So you and I got to know each other through the competition piece, and I love how our friendship has evolved over time. And so just the more that I get to know you, I see the parallels kind of in our career. And what I love about doing these interviews is how much I learn about people. So what I want to know is tell me about the Pat Casey and rising and the journey to, everybody knows about your three national championships and all that stuff, but how did it happen? That’s what I want to
Know. Well, first of all, nothing happens without being blessed to have the opportunity. So certainly was given that opportunity in 1988 by George Fox College, and it was kind of funny. I just got done playing eight years of minor league baseball and had my fill of baseball and did you say fail or feel both? You know what I mean? I was in the Coast League with the twins and I got released in the middle of the year and the Mariners wanted to resign me, but I did not want to go to Chattanooga for 10 days without a guarantee that I was going to be on the big league, be invited to big league camp. And so I got a call from small college, George Fox College and the hometown I was from who had really never had any type of baseball success or had any emphasis on the program. So I really had no interest in doing it.
I got to admit buddy, I’d never heard of that until I met you. I had no idea there wasn’t George.
The only reason I knew about I lived in the town that existed in, they only had one thing going for ’em. Well, they were okay in track, but basketball was something that they were pretty good in.
What’s the size of school?
At the time they were, when I was growing up, they were in AI and they were about 300 kids, and then they got to 600 kids and 900. And I think when I was there as a coach, they probably were around that eight or 900 kids. And then now they’re up around 2000. They become a Division III school. But anyway, I didn’t have any interest in coaching or staying in baseball. The ad, who was the coach, and he had so many hats. He was the ad, he was the baseball coach, he was the head of international students. And so he just had too much and just thought that I might be interested. And he kind of repeatedly called me until I finally relented and went and met with the president and he talked on it. And so I took that job, let’s say July 10th or 12th or whatever, and called my best friend who played baseball with me and said, Hey, you doing anything? He said, yeah, I just got my appraiser’s license. I said, you making any money? He said, no. I said, perfect. I got a job where you’re not going to make any money either. We’re going to coach together. So we started that journey together, George Fox in 88, and I had 17 guys on my first club and six of ’em were from Puerto Rico.
What really?
Yeah, because like I said, the coach before me, the ad was the head of international students. So he figured if I’m going to go to another area to recruit students, let’s go to someplace where they can play baseball. And they were pretty good. I had a couple guys who were really pretty good and had a switch hitter named Miguel Rivera and stayed in touch with him. And anyway, I just instantly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the competition. I enjoyed just being in the dugout and a different perspective of baseball. And so we had no field, basically we built a field and built a batting cage, did all the stuff anybody would really do at a small place like that. And we competing. We played played Oregon State and Washington and Washington State in the same year and beat Washington and Oregon State and Lewis and Clark State. So I mean, we were feeling like we were pretty good. The problem was that I continued to make $3,000 a year with three kids and a wife that thought maybe I needed to go ahead and grow up.
That’s a thousand a year for each kid, man.
Exactly, exactly, man. And North Cut still wasn’t my pitching guy. He still wasn’t making anything other than half of my money from stopping and having a good time. So anyway, just thought it was time. I had a real estate license and I wasn’t doing any of that really because I enjoyed the coaching piece so much, but thought it was time that probably I moved to a different arena and I got a call from a guy named Jack Rainey who was the commissioner of the northern division of the Pac 10 at the time.
I don’t know whether it was PAC 10 or, but they were, the northern changed so many times, right?
Yeah, yeah. We just keep adding teams. So anyway, he asked me why I didn’t apply for the job at Oregon State, and I just said, well, I know their assistant. He’s been there for a while. He’s a good dude. I heard they’re going to hire him. He said, no, man, you should apply. So drove down there, turned in my application and the gal says, I don’t even think the job’s open. And so I thought, perfect. So anyway, three or four weeks later, I got an interview, got the job at Oregon State, I would say around August 5th, and walked into my office and well, I didn’t really walk into my office because I went over to get some keys the first day I was there, and the lady asked me what I would need keys for, and I said, well, I’m the new baseball coach. And she said, oh, okay, well lemme check. So nobody really knew who I was, so it’s kind of a funny feel.
