Player, Coach and Manager
Published on June 14, 2006 under Northwest League (NWL1)
Everett AquaSox News Release
As the manager of the Tacoma Rainiers, Dave Myers once got a call in the dugout during the national anthem from a Seattle Mariner front office person telling him to take a player out of the lineup because he was being promoted to the Major Leagues.
Myers told his boss he had never pulled a player in the middle of the national anthem and he wasn't going to do it that night.
"All right,'' the exec said, "but if he gets hurt, it's your ---.''
The player, Raul Ibanez, emerged from the game unscathed. And Dave Myers came away with his body intact.
One of the pleasures of being a manager at triple A: You often get to tell a kid his life-long dream has come true.
And so, Myers got to break the news to Ibanez that night.
After some unsettling moments.
Ibanez, now the M's regular left fielder, has always been a hard worker, a guy who hustles, a guy who is always trying to get better.
But that night he did something that was very un-Ibanez-like. In his second and final at-bat, he grounded out to the first baseman. After running hard halfway down the line, Ibanez jogged the last few yards to first.
Whereupon Myers took him out of the game.
And upset his teammates.
Knowing Ibanez and his play-hard attitude, they couldn't believe that Myers would sit him after one slight indiscretion.
In the clubhouse afterwards, Myers instructed one of his coaches to not let Ibanez leave.
As for the player himself, he was disconsolate, sitting at his locker with his head down.
Myers let him stew a while longer, then called him into his office.
Right away, Ibanez began to apologize for not hustling.
"Raul,'' Myers interrupted, "I didn't take you out for that. I took you out because you're going to the big leagues.
"He was stunned. He didn't know what to say.''
Dave Myers won't be telling anyone that he's going to the big leagues this season. But he more than likely will have the pleasure of informing someone that he's being promoted in the M's minor league system.
And to go from the Class A short-season Northwest League, where Myers is managing the Everett AquaSox, to Wisconsin in the Class A full-season Midwest League is a big deal to a kid in his first season of professional baseball.
Not quite on a par with being called up to the majors. But big, nonetheless.
It means the kid is ready for some better competition.
And that's what minor league ball is all about: getting players ready for the next level.
For most players in the M's organization, it begins either at Peoria in the Arizona League or Everett in the Northwest League, in which teams play a 76-game schedule, beginning in mid-June and ending in early September.
Myers has been in the NWL before. As a player and as a manager.
He began his playing career at Bellingham with the baby M's in 1981, then returned there as manager in 1991 and '92, winning a league title the second year.
He came back to the NWL last year, spending the summer at Everett as a special assignment coach with the AquaSox.
If anyone knows Mariner baseball, it's Dave Myers. He has spent his entire professional career in the M's organization, eight years as a player, and beginning his 18th season as a manager or coach.
That includes four years at the big-league level as the third base coach for the M's. One of those years was the American League record-breaking 116-victory season of the 2001 team that went to the American League Championship Series, losing to New York in five games.
Myers' right arm got a workout that year. "I had a lot of people coming my way,'' he said, referring to the 927 runners who crossed home plate.
Needless to say, it was the most memorable year of his career. "Nothing else compares.''
That was a very confident team. With victories piling up like snow in Buffalo in mid-winter, Myers recalled a game halfway through the season in which M's starter Paul Abbott gave up five runs in the first inning. "I thought to myself, 'It's going to take a little longer to win this game,' '' Myers said. "It was a feeling everybody had.''
When most of the coaches were let go along with manager Bob Melvin after the 2004 season, Myers didn't get any offers to stay in the big leagues. Perhaps it was because he had never had to go outside the M's organization to look for a job. The M's knew they had a good baseball man and always had a job for him.
And then there was this: "I've never been much of a self-promoter.''
As a manager, he didn't have to promote himself. He let his actions speak.
In 12 seasons as a minor league field boss, his teams won four division titles and one league championship, and his overall record was 732-645.
He'll try to embellish that mark with the AquaSox this season, realizing that his first duty is to develop players. "I enjoy teaching this game,'' he said.
His inaugural address to his players dealt with "how we conduct business. Play hard and act professional.''
He has a full complement of coaches to work with, unlike the first manager he played for. That was in 1981 at Bellingham, and the manager, Jeff Scott, had not one single coach Scott was the pitching coach, the hitting coach, in addition to doing everything else, including throwing batting practice every day.
"We had ratty uniforms, ratty equipment, ratty facilities,'' Myers said. "We did the best we could (with what they had.)''
So when people remark to him "how far you've fallen'' from his years with the big-league club, he muses, "It's all in what you compare it to.''
"I pushed that bus,'' he said, alluding to the junker known as the "Yellow Banana,'' a decrepit vehicle that transported the Bellingham team around the Northwest when it wasn't sitting at the side of the road with mechanical problems
Initially, Myers was to return to Everett as a coach this year, but the man who was supposed to manage the AquaSox, Jim Horner, went to Wisconsin instead when the would-be manager there had some personal problems and asked to stay with the Peoria team in the Arizona League.
Myers hadn't managed since 2000, and was ready to get back into it.
He remembers a time during his career when he sat on the bench for two weeks, watching Darnell Coles, a first-round draft choice, play shortstop. "I didn't like it,'' Myers said. "I never want to do that to a player.
"In our system, we try to use our players, not have them sit for any length of time. They need to be ready (to play) if they're not in the starting lineup.''
Myers isn't given to hystrionics when things don't go his way, but he's been known to let his emotions boil over every now and then in a game. He has been ejected a few times, but the majority of them, he said, were calculated.
"When the game started, I was pretty certain I was going to be ejected,'' he said. "The team needed me to get ejected.''
He makes this guarantee. "I won't challenge Pedro's record of six ejections in the first half of the season,'' he said, referring to former AquaSox manager Pedrol Grifol.
But if he comes out before the game with the lineup card and gets into an argument with the umpires, you'll know he's headed for an early shower.
Northwest League Stories from June 14, 2006
- Player, Coach and Manager - Everett AquaSox
- Minor League Baseball a Personal Paradise for AquaSox Trainer - Everett AquaSox
- Surprise / Honor your Father this Sunday - Salem-Keizer Volcanoes
- Boise Hawks prepare for Media Day - Boise Hawks
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