Adversity No Match for New Tribe Hitting Coach

INDIANAPOLIS - It is July 16, 1997, and the moment Long has dreamed about since he was a kid playing catch with his dad in the backyard is now right before him. First at-bat as a big leaguer - a Kansas City Royal, to be exact. Ninth inning at Oakland, pitcher Gary Haught on the mound. Here comes the first major league pitch Long has seen in his career, and . . .

Well, we'll get to what happened next in a minute. It wasn't something you see every day.
 
Meantime, welcome to Long's classroom, 21 years later. Have a seat. Well, there actually aren't many of those. This is a working room - the batting cage inside the hull of Victory Field, where the Indians have been swinging, and Long has been teaching.
 
"I like the challenge. Hitting's hard," he said, now in his second decade as a coach. "The most rewarding thing is seeing these guys go through trials and tribulations and then reaching their dreams and goals, whatever that might be. That's the big picture right there."
 
At last glance, the big picture included the Indians leading the International League in batting average and doubles, and near the top in a bunch of other offensive categories. So, it's not a bad time to be the Indianapolis hitting coach.
 
"We've got some guys that can hit. I don't think that has a lot do with me as much as it does with them," Long said. "At the end of the day, it's more rewarding for me to help these guys impact a major league club, and help them fulfill their dreams, like I once was trying to."
 
Ah, yes. About that dream.
 
Start in Pasadena, Texas, with a little kid who lived for games. Any games. "I just love to compete. The compete part is what kept me outside on summer days," Long said. "We're talking back yard, front yard, wherever the football game was, the basketball game, anything going on."
 
He wrestled. He even dabbled in BMX racing. And he worshiped the Houston Astros, playing just up the road, most especially fellow Texan Nolan Ryan.
 
(By the way, Pasadena was home to the famous honky-tonk Gilley's, where the hit John Travolta 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy" was filmed. And yes, Long has both been to Gilley's and seen the movie).
 
Next, Dobie High School, and a painful playoff loss to rival Deer Park and its tall star pitcher - Andy Pettitte. "We're still friends to this day," Long said.
 
Next, the fork in the road. Long had signed to go to college power LSU, but the Royals drafted him in the second round, so he decided to go that direction. "I missed out on some rings at LSU, but I wouldn't trade some of the memories and friendships that I made in those several years of being a Royal."
 
Then, the climb up the minor league ladder in the Kansas City organization. The baseball hopscotch, from Eugene to Rockford to Wilmington to Wichita to Omaha. Playing for Omaha meant there was a visit to a certain spiffy new ballpark called Victory Field.
 
"I still remember the guys complaining the place was so big. I did hit a homer that series," he said. "You don't remember all your home runs, but this one I remember because it was a big park. I hit it down the line, it was two strikes off a lefty throwing really hard.
 
"That was the biggest memory, and also just how nice the place was overall. Then coming back this year, seeing it again, it hasn't really changed. The stuff that impresses me here is the stuff people don't see; how clean it is down here behind the scenes."
 
He waited for that one last step - to the Royals. But there was one more obstacle to overcome. A moving one.
 
Long was in Nashville with his Omaha team, crossing a street to go to lunch, taking a glance at traffic. "One guy was letting me go basically, and then the guy beside him, I didn't see," Long said. Next thing he knew, he was bouncing off a car.
 
"I sat out of the lineup that night. I was fine, I had some scratches. If you see my rookie card, if you look at it, my elbow's scratched up. That's from the windshield of this car. Something could have happened really bad there, and I could have missed my opportunity."
 
The Royals called him up the next day, and Ryan Long -- with a scratched elbow and the new conviction to look twice before crossing the street -- headed to Oakland.
 
So, we're back to that first pitch from Haught. Here it comes, and . . .
 
Kerplunk.
 
"He drills me the first pitch. I'm not sure if it was on purpose or not. Maybe I should have charged him. I could have went down in history as the first person who charged the mound on the first pitch he saw in the big leagues. It didn't hurt. You had so much adrenaline, he could have hit me in the face, it wouldn't have hurt."
 
Yeah, some guys whiff on their first at-bat, others ground out, a lucky few homer. Long trotted to first base after taking one in the - well, that's the thing. He can't remember just where he was hit.
 