So I’m back in the Midwest. And then for me, this is just me personally, you on the radar when we competed against each other, when I was coaching Indiana and still again, not knowing your story. And I remember sitting down one time when I was at ASU because I was just curious because what everyone sees said, oh, what have you done for me lately? So you’ve won the three national championships, which well documented. But for you on that journey of building, because I always talk about the process and how hard this process is, building culture and all that stuff, when did you feel like, Hey man, we’ve arrived. Maybe that’s not the right word, but you understand what I’m saying. You take the job, you build it. It wasn’t just Oregon State out of the chute, you built that thing. So how many years did it take you to do that?
Well, when I first got there, due to the fact that you were north and south, your competition was mostly in the north. It was Gonzaga and Portland and Portland State had baseball at the time, Oregon did, not Washington, Washington state. And so we were relatively competitive the first I got there in 95, in 97 and 98, we should have played in a regional, no question. We were really, really good in 98. The South gave us the opportunity to play them to help with the RPI because they wanted to keep us out of a conference as a whole, which I totally understand. I’m living in Phoenix and Palo Alto and I got to go to Corvallis or Pullman, so well, that’s why I want you to only visit me now.
Exactly, exactly. That’s why you got a T-shirt on and I got a jacket on.
Right, Exactly. So in 98 we played Washington or we played in the south, and they didn’t count on your record, they just counted on your conference record, just on your overall record. So we played Arizona, they were 10th in the country that year, and we swept ’em. We played UCLA and we swept ’em. We went to USC, won one of three, and they won the national championship, and we lost on the last state of Washington who won the north, and we didn’t get to go to regional. And so I thought that we were very competitive from the beginning. The gentleman before me, coach Riley, did a really good job. They just didn’t, there was no vision at Oregon State from an administrative standpoint at that time that hey, other than going down to Central California and playing the spring break deal that we’re ever going to do anything.
And the very first thing I remember saying is that I expect us to compete regionally and then nationally I expect that, or I wouldn’t have come here. And I know that sounds bold, but it’s what I believed in. And I started really pushing about 97 towards just to be a conference. That’s why they did that. And then finally, 99, matter of fact, bless his soul, Mike Gillespie stood up in the meeting and goes, it’s probably not good for USC, but it’s good for our conference and I’m going to support this. So we got the presidents and the ADSD behind us, and in 99 we became a full conference and I got my brains beat out, and I remember coming back on the plane from Stanford getting beat 22 to four and on last day, and they had mercy rule, and so they only batted six times. So we rounded it out pretty good there. We gave up almost four, almost. What was that? About seven evening. And anyway, I thought maybe I was wrong, man. Shoot, man.
Did I screw this thing out? Stay Up here, man, out of the way.
One of the coaches said to me at the time, he said, case, man, I love that you’re into this, but man, you guys don’t have the facility. You don’t have the money, you don’t have the weather. How are you going to compete? You’re talking about Arizona State, Stanford, U-S-C-U-C-L-A, back to back to back. And so part of me doubted myself a little bit, maybe in that 99 season, it wasn’t the right thing. And then I just said, Hey man, we got to get into what we got into this for and get back to grinding and who we are. And basically the same principles that I coached with at George Fox, the beliefs I had, and I did a poor job of coaching in 99. We got moved around pretty good that year, the first year in the south. And so it was just like anything, I just don’t think you can exist beyond your belief system.
In other words, I don’t think anybody that gets into my opinion into anything, whether you’re running a company or a team or anything else that doesn’t have a belief that they can reach a certain level, they’re probably never going to believe in that. And then the importance of understanding how important the little things are, really what are the big things, because the big things are accumulation of every little thing. So we had certain things that we believed in at Oregon State that I thought made a difference, and for other people they may not mean anything.
Were those things. And I actually wrote this down, I was going to ask you, and I’ll tie it into something dear to your heart, IU basketball, but were those little things the same things that were important or the same little things that when you started your career?
