Not a Slide Guy

Every MLB team has a Minor League farm system to develop players and produce the next generation of big-league talent. Each affiliated farm team has a set of coaches that includes, but is not limited to, a Manager, Pitching Coach, Hitting Coach, and normally one miscellaneous 4th Coach. On top of that, each MLB organization has “Roving Instructors”. These coaches teach specific skills/positions and are responsible for traveling a couple of weeks a month to each of the affiliate teams to work with the players that fall under their specific umbrella. The roving instructors sometimes have a “Coordinator” title and each team normally has one for catching, pitching, infield, outfield, base running, mental skills, and sometimes bunting.

When I was in Low-A with the Red Sox, the team named Tom Goodwin as the new base-running coordinator. “Goody.” Goody is the man! You cannot be in a room with him and not be smiling or laughing the whole time. His positivity is infectious. He played in the big leagues forever… and when he is 100 years old he will still beat me in a foot race in my prime.

Now, admittedly, I am not the best base-runner in the world… but as I understood it, part of Goody’s job was to encourage players (minor leaguers, and especially lower-level minor leaguers) to push the envelope. To run until they made you stop. To learn your limits by testing them.

Whenever any base-running coordinator comes into town, the team does extra “off-the-bat” base-running reads during batting practice. When Goody came around, he would always create some sort of competition about who could advance on the most dirt ball reads in a week, or how many times the team could go first to third on a single.

So you can imagine my surprise when he told me the exact opposite.

I was on first base. I said something about trying to steal, or advance even if it was close… and he told me “No”.

I said something like, “Isn’t it your job to tell me to push the envelope?”

And he said, “Hell yeah it is. But not you. You’re not a slide guy.”

I had never heard that term… “Not a slide guy?”

“Yeah, you’re slow. If you have to slide… you shouldn’t have gone.”

It makes sense. I had just never heard it phrased like that. He’s right. I’m NOT a slide guy.