Lessons Learned From Losing

I played baseball at Trinity University from 1988-1991. The three worst seasons in the program's history were 1987, 1988 and 1989.

Today the program is a D3 baseball powerhouse highlighted by their National Championship in 2016. In his 22 year career at Trinity, Head Coach Tim Scannell has won 700+ games.

Currently ranked #3 with a 7-0 record, the 2020 team has already won more games in their first week of play than our team did my entire first season. Thus, when asked to speak to this year's banquet to kickoff off their home schedule it made sense for me to speak about the program's growth to the players, coaches and their parents.

Here is what I said:

Trinity Baseball First Pitch Banquet Speech—February 22, 2020

Thirty years ago, I was sitting in the audience of this same Trinity First Pitch banquet. It was the start of my junior season. 

The speaker that night was Davey Johnson who like me earned his degree from Trinity.

Unlike me, Davey spent 30 years in major league baseball as a player and manager and has three Gold Gloves and three World Series Championship rings. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Major League Baseball stories, but I do remember one Davey told at the banquet that is worth repeating.

In 1972 Davey hit .221 with 5 home runs as the starting second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles. At the end of the season he was traded to the Atlanta Braves. Davey was a San Antonio native so before moving to Atlanta he spent the off-season working out at Trinity with Dr. Jesse MacLeay in the physical education department.

My ears perked up because a 70-year-old Dr. MacLeay was teaching my weightlifting class.  Then my interest really piqued when Davey told us his 1973 stats. 

He improved his batting average by 50 points, knocked in 99 RBIs and hit 43 home runs, a the major league record for home runs by a second basemen.

With that revelation, I looked around to my teammates as we debated heading to Dr. MacLeay’s house that night. Desperate times call for desperate measures.  

The Trinity baseball program during my years was in a much different place than it is today. When I came to Trinity, I was one of only 22 players at the introductory meeting before our first practice. There were 11 first year players, 5 sophomores, 3 juniors and 3 seniors.

Our head coach Bill Richardson taught at San Antonio College, so he was only on campus for practices and games. He had little help other than a series of volunteer coaches who seemed to change out every other week.  He also had to work practice schedules around co-ed intramural games that savaged our outfield.

Despite the challenges, I was still over the moon excited to be playing college baseball. Our first game was a road trip to play LeTourneau in Longview. We arrived late on Friday night and slept 4 to a room at the hotel. 

Saturday morning around 6:30 a.m. as the sunlight crept into our room I jumped out of bed and to no one in particular yelled: “Get up, get up. We’re playing ball today!” My senior roommate for trip Jim Wheat, who would later become my roommate after Trinity, told me to: “Shut up and go back to bed!”

In that first game a couple hours later, Jim pitched a two hitter and I had a couple hits and RBIs helping us get the victory. In-between games, a couple kids asked me for my autograph. 

Wow…can it get any better than this?

The answer is no as we lost 24 of our next 30 games. The next year we lost less games but only because we had some rain-outs. We finished the season 5 and 26.

With so few players, Coach Richardson was forced to play everyone. The second games of doubleheaders often featured our "funk” lineup. These players weren’t ready to start but if they didn’t play and ended up quitting, we wouldn’t be able to field a team.

Our pitching ranks were also thin. Often, Coach Richardson would roll a ball to our second baseman as he walked to the mound to make a pitching change. That would him to warm up with our first baseman before coming in as a relief pitcher.

I was left-handed right fielder with a decent arm, so I was also pressed into service on the mound. On games when I faced a scholarship school with a funk lineup behind me, my teammates called me a “sacrificial lamb” and would “baaaaa” as I walked onto the mound.

I struggled so badly with my control before one of my starts Coach warned me: “You better throw strikes or I’m going to yank you after your first walk.”

His speech worked as this outing turned out to be my only game were I didn't walk anyone. Unfortunately, the first eight batters hit safely so Coach pulled me. Walking off I told him “Hey, I threw strikes.”

Since I was also struggling at the plate, I was surprised when my college girlfriend told me she saw my name in both of San Antonio’s daily newspapers. Before I could figure why I deserved to get mentioned in the stories, she asked me “What does LP in front your name mean?”  Aah, I made the box scores as the losing pitcher. 

At the end of my sophomore year, Coach Richardson sat me down for our end of the year meeting and led with a compliment of my ability to hit well in batting practice. He ended it by saying, “Next year it would be great if you could also learn to hit in the games.”