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the first thing is we talk about strategies and we talk about plans and we talk about how to execute strategy and execute plans, but what really matters is who’s executing the plan and who created, who created the plan. And if you can’t get everybody to commit 100% to oneness of purpose for a common goal, it doesn’t matter what you do, you might win, but I don’t believe you’ll ever win long-term when you have individuals that say that what we do together is more important than what I do individually, it’s amazing what they can do because they forget about themselves. And that’s, I think if I would hope that if somebody went through and said, Hey, we played Oregon State over a three or four or five or 10 year period, they would have something to say about something unique about togetherness or our unity as a team. I would hope that that would be the one thing that would stand out. Not that, oh man, they got great players, or, oh, they really know how to hit and run, but no man, what they do is they come at you together so relentlessly and so consistently that they never let you up. And my deal was that you get ahead and then you suffocate your opponent with pitching and defense.
Well, and along that line, you and I have talked about this privately, but maybe it’s, you’re right about that. I know competing against you, your teams, you knew going into it what the expectation was, what you were going to face in that other dugout, but even some of the subtleties, and I think it’d be interesting because I’ve asked you about this, but even your position in the dugout at the other end of the dugout, why’d you do that? Why do you do that?
Well, I did that because for me, I believe that practices are for coaches and games are for players. And I had a really hard time standing there when the guy would walk by the OnDeck circle and strike out and come to put his bat in and not have something to say about, well, we talked about his slider being out of the zone. It’s not like the poor guy doesn’t know that. So it really helped me have them believe that when I tell them I trust them, that I do trust them, and I’m away from that a little bit. And so I get it.
The guy isn’t trying to strike out, he’s not trying to swing at a bad pitch, but being human and competitive, if you’re standing right next to somebody, you usually say something guilty.
Yeah, me too, but you’re better than me because I couldn’t stay there. I can keep my mouth shut. I had to move to the other end. And it also allowed me to think about the game as a whole a little bit more maybe instead of really focusing in on that kid coming back from a good or bad or a bad at bad, it allowed me to kind of look at the play ahead maybe or what we’re going to do the next thing defensively or pitching. But we won games in practice. We created a practice that was, in my opinion, that had an intensity level that you couldn’t wait to get to the game so that you could just play and show people what you can and can’t do. And there is a balance in baseball because it’s so long that there’d be certain in drills that would be real high in intensity for a short period of time, then you’d go something where you could relax a little bit.
But I just a hundred percent believe in practice. I think you win there. I think when you learn to understand and value every minute, then ultimately how to respect the hour, what can you get done in an hour is amazing. If you believe that one minute can change anything in a game and 30 seconds can change anything that happens in one minute in 15 seconds, you can control the next at bat by what’s in your mind. And so our motto was, you can’t change the man until you change the mind. And we had a bunker mentality, and I think people relate that sometimes wrong. I think they look at it as, oh man, they’re regimented. Oh man, no, that’s not it at all. What it is is actually when you trust that a kid can take that thing across the white lines with the tenacity that you respect, then you let ’em play.
Because not always are good things going to happen, but if you don’t trust them and they don’t trust you, then you continually interfere during the game as to what they’re doing. And pretty soon they’re going to go, come on coach, man, we worked on this in practice. I just happened to not get to where I was supposed to be or whatever. And I’m guilty of doing that. And so like I said, I’ve told players this before. I got a guy playing in the big leagues for me right now, and he came in and asked me what he needed to do to play every day. And I said, well, that’s kind of hard for me to believe that you need to ask me that question because you come to practice every day and you know what you need to do to play every day. And the one thing we talk about more than anything is our belief system. And when you start believing that you’re going to be as good as I think you’re going to be, then you don’t have to worry about playing every day. All you got to worry about is what color ink? I used to write that lineup because you’re going to be in it. But I mean here again, it was not anything that he was doing physically, it’s just he had doubt. And when you got out, then you lose time.
Your comment, just maybe your comment about games are for the practices, what we’re doing, games are for the players, reminded me of the old Bobby Knight. That was the whole thing. I had a good fortune of watching some of those practices and the intensity, and it almost this coincidental segue here. I was going to ask you, and I think about this all the time myself, so you coaching at George Fox and so do you remember Butch Carter, the old Indiana basketball player, and then absolutely he played in the NBA. And so Butch takes the job at that time, he took his first head coaching job with Toronto Raptors, with Vince Carter, and I had the good fortune of watching Butch coach my brother-in-law, Greg coach high school basketball in Middletown, Ohio, and he took a bunch of football players. Now Greg was a basketball player, but took a bunch of football players and they did a great job and they beat some of the Oak Hills Academy and some of the top programs.
