IL Indianapolis Indians

Addicted to the Game

September 9, 2022 - International League (IL)
Indianapolis Indians News Release


So here we are at the parking lot of San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium. Inside the gates, the Padres and Chicago Cubs are tied in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1984 National League Championship Series. The place is packed, and lots of fans without tickets are hanging around outside, just to share the experience. Like that 7-year-old boy over there, with his sister and aunt.

Suddenly, a roar from the ballpark. Steve Garvey has homered for a walk-off Padres' victory (they'd win again the next day to clinch the pennant). The crowd thunder builds like a rolling storm, and the little boy outside is enchanted by it all.

"I remember to this day feeling the parking lot shake," Eric Munson would say 38 years later. If he wasn't in full-blown love with the game of baseball before then, he was after that afternoon.

And look where it's led.

Eric Munson is the hitting coach for the 2022 Indianapolis Indians. That's saying a mouthful when you consider where he was last year: In Dubuque, Iowa, teaching kids the game at the baseball training academy he started in 2013, just as he had been every other year. Fact is, until this season, Munson had never spent a day as a coach in a professional baseball dugout.

And now he's helping tutor guys who are one call from the big leagues.

"This is a lot different. Obviously. It's a lot more of a challenge, but I like being challenged," he was saying one day in the Victory Field dugout, after spending a good part of the afternoon studying the Indians' batting practice. "I like the competition."

It's not exactly your garden variety road to a Triple-A staff. Aside from all those years with Gold Standard Athletics back in Dubuque, his only coaching experience has been in college. But he was once a major league player. Plus, he knows hitting and he knows how to talk so others listen, and isn't that the job description?

"The players have been great. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't, but they've been open to suggestions. As a coach, that's really all you want," he said. "I've felt at home. A lot of that is the organization and the staff and the people I've been around. They've made me feel welcome and they've given me a lot of help and a lot of advice. I feel pretty comfortable, but obviously I'm still learning. You've got to keep learning. If you think you know it all, you're probably full of it."

The unconventional road to Indianapolis is just one interesting Munson tale. So is his first major league game as a player, when he stood at first base with his stomach doing cartwheels. Or why he once left a College World Series field bleeding. And wait till you hear about who was in the stands on the best day of his major league career.

Yeah, he might be a rookie when it comes to coaching professional baseball, but he knows all about the long road to the big leagues, which can have more potholes than Keystone Avenue in March. He's been on it.

So, time for some Munson stories.

It is 1998 in Omaha and his USC team is closing in on the College World Series title. After the last out to clinch the championship, the Trojans celebrate on the field and he's at ground zero. He had chosen to come to USC as a catcher - "Best decision I ever made" - for a chance at this very moment.

"I was at the bottom of the dogpile," he said. "And I remember everyone crashing down and I faceplanted. I got a bloody nose." Not that he minded.

It is the 1999 First-Year Player Draft and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have the first pick. Josh Hamilton. Next are the Florida Marlins. Josh Beckett. Then the Detroit Tigers.

Eric Munson.

A lot of thrills come from being named so quickly on draft day. A lot of money. And maybe, a little burden of expectation. "I never really looked at it that way," he said. "I just wanted to play in the big leagues. Every day I tried to get better."

It is July 18, 2000. For Munson, the moment nearly every young baseball player dreams of when looking at posters on his bedroom wall - his first day in the major leagues. Late in the game against Cincinnati, Munson takes over at first base for the Tigers.

"First putout was Ken Griffey Jr. I'll never forget, for some reason I was nervous, and I never really felt nervous like that before. I just remember thinking, _please dear God, don't hit me a pop-up. _I never had trouble with pop-ups, but I was thinking, just don't hit me a pop-up. Luckily it was a ground ball. I settled in after that."

He had his first at-bat the next day - against Roger Clemens in Yankee Stadium. That's what's called jumping into the deep end of the pool. Lined out to left on the first pitch. "That one happened so fast," he said, "I didn't even have time to think about it."

It is September 19, 2001, and Munson is back with the Tigers. His first major league hit is a single against Minnesota's Eric Milton, and he still has the ball stored away. Two weeks later, he would hit the first of his 49 major league home runs - against Eric Milton. "It's easy to remember those, because it was just one name," he said.

It is June 26, 2004. Munson is having the brightest time of his career, with 18 home runs the season before and on his way to 19 for 2004. He leads off the bottom of the ninth inning of a 6-6 game against Arizona's Brandon Villafuerte and sends the third pitch on a moonshot to deep center. Going . . . going . . . will it ever come down? Not until it lands 457 feet away, at the time the longest home run in the history of Comerica Park, and also a game-winner. Munson savors the cheers from the stands, not realizing that one of the 33,579 fans is named Muhammad Ali.

"I went up to the clubhouse and Muhammad Ali was in the clubhouse. I got my picture taken with him. That was a good day," he said. And the start of a unique streak for the Tigers. It was the first of three consecutive games they would win with a walk-off homer.

