.
A class act, this Long fellow.
He’ll be back.
Meanwhile, he’ll get to spend a summer with his wife, Dian, and the couple’s three sons, Stewart, 16; Preston, 13, and Tyler, 7. Don will get to see his sons participate in sports and he’ll be home for dinner every night. The family stayed at home in Edmonds the last three years while Don was in Pittsburgh, but did make a trip or two each summer to be with him.
Don considers the year off a “gift” to his wife. “She’s had to endure so much on her own,” he said. “She’s been awesome. Eight months out of the year, she’s doing most of the parenting for both of us. Her first priority is our kids, to make sure they’re growing into solid people, and she’s done a fantastic job.”
Will he miss baseball? Of course he will.
“I love the competition,” he said, as he sat in a coffee shop in downtown Edmonds recently. “After having been with one team (Philadelphia) for nine years as a roving (minor league) instructor, to be back with a team, especially at that level, feeling the competitive nature of the game and how every pitch matters …”
A keen observer of the game and a meticulous teacher of the art of hitting, Long knows of what he speaks when he says every pitch counts. A manager in the minor leagues for 12 years, the former Meadowdale High School athlete believes that talented players in the minors tend to “take some pitches off throughout the game and still do really well.”
Take even one pitch off in the majors and it might be the one that gets you. Or, if you’re a pitcher, you “might take a batter for granted and you don’t quite throw your pitches to perfection and that guy that shouldn’t hurt you does. It’s hard to win a major league game and you’d better compete every pitch.”
The Pirates know all too well how difficult it is to win. They did it only 57 times last year, their 18th consecutive season without a winning record.
Not that they haven’t had talented players. It’s that many of those players have been traded. For example, Long’s first season as a big-league coach, 2008, the Pirates had three players with 20 home runs or more: Nate McLouth (26), Adam LaRoche (25) and Jason Bay (22). Other solid players were Freddy Sanchez, Jack Wilson, Jose Bautista and Xavier Nady.
Two years later, none of those players was still with the Pirates. It created opportunities for new, younger players — who had, as Long put it, “no track record at all at the major league level.”
Confidence is a very fragile thing in baseball. For a young player, it can shatter in a fraction of a second. Especially when you’re 21 and in your first big-league season. “There are a lot of unknowns with the guys we have,” Long said, still wont to slip into the present tense now and then. “They didn’t know if they could play up here, so when they’re in the doubt mode, you can see it written all over their faces.
“When they’re oh-for-four or one for their last 20, you (the coach) don’t have the luxury of saying ‘next.’ You have to plant your feet with them and say, ’Look, I’m here with you. We’ll figure this out. You’ll be all right.’ You have to find ways to build their hope. So it’s a challenge every day. A good challenge.”
The first thing Long tried to do with his hitters, whether a veteran or a rookie, was build trust. And he let them initiate the discussion. “You have to give them the first opportunity to say, ‘Here’s what I think.’ Having said that, some guys won’t give you a whole lot to begin with. They’re going to be a little bit standoffish. So time has to go by. I’ve just seen too many situations where you try to force the process and it backfires.”
Andrew McCutchen, a 23-year-old outfielder, got to the majors in 2009 and played his first full season there in 2010. He presented one of those good challenges.
“He very much wants to figure things out on his own and he’ll work through some bumps in the road to do that,” Long said. “At the first sign of trouble, he’s not going to come running and say, ‘What do you see? What’s wrong?’ He’s very confident of his abilities and in his ability to figure things out and make adjustments.”
Long was subtle in his approach to McCutchen. He would show him photos of when he was hitting well and when he was struggling and he might point out something minute about the way his body was positioned. “Just a suggestion, for what it’s worth,” Long would tell him. Next thing you know, bingo.
In Long’s first full season working with McCutchen, the centerfielder batted .286 with 16 home runs and 56 RBI. “He’s really good because he can make adjustments like that,” the coach said with a snap of his fingers.
The ultimate joy Long derives from his job is helping a player become his “own best coach.”
“You’re part of the process but he’s still the one that had to go out and do it,” he said, “and when he does it he feels that sense of pride and his confidence starts to grow. That’s what I get out of it.”
One of the veterans benefitting from Long’s coaching was outfielder Jason Bay. In 2007, the year before Long joined the Pirates, Bay hit only .247 with 21 home runs and 84 RBI. He was coming off back-to-back 30-plus homer, 100-plus RBI seasons. With Long’s help, Bay — who still takes instruction from his former hitting coach in the offseason — rebounded with a strong 2008 season, batting .286 with 31 homers and 101 RBI.
Unfortunately, the Pirates didn’t get the full benefit of those numbers: He was traded to Boston at mid-season. But he didn’t forget the hitting coach he left behind, recommending to the Mets that they interview Long for their job.
Now you see the challenges Long faced in his three years with Pittsburgh. A player might be here today and gone tomorrow.
All Long could do was keep on working. “I thought we did some good things,” he said, “but the record obviously is the bottom line. Yet it doesn’t indicate what I thought went well. A lot of guys got better, but apparently not enough. I think a lot of guys who are going to be good players did what they were supposed to do.”
And Long did what he was supposed to do. He made players better.
He’ll get another chance. He’s everything you’d want in a coach. He works hard. He listens. He observes. He studies.
“He’s a phenomenal instructor,” said Mark Carter, who played baseball at Cascade High School and whose 12-year-old son Michael takes hitting lessons from Long. “He’s very patient and assuring to the kids. Clint Hurdle made a mistake in not retaining him.”
There’ll be another major league job with Don Long’s name on it. He says he might like to try something different next time. Perhaps be a third base coach. Or a bench coach.
Ultimately, he’d like an opportunity to manage.
“What I found as I got more comfortable there (Pittsburgh) at that level was there are things you can do (as a manager) to really build a team. I look at what Joe Maddon’s done in Tampa with a young team.
“You’ve got to have talent, but a lot of it’s about effort and attitude and the way you go about it and what you think and how you choose to react. I would love the opportunity as a manager to be at the forefront of that and build something that’s just great.”
He had success as a manager in the minors. Why not the majors?
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