But where I’m going with this was, I remember I was riding with Butch, we’re up in Toronto, I’m up there visiting him, and I asked him the question, this is the young naive Tracy Smith. I said, Hey man, gosh darn, now you go from this and now you’re coaching in the NBA. I was like, what are the practices now in the NBA, whatever, whatever. And he’s like, Tracy, I do the same techniques. I teach the same thing that I did at Middletown High School back in the day, and I just thought it was interesting. And that’s what I wanted to ask you about. George Fox, I think me, I was thinking you had to change and be totally different, treat these guys different way, get away from your core principles because you’re at a high level now. That’s what I was getting to on those same principles apply at Oregon. I think people think or assume, and I was guilty of it too, that you have to create this whole nother alternative reality every level you go up when really, so I’d be curious on your thoughts on that. Do you coach the same way at Oregon State when you’re winning national championship division one level as when you were there? I’m sure there’s differences, but what’s the difference in that?
Well, the difference is that I think what you’re alluding to is absolutely correct. I say this all the time. You could go to a little league practice and find a coach that’s teaching the fundamentals of throwing a baseball very well or bunning, and those fundamentals are very, very consistent. And there are things in the game, in my opinion, it should never change, but there’s things that are always in fluxx. And what changed for me was the fact that if I was going to be an effective leader, I had to be a lifetime learner because great leaders never quit learning. And so I became a better coach and coached somewhat differently from the aspect of how I was able to communicate, maybe how I was able to articulate maybe how efficiently we could do things. We might be doing a drill at George Fox, of course, you had six balls, you had to wait until the other ones got in.
Hey, you need those balls to finish the drill anyway, for example, we run the same bunt defenses at Oregon State that we ran at George Fox. Okay, exact same bunt defenses. But how we changed in how we practice those became completely different because of my learning experience in game. And that is that in games, when you run a drill and practice, you run it maybe, and there are things you should do repetitiously, but if you run a, let’s just say you run a basic bunt drill and you say, we’re going to run this for three minutes, you just run it and you run it again, right? Well, that’s not what happens in the game. You get one shot at it. So what we do is we react to what we did on that bunt defense if we threw the ball and bounced it in the dirt at first.
Now you’ve got guys at first and second, you’re in a completely different defense. If the guy gets to third, now you’re first and third, the catcher has to come out and give you the first and third. So we took our short game defense and evolved it into a game setting to where you could rerun in three or four different defenses in our package instead of just saying, okay, everybody’s the pitcher’s over there playing grab, ask 15 of ’em standing along the line and your turns next and you run out there and Oh, I know we’re running Bundy two. Well, no, it’s not like that. Now you got to pay attention because you got to know who’s on first. You got to know what many outs are. I like it changed what we did and we even got better than that where we even created chaos. And so in other words, first and third guy standing there and he comes sat, I might call Bach, and he’s like, Bach, Bach, you sit there and argue with me. You can’t do that in a game. The coach gets to do that. I’m the coach and gets pissed off, man. He’s not thinking, well, let’s go. What happens when things go upside down? So that’s how that evolved. But you’re a hundred percent right. I think that when you get your tail down to play defense in basketball and cut your man off and get into the rack, it’s the same in high school, college or professional basketball. And so it’s just a matter of how much it means to you to keep him from getting to the rack. And that’s the same it is in baseball. You can put a bunt on, and I had a rule about how we sacrifice bunt and I let you have the freedom to drag bun any way you possibly could as long as it was effective. Sacrifice button was uniform. We were going to do it the same way every guy.
Why is that?
Why is that? Because I think that you have to have some things that are unique to your system that create a discipline that you fall back on. And bunning, the baseball is a very basic thing. They even tell you, we’re going to call it sacrifice.
You have to do is
Move the runner. So don’t worry about how I ask you to do it, giving yourself up right there. So we’re going to do it one way and that way I know my three hitter, Trevor Anick, or I know my one hitter, whoever it may be, Aaron Matthews, they’re all going to bump the same way so that we don’t screw up the sacrifice drag different story. You’re trying to get a hit, man, I’m okay if you can stand on your head and drag go for it. But the sacrifice, that’s a team thing. And I think the guy recognizes that, that’s sitting in the dugout that wants to play that says, Hey man, athlete rutman sacrifices just like I would sacrifice if I’m sitting.