It is Sept. 21, 2009, and Munson goes to the plate for the Oakland Athletics, his fourth major league team. The flyout to left against Texas' Eddie Guardado is his 1056th official at-bat in the majors. Also his last. Retirement beckons, and if his career had never been the shooting star that the No. 3 pick a decade earlier might have suggested, he had still played a lot of big-league baseball.

"At the end I was at peace with it because my body just didn't work the way that it used to," he said. "I had slowed down and was breaking down. I knew it was time."

He was 32 years old with a wife and two young children. What next?

Munson returned to USC to complete his degree, then hooked up with the Trojans baseball team as an instructor. Later came an assistant's spot with the 18U team for USA Baseball, and the decision to turn an old building in Dubuque into a baseball training academy.

Baseball had always been in his blood. Teaching how to hit it turned out to be as well.

The nibbles from professional baseball came the next few years but Munson was never quite ready. His children were young, and Gold Standard Athletics needed tending. Still, others looked at him and saw a future back in the game, and when friend Andy Haines became the Pirates' hitting coach this season, he put out feelers to Munson.

Why not Indianapolis? Munson's kids were well along in their teens, and Indy is not so far from home in Iowa. "I was just kind of waiting for the right situation," he said. "Everything lined up.

"Here we are."

Here he is, putting in the same work ethic he has always displayed. Catch Munson after a game in Victory Field, and he is almost always studying film with Brady Conlan, the integrated performance coach. On the road, they're doing the same thing back in their hotel room. There is always something to see, something to learn, something to improve.

And besides, Munson understands the journey so many of the Indianapolis players are trying to make.

"I hope it offers them a little bit of comfort, because I've done everything good, bad and terrible. When they're struggling, we know what it's like to struggle. We know what it's like to be on a hot streak, and all of the stuff in between," he said. "We know when to talk to them and when to leave them alone."

Yeah, it's different in many ways than back in Dubuque working with young kids. But some things are the same - the challenges and pitfalls of trying to hit a moving baseball thrown by a pitcher with malice in his heart.

"I think the biggest thing with this level is the mechanics and moves are pretty good or very, very close," he said. "So, the bigger piece to me is how do we help them with approach. Who are we facing that night, what does the guy have? More the strategic part and I really enjoy that piece of it.

"When you're younger and you're not playing at this level, you can just see the ball and react. You don't have to have as much of a detailed approach. At this level, it's not random how they pitch. They know what your weaknesses are, and they know what your strengths are. To be able to play the game of chess versus back in the day, it was playing checkers. It was a little bit more reactionary. Here you have to think a little bit more.

"Brady and I enjoy helping them with that."

Hitting a baseball can be a merciless and frustrating task, especially for a player who is close enough to the major leagues to smell the popcorn. Munson was there once.

"Because of the level and because these guys are so close, that's a challenge to players as well, to not try and look too far in the future. And also, not look in the past. That's just human nature. Sometimes we get stuck looking in the past or looking in the future but here, you have to be in it today because if you're not, the game can embarrass you. Everybody's been embarrassed in this game."

Much of the above for Munson and Conlan requires them finding what pushes the right buttons for each hitter. Not easy in Triple-A, where the usual situation is players coming and going like the Indianapolis airport. As of late July, 29 different men had an at-bat this season for the Indians.

And if some of this is on-the-job training for Munson, the Indianapolis players seem to appreciate the effort.

Outfielder Jared Oliva, for example.

"We've had a lot of guys come in, a lot of guys go up, and they're just really staying on top of what works for each guy. When the cage opens at 2:30, they're in there at 2:15, when it ends at 3:30, they're there at 3:45," he said. "When things do come up, they're quick to address what drills, what external cues guys might need."

Or Ji-Hwan Bae, who in late July was hitting .300 in his first Triple-A season and has thrived with Munson's keep-it-simple approach.

"That's the best way for teaching for me," he said. "Sometimes when he catches something he comes up and talks first, and then sometimes, I feel weird, but I go to him first and ask something.

"If you cannot trust the hitting coach, you can't do anything. I one hundred percent trust him."

Or Bligh Madris, who was also flirting with .300.

"The most important part in this game, because it is so hard, is to have someone like (Munson) who instills confidence in all the guys. He knows we can play, he trusts all the work we put in every day. He lets us know how good we are and how good we can be on any given night. He doesn't let us dwell on the bad, but he pushes for the good every single day. And he's a workhorse too. Whatever we need to work on, he's there for us."

That's easy for Munson to do, since when he talks of being around baseball, he uses the word addiction.

"I'm having a blast. It's a lot of time, there's a lot of things that go into it, but at no time does it feel like work. We always call it a grind. Yeah, we're grinding because it's every day, like the players, but it's a fun grind. I enjoy the work. When you come out and watch the game, that's your reward."

And sometimes, baseball can be so special that the parking lot shakes. He learned that when he was seven.

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