The Pecan Park Eagle

1.) In the first place, a baseball bench coach does not coach the bench nor the players sitting upon same.

2.) To some variable degree, the bench coach either helps the manager coach or else serves as his clandestine ventriloquist on tough decisions during the game.

3) The bench coach is there to remind the manager of his best choices for relief pitchers and pinch hitters during the game.

4) The bench coach is available for games of checkers with the manager during lengthy rain delays.

5) The bench coach is there in the bar to pull the manager out at 11:30 PM with the consistent reminder: “It’s not good to make curfew rules for the team that you don’t plan to keep yourself.”

6) The bench coach is there to assure the manager that he could take the team to more World Series wins than Casey Stengel, if he would only stay away from the booze, the track, and/or the ladies of easy acquaintance.

7) The bench coach reminds the manager to stay in touch with his wife or girl friend on lengthy road trips.

8) The bench coach sometimes becomes the manager’s “all hell breaks loose” listening catcher when the wife and girl friend find out about each other.

9) Trained psychotherapists and naturally intuitive .200 minor league player veterans are better qualified for service as bench coaches than any righteously straight-laced former Hall of Fame player ever will be. Members of the latter group simply haven’t seen enough of the things that happen to the ordinarily flawed manager to be of much help in matters of domestic discord and/or substance abuse.

10) The bench coach who sometimes ascends to managerial status invariably then will select a virtuous Hall of Fame player as his own personal bench coach.

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