That’s how you build that unity. That’s how you make the respect for your teammate. And we had one or two rules as far as our appearance. That was it. I wasn’t, people look at our club and think that we were extremely disciplined because maybe that I was very, very strict or firm with ’em. No man, the standards by which we lived by and which we played by, we all sat in a room and said, Hey, how many guys want to lose this year? No, I didn’t see anybody raise their hand. How many guys want to win this year? Everybody raised their hand, okay, let’s start talking about winning. How do we win? And then out of that discussion of humanity becomes this complex nonsense of all the shit that happens in baseball, right? Well, if we hit three 10 and if we have an all base percentage of three 70 and if our ERAI go, that’s all great, man, but that’s just a direct result of what we’re committed to.
I noticed you use the word standard too.
Absolutel not rule. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean that about standards, you’re vested in what you do if you’re part of the discussion. But when a guy walks in and puts the thing up on the board and says, all right guys, and for me not anybody else, and there’s been guys that have done this thing better than me by a thousand times and they have their own ways of doing it for me, I always thought it was better when we talked about why we didn’t do something the way that we talked about when they’re the ones that helped make the decision. If I told a kid, Hey man, I think that you need to hit three 40 and field 9 92 and steal 20 bags, and he might be out there struggling saying, well, shit, that wasn’t my, excuse me, that wasn’t my, that was you telling me that I could do that. So I just think a common purpose eliminates ego. I think ego gets in the way of success, and I think that individualism certainly gets in the way of overall production.
It’s funny you just did the illustration of a little bit of who you are. It’s funny because again, back to your national championships and everybody’s, Hey man, pat Casey, and I’ll get questions about, Hey, what’s he like? And we’ve gotten know each other. And so I’m actually looking over here as we’re doing the interview of the couch that we’ve sat on a couple times and had a beer in our hand and a cigar. And those are always fun for me because I would summarize it like this. I would always say the cool part about Pat or Casey, but I said is that he just has this way of making stuff really simple. You talk about these things and we sometimes make life so difficult and the complexities of it. And that’s why I said I think if people spend time with you, it’s profound statements, but they’re really not profound statements. It’s just like you get back to the simple and then you walk away going, you know what? That really makes sense. And what you just said there about even the bunning and how and why you do it, it may seem insignificant, but there’s a bigger meaning behind
That for me. That’s exactly right. And for me, like I said, that was maybe my inability to work in this tech world and this complexity of it and all things that are really important. I still have a profound belief that everything happens behind the uniform, and that’s the guy that’s buttoning it up. And so great leaders find a way to get greatness out of their players or out of their soldiers or out of their employees. Great leaders don’t sit around and talk about how great they are. And we spend a lot of time working on things that people would be shocked at how important they become to us because of someone else on the team.
And if you give somebody a task, you give a guy a shovel, one guy will dig a grave, another guy will dig it, well see, there you go again, you’re doing it again. But I mean, isn’t it true?
So in other words, if you just say, Hey, we’re going to practice for two and a half, three hours a day. I don’t know what the rules are anymore, but it can be just a long drawn out, monotonous deal if there isn’t a reason or a purpose behind that other than yourself, that’s just, and you’re right, I think genius in anything you do is finding the way to not only teach it, but to go ahead and execute it in its simplest form. I mean, there’s not anybody that I’ve ever followed in coaching that didn’t say things that were so, just hit you like a lightning rod, but were so simple. Once you heard ’em, I mean it’s like, and then other guys stand up and talk about, Hey, we got seven guys that got a launch angle of 18% or better, so we’re going to hit just not sure that I could coach in that world. And so it’s amazing what people will do when they believe and the purpose behind it. And that’s pretty could never be wrong. I mean that’s the way I look at it.
Well, if you just look at guys right now, for example, you’ve been in a lot of places and we’ve talked about that. We’ve had good times together. We go out and we go, yeah, case, that’s what I did when I was a kid or whatever. But your conversations with me, there’s always bringing somebody up in your past, whether it be a brother or a friend or a coach that had some type of significance in your life. And never once did I ever hear you say, yeah, this guy took me into the room. We sat down and looked at this computer screen and started figuring out this, that or the other. It was always, yeah, that dude nine, he played center field force us or that coach man, he gave me the freedom to go out and recruit whatever it is. And I do understand the importance of a lot of things in today’s game that are very, and I have deep respect for him. I do. And we use that stuff as well. I just think that sometimes we miss some of the most important things that are right in front of our eyes.