Luckily by the end of the First Pitch Banquet kicking of my junior year, we had three things going for us:

• Trinity had joined a conference so our schedule would feature more D3 schools and an end of the year tournament.
• Ten of the 11 first year players I started with were coming back for their junior year along with a good group of first- and second-year players.
• And now Davey Johnson had us believing Dr. MacLeay could make us all home run hitters.

The morning after the banquet I asked Dr. MacLeay his keys to hitting with power. He said two things:

• Build your core
• Improve your wrist strength

He had unorthodox ways on achieving both. Dr. MacLeay preached that one good sit up with heavy resistance was better than 100 regular sit-ups. Less sit-ups sounded great to me, but it didn’t give me washboard abs then or now.

For wrist strength, he recommended a machine that was probably 20 years old when Davey Johnson worked out with in 1972 and hadn’t been used since. But it worked for Davey, so I used that contraption religiously every day. 

I hit my first career home run against Notre Dame to tie an early season game 4-4. I flew around the bases only to have my enthusiasm dampen when I crossed home plate as the ump asked, “kind of cheesy swing, right?” 

To add further insult, that same ump missed an obvious strike three call with two outs on a Notre Dame player allowing his teammate to steal home and beat us 5-4. In the early 90s, there was no such thing as Tiger TV and Trinity didn't videotaped our games so we couldn’t check the replay and protest the blown call.

In fact, in my entire time at Trinity, I only have eight at-bats on tape. They are all from one doubleheader against Millsaps, our new conference rival.

My high school buddy Chris flew in from Arizona. In this pre-smartphone era, he was my only friend who owned a video camera. Luckily, he got shots me hitting two home runs including a game winning grand slam with admittedly cheesy swings and good wrist strength.

Thank you, Chris, Davey Johnson and Dr. MacLeay.

However, the highlight of my time at Trinity was winning the conference championship my junior year (the first one since the program switched to D3). When we clinched the final victory, the first thing I saw was Coach Richardson jumping up and down in circles. Coach had spent three years squeezing water from rocks and now his “damn mullets” which is what we called us when we made bonehead mistakes, were conference champions.  

His love of baseball and dedication to our team had paid off and he deserved a victory dance. I was happy for him and my teammates, especially the ones that struggled through those first two years. 

You want to leave a program on better footing and playing my last game you could see the future was brighter with 18 juniors and seniors on the squad up from those 6 my first year.  

That first year there wasn’t a budget for Trinity Baseball t-shirts so a couple of us went to the mall to make our own . Now three years later Coach Richardson proudly got to design and award us all Conference Championship t-shirts. 

Trinity then committed additional resources to the program that included having a head baseball coach as a full-time Trinity employee. However, the new hire was also an assistant football coach and the new head football coach was also the assistant baseball coach.Luckily that didn’t last long and eventually led to Coach Scannell coming to Trinity. 

On behalf of my teammates, Coach Scannell please accept our appreciation for your efforts and those of your assistant coaches that has taken the baseball program to such amazing levels. I'd also like to thank the Trinity administration for understanding the value of the athletics and increasing the resources to hire and retain such outstanding coaches.

For those of you on the team right now, I’d like to leave you a couple of final remarks.

Be proud of what you have accomplished to be on a team this caliber. Your annual goal is to win a National Championship. You are among a select few number of teams that have a realistic shot at accomplishing such an impressive feat. 

Hopefully your season turns out as well as the last time I spoke to the team. With Coach Scannell’s support, I organized an alumni tailgate for a home Saturday doubleheader against Texas Lutheran in April 2016. After losing to TLU on Friday and getting 10 run-ruled in Game #1, two of the unlikeliest things in Trinity baseball history happened. 

First, I was invited to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the second game of the doubleheader and I threw a perfect strike. Then Trinity won by eight runs starting a 17-game win streak culminating with a National Championship.

Seventeen wins in a row is amazingly impressive especially to someone who only won 10 games his first two seasons. But if there is one thing you can emulate from our team, it is show up every day, be there for your teammates and do the work. Shag balls, hustle during practice and get in as many repetitions at your position as possible so you are ready for any opportunity.

If you were one of my teammates sitting with me at the First Pitch banquet before my junior year, you would have ranked me as the seventh or eighth best player on the team. 

But when Coach put me third on the lineup card that first game, I took advantage of the situation. I batted third every single game of my junior and senior season helping the team win that conference title and earn MVP honors.

In closing, don’t be afraid to jump out of bed early tomorrow excited you’re playing ball with teammates, some of whom will become lifelong friends. 

And if you need a little extra pop, go search the basement of the Bell Center for Dr. MacLeay’s wrist machine.

Thank you and now go win that Natty so you can get a t-shirt as cool as my 1990 champions one!