Baseball has coaches. So many coaches.

Bench coaches are more important than ever. Why?

I’ve been a baseball fan for a long time. As a young fan learning about the game I knew of Managers, first and third base coaches, pitching coaches, and bullpen coaches. At the time it seemed to me that the third base coach was most important in the hierarchy since if the manager got ejected, the third base coach would take over managing duties.

Today it seems there are too many coaches associated with a Major League team to even count. Aside from those above, there is a bench coach. a hitting coach, an assistant hitting coach, a catching coach, an infield coach, a baserunning coach, a strength and conditioning coach. That’s more than 10 coaches per team beyond the manager. Some coaches serve dual roles as did Joey Cora as a base coach and infield coach for the Mets this past season. MLB dugouts have had to get bigger to contain all the coaches in there besides the players! Good thing there’s room in the bullpen for a coach or two in addition to the ever-present bullpen catcher.

What of the evolution of baseball coaches? I found this:

From Wikipedia: Full-time coaches in professional baseball date to 1909, when John McGraw of the New York Giants engaged Arlie Latham and Wilbert Robinson as coaches.^[1] By the 1920s, most major league teams had two full-time coaches stationed in foul territory near first base and third base when their team was batting, although the manager often doubled as third-base coach, and specialists such as pitching coaches were rare. After World War II, most major league teams listed between three and five coaches on their roster, as managers increasingly ran their teams from the dugout full-time, and appointed pitching and bullpen coaches to assist them and the baseline coaches. Batting and bench coaches came into vogue during the 1960s and later.^[1] Because of the proliferation of uniformed coaches in the modern game, by the late 2000s Major League Baseball had restricted the number of uniformed staff to six coaches and one manager during the course of a game.^[2] Beginning with the 2013 season, clubs have been permitted to employ a seventh uniformed coach, designated the assistant hitting coach, at their own discretion.

When I was a kid, I had no notion of ‘Bench’ coaches. Mainly because that position was almost non-existent. Once I became aware it at first was a bit confusing since I knew bench-jockeying was a term and I could not figure out how it related to bench coaching. It wasn’t. Had there been bench coaches all along I wondered?  Knowing the immortal words of James Thurber ‘You could look it up’. I did. 

When did bench coaches begin?

From Stuart Miller’s August 18, 2012 NYT article: - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/sports/baseball/in-major-league-baseball-bench-coaches-assume-growing-role.html

“No one knows exactly who the first major league bench coach was. New York Giants Manager John McGraw used his former pitching ace Christy Mathewson as assistant manager from 1919 to ’21, but the first modern “bench-riding coach,” as he called it, was very likely Pete Reiser, who served as Walter Alston’s deputy with the Dodgers in 1962. Gary Gillette, who edited the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, said Reiser told The Sporting News his duties included making suggestions about tactics, relaying signals and checking statistics — all part of the job today.

But baseball changes slowly, and Alston was not copied until 1969, when Ted Williams became the manager of the Washington Senators and asked his former teammate Johnny Pesky to be his right-hand man in the dugout. Pesky had broadcasting obligations in Boston, so Williams instead hired Joe Camacho, a former minor league infielder.

In 1976, Yankees Manager Billy Martin gave Yogi Berra a dugout seat to share his baseball acumen and act as a liaison because Berra could “communicate very well with the players,” a skill that could elude the explosive Martin.

And when Bill Veeck promoted a novice named Tony La Russa as the Chicago White Sox manager in mid-1979, he insisted that a veteran, Loren Babe, serve as the bench coach, a move that La Russa recalled last week “really helped.”

Still, the bench coach was an inconsistent presence through the 1980s. According to the Hall of Fame, the first recorded reference to the role in print was The Washington Post’s mention of the Yankees’ hiring of Joe Altobelli for the job in November 1985. The New York Times first mentioned the position in 1989.“

In baseball terms being a bench coach is kind of new thing given that baseball is approaching the 150^th anniversary of the National League and bench coaches have been common for only 30 years. The role is sort of like being a ‘Consiglieri’ a la the one Billy Crystal played against Robert de Niro’s mob character in ‘Analyze This’. Not quite a yes man, but actually that’s kind of the case. Although there’s a big difference since being a bench coach is often tantamount to being a future MLB manager. Billy Crystal’s character was never going to take the top position in the family.   

Are MLB coaches well paid?

MLB Manager and coach salaries are not divulged by MLB or the team owners. Their salaries don’t count against the team’s salary cap nor are they members of the players-only union. If there’s a player union labor action, coaches are management and completely excluded from anything that goes on. That does not mean the coaches don’t get paid well and much better in today’s MLB than was the case 30 years ago. It’s easy to say that the teams can afford it since the total outlay for managers and coaches is under $10 million per team annually and payrolls as we’ve seen can be 30x that amount.  You can understand team owners trying to maximize their investment by coaching the players up as much as possible.

The aforementioned Yogi Berra reportedly was to have quipped about a hot restaurant ‘Nobody goes there anymore it’s too crowded’.  That clearly does not apply to baseball coaches and dugouts.

Jobs for retired players

Probably the best thing about having all these coaches in and around MLB teams is the connection to retired players and personalities. It happens often that I will notice a former player coach on the field having not thought of that player in years. The first thing I think is it’s great to see them. Then I think, wow they look so much older. And that I am jealous of their jobs!

About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.