And for me, that’s always been the actual kid that walks into the locker room and then walks out of the locker room and things are so simple. The one question I have every meeting, the first meeting I ever have is how many hours in a week? And I never had anybody ever come in and know how many hours were in a week when they were freshmen. And the only reason I tell ’em that is not because I want them to understand the mathematics behind that, but understand about the fact that that is the one thing that we all have the exact same amount of. So Addie Rutman had one level of talent and Jimmy Smith might’ve had another, can’t control that. Tracy Smith might be six three and Jimmy Smith might be five eight. Time is something that they have the exact same amount of, and so there is no advantage for anybody in the room if you understand that. So it’s why I’m giving you that number so that you understand it because when you come back and figure out how many hours you are required to practice and lift and go to school and study, you’ll understand the amount of time that you get to make a decision of how you are going to create habits in your life, good or bad.
And A hundred sixty eight, a hundred sixty eight, You got it. I had to do the math because I didn’t want you to ask me on camera and it embarrassed me right there. Wasn’t going to ask you me many hours in a week.
Well, it’s a great point. I mean, the general question that I was going to ask you is, and you answer it in every answer you give, like your secret sauce. If you were to, it’s a hard question because it’s too, but what would you say your secret sauce that makes you a little bit different,
Willing to do everything that I ask my players to do? If you’re going to stand in the rain, I’m going to stand in the rain. If you’re going to get out of bed at five, I’m getting out of bed at five, build a trust them that I can make mistakes, let ’em know that I’m going to make mistakes, give them complete and total trust in one another, that I have that same belief in them as a team and there’s things I shouldn’t be involved with. That locker room is theirs. I’m going to come in and when I come in there, I got something to say. I think it’s going to be really important. And so I’m not coming in there very often. That’s your sanctuary. We get out between the white lines, we get out between the white lines and there is nobody, there is nobody that’s going to believe in what we can do more than us. And I just think that there’s a unity or a bond or a character trait of toughness and maybe a little bit of a will to do some things. I’m not a big, and there’s just so many things we can have. We can talk forever. I think it’s more important when man discovers that the difference between his heart and his will, I would say that would be very important to me.
Yep, I agree with that. So yeah, we could talk forever on this. So I’ll ask another question on this and we’ll transition a little bit about our venture that we’re working on together. But I always like this one because I think about it myself and how we evolve. But if you could go back to that young, and first of all, you were telling me how big you were back when you were young, but it just cracks me up when I think about that. If you go back and tell that young Pat Casey way back when and you started your career, what advice would you use now and what you’ve learned some of the key things over the time that you would tell that young one that maybe would cut that learning curve? Because I hope some of the folks that are watching this, some young coaches or whatever, appreciate you and the knowledge, the experience. And what I love about you is you were about as normal a human being as there is, which I love. But what would be something that you could tell that young Pat Casey that maybe you wish you had that that would cut that learning curve?
Well, young, the mistakes I made when I was younger, playing minor league baseball from 21 to 28 were confusing competitiveness with maybe common sense. I don’t know. I didn’t have a lot of patience maybe or a lot of respect for the process. I would guess when I was playing, I just played. I wasn’t fortunate enough. I never saw myself on tape playing a baseball game until I was probably in AAA or aa. I don’t know. We didn’t have high school video. I played three sports, which I’m glad I did. I wish kids would do it now, but probably just a better understanding. I didn’t understand what it meant to be a professional. I just wanted to play and have a good time. I tell my guys all the time, I said, listen, I played in Virginia as far as east is Virginia and in California and in Canada and in South America.
So I have done all, I’ve been in every bar between those. And I promise you one thing, they’re all going to still be selling beer when you’re out of college, so just go ahead and slow down a little bit. But I was never a bad guy ever. I just wasn’t anybody that ever really had a plan when I was playing. I just played and I wish I’d better. I wish I would’ve understood it better. I wish I’d had more respect for the game. I wish I’d have been more coachable. I think sometimes some of your greatest strengths are some of your greatest weaknesses and the lack of discipline probably of I, we didn’t have weights my senior year in 1977 in high school, they came in with a universal gym and the basketball coach said, basketball players can’t lift. I never lifted any weights in my life. And so I didn’t have a regimen of that.
We didn’t have batting cages, so I didn’t have a regimen of that. It was just different. I never forget this. I was in the locker room with John Crook leaving. It must’ve been AA and the last game, and I packed my stuff in there and still had the clay on the bottom of my shoes. I was in the Texas League when I went to spring training. I unpack that same bag the next year and had the same dirt on there. You didn’t fly to Arizona and work out. I was living in Newburg, Oregon. I played city league basketball and had a good time. So I wish I’d had a lot better understanding of the game and what I could have done with the game. But now that I can tell you, maybe it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
I got to coach, I got to learn. I got to be around players that inspired me. And to this day, to this day, the first guy that I ever recruited, he went down to Oregon when we won a milestone game. I think it was like number 1000 in my career or some, this guy’s name’s Frank W. He’s the first guy I ever recruited. For me, that’s way more important than me ever getting hit in the big leagues. And so I would just say that there’s a lot of things I wish I’d have done differently. Not sure that if I would’ve changed those, I’d be in a better spot than I am today. But I’m not one of those guys that ever says, oh, I would never change anything. People say, Hey, I had a great career. I’d never changed anything. I would wish I could change a lot of things I did in my career playing and coaching.
Yeah, me too. Well, perfect. Kind of a segue into the platform and that we’re on, and we’ve both chosen to be a part of this adventure with the diamond agents and the stuff. So I guess I would just ask you, and people can find out more about it hopefully, but what’s the main reason you involved in what we’re doing together at this point in our careers with the diamond allegiance?
Well, I think, you know how this started with me as far as the Diamond Allegiance, you brought me into it when it was basically just the foundation and Sandy wanted to, Sandy wanted some people on that board that would help with what he was doing, and that is to help young kids get involved with baseball, stay involved. And it’s in particular those kids that couldn’t be involved. And when you coach at the division one level, you have a lot of work to do and you’re really concerned with the visual one guys. And when you go out and watch kids play, you watch the visual one guys and you don’t go to a lot of places where kids just play for the fun of it or kids or kids can’t afford it. And so I was happy to be on the foundation. The foundation piece was awesome to me.
And just being on the advisory board, and I don’t know who took that and morphed it into what it was going to be with the Diamond Allegiance, but when you guys shared that, hey, we want to continue to do what we’re doing on the foundation piece, but we think we can help a lot of kids across the country, and in order to do that, we’re going to have to create a model that allows us to interact with young kids. I just thought, man, what a great way for me to give back. You get into your world of coaching and you don’t get to spend a lot of time with that. And I honestly could go to West Delaware, Iowa and recruit a kid on the farm town and watch him play and have just a good time as I could going down to Long Beach and watching the area codes.
And so I just think for me, that’s a great way for me to give back. I want to see kids that are sitting there trying to make a choice. And that is, do I give up baseball? Do I start watching a lot more TV and playing a lot more video games or doing a lot more things that may not be as productive as to where a great game of baseball can get me, whether it’s building relationships. And so I’m inspired as much about the guy that’s at Fringe D one guy and helping him maybe say one word to him. I had a guy that’s with us right now that just called me, one of our teams that’s with us, their owner called me the other day and asked me some advice on a kid that was looking for some help with the mental part of the game.
And I just thought, that’s super cool. But I just think that the one thing that I really long for, and that is to see this allegiance make a difference, the decisions kids choose to make opposed to maybe something they didn’t have that opportunity. So in other words, if we can help two kids that could have never afforded through this allegiance, say, Hey, I got a scholarship to go play for the jackrabbits and I’m going to play baseball this summer. And he plays baseball, discovers that, Hey, I might be able to go to junior college. Or Hey, I met a guy that his dad owns a business that I really want to work in, whatever it may be. I just think we spend too much time inside those four walls thinking about what am I going to do when I’m 78 and hell, who knows where they’re going to be here when I’m 78? And so if we don’t inspire our youth, we’re going to pay for the consequences and therefore I’m involved from that standpoint. I love the game of baseball, baseball. This is such a big part of my life. I don’t want to give that up. So maybe there’s a part of it that feeds me, but I long to see kids understand what this great game can give. And also to, we’ve got so many plans in the works to help offset some of the costs for the families right now, I want to see families go see their kid play. I just think it’s hard when some family has to sit there and say, Hey, we can go to two. We can’t go to that third one. We can’t afford it. Maybe we can do some things that help there. But you just think about organizations. I don’t care if you got 500 kids within your organization, 300 or a thousand. If you affect five kids out of 500 and those five kids get married and have a family, you think about how many kids are going to be affected over the lifetime of that decision.
And even if you only get five out of, that’s just being conservative. I think that’s a big part of what we’re doing. And of course the tech piece of what we can present that helps facilitate the things these coaches are doing and the things that kids need to have at their accessibility to advance in the game. And I think advancing, like I said, I will be just as excited about the guy that never thought he’d make the high school team that made it guy that never thought he’d go to college, that goes to an NAI or three year. I never thought he was going to be AD one that becomes AD one. The guy that never thought he was going to be a big leaguer. That becomes a big leaguer. I think that that’s for me is what’s pretty cool. And then trying to inspire coaches to understand what our roles are as coaches and how important it is that we advance and create and nurture future leaders of our country.
So what would you say as we’re out talking to the organizations, the organization heads and those involved, that those, when they ask the questions, so you’re saying Pat Casey would really take an interest and help us, and he’d really come out and see our kids and talk to our kids. What would you say to that?
I absolutely would. Obviously two places at one time. But you know what? You and I have talked about that. You’ve probably heard me say that four or five times. Hey, Tracy, I’m good. And I do understand that everything we’re doing, my piece is the piece that send me to Texas to sit there and sit with an organization for a day and a half or two days and watch ’em work out and talk to ’em. And that’s what I would like to do. I mean, that’s certainly a big part of it. It’s hard when you sit up in this little corner and people, even if you and I could say that about Connecticut or Texas, but people don’t really know you. It’s funny, the first time I met Garrido, I was a player playing against Fullerton, and he was the coach in 1979, and we were in a regional in Fresno, and they won it and won the whole thing.
And I was a player and I was just like, oh man, we’re playing Fullerton and blah, blah, blah. And I never got the chance to coach against him early because that just wasn’t the way it was. And I went out, played eight years, and he’s moved around with Illinois, Texas, and the first time I met him, I was just blown away about, he is just, just going with this guy’s just like me, man. We’re just talking baseball. You guys ran that relay the other day I saw on tv. I’m just wondering why you trailed with, and I’m just laughing going, honestly, I had this picture in my mind that this guy wouldn’t talk to anybody. His ego was so big, blah, blah, blah. And he was just a great guy. And I think it’s the same there. I don’t think people really have a great perception of a lot of coaches when the only time you see him is in uniform or players. I had a player that was the first rounder, and I had a scout tell me, oh, Casey, he’s got a really bad attitude, and this is where I think that I’ll really help because I think I get to know the player or the organization. But he’s cocky. He’s got a bad attitude. I’m sure he is a guy that comes in late at night. I said, well, lemme tell you, the guy’s a 4.0 student. He doesn’t drink. He hobby is to raise funds for Children’s Christmas deal at his hometown. He works at St. Vincent de Paul, and I get it. He’s got his sunglasses flipped backwards and he’s styling and sometimes he doesn’t. So the misperception of who he more to the story.
What’s that?
There’s more to the story. What would Paul Harvey always say and the rest of the story, whatever Paul Harvey would always say, that’s the rest of the story. Yeah, yeah. No, and I just had to convince that guy that, Hey, look, he may appear that way, but I’m with him every day. And yeah, he does get upset with him. He is really hard on himself. And my job for him was completely and totally just to have him understand how he was being perceived. He ended up being a first rounder. And so I just think those things are right up my alley. I had plenty of people that probably thought I was a jackass when I was playing, and I probably was. And so just things like that are important to me. I don’t really have a, I’m not zeroed in on exactly what my role is with the allegiance other than the fact that I think that as I’ve looked at it from two or three different lenses and felt like that I want to be involved with the game. I want to be involved with people. I want to be involved with helping people. It was just a tremendous opportunity for me. And so that’s how I look at it.