He flied out as a pinch-hitter out the next day, and then the Royals moved on to Seattle. On July 18, Long was in the lineup, and look who was starting for the Mariners.
 
Randy Johnson. The Big Unit, just reaching his terrifying prime.
 
Welcome to the big league, kid. There was nearly a full house in the Kingdome, including Long's parents. And a 6-foot-10-inch future Hall of Famer on the mound.
 
"First at-bat, I got a pitch about 90, 93 (miles per hour). I popped it up. I hit it so high, I thought it was going to hit the roof. The confidence goes up, I'm thinking, I can get this guy.'<br>&nbsp;<br>"The second at-bat, got a guy on, hit a ball hard up the middle."<br>&nbsp;<br>It was Long's first major league hit, and first RBI. They came against a man who would go 20-4 that season and strike out 4,875 batters in his career -- second only to Nolan Ryan, Long's boyhood hero.<br>&nbsp;<br>Long wanted the baseball, of course. There's never been a player born who didn't want the ball from his first big league hit. "Griffey (Ken Jr.) fielded it, he comes up trying to throw the guy out at the plate, the ball's bouncing around, I'm thinking,Oh man, there goes my ball.'"
 
Long did finally get it, however. Still has it.
 
"What a memory. I couldn't have asked for a tougher opponent to get the first hit off of. I followed up with this-I also had my first two (big league) strikeouts off him. I went on a long list of major league baseball players who were struck out by Randy Johnson."
 
Five days later, Long would get his second hit - and second RBI - off Minnesota's LaTroy Hawkins. Alas, they would be his last. He was sent back to Omaha and never returned. His major league career was over after six games, nine at-bats, two hits, two RBI and 28 pitches seen - all of them glorious, even the one that hit him. He was gone before the Royals finished their road trip, and never played in a home game.
 
That high and low have stayed with Long to this day, as a coach.
 
"The one thing we tell these guys when they go up is, `Man, don't come back.' You hate to see them come back. You feel for them. You're doing this to be there, you want to stay. It's a letdown. So, you've got to find a way - and this is where I could have been better, and I try to help these guys with this - you've still got to find a way to push. You've got to push through it and try to get yourself back. I never did.
 
"Once you get a taste of it . . . I felt like I still had more to give."
 
Long spent three more years as a player, eventually ending up in the White Sox organization. After the 2000 season, the White Sox talked to him about coaching. He was married, would one day be starting a family. He figured it was time to get a steadier job - after a .262 minor league career average, 94 home runs and 440 RBI.
 
"You want to keep that shirt on your back. I love coaching, but playing's the best. But I love the decision I made at the end."
 
He's worked his way up the Pirates minor league coaching ladder, just as he did as a player for Kansas City - Bradenton, Altoona, West Virginia and now Indianapolis. Always looking for a way to get more hits from his players, the way he once did from himself.
 
"You start from the bottom in the high school draft, it's a long way away. It's not like some of these college guys who skip some levels. That's one of the things I have that I can draw from. I did play on every level, and now I've pretty much coached at every level, except the major leagues."
 
Coaching hitting can sometimes be just as maddening as trying to do it. The reality is still the same - a man at the plate is going to fail most of the time.
 
"It can drive you crazy," he said. "On a good night you're still going to have three or four guys who aren't going well. There's always work to be done. But that's what I love about it. There's a lot of adversity.
 
"I think you just keep growing with the challenges and the adversity of it, and just learn from it, and hopefully you're helping people out from what you've learned."
 
If Victory Field hasn't changed much since Long's first visit in 1997, his life has. He and Olivia have been married going on 18 years, and son Easton is seven, showing early signs of being a pretty good natural hitter.
 
"The coolest thing I've done is not worked with him, and just let him watch," Long said. "He's lucky. He goes to our games and gets to see professional hitters. He gets to see what right looks like a lot. He's not around what wrong looks like."
 
This is Long's first season coaching at the Triple-A level. Is his classroom any different?
 
"Main goal, no. Trying to get the guy to the next level. How I do it, yes. There's a greater sense of urgency, there's more on the line now. They're close to the big leagues."
 
Just as Long once was. He'll always be the guy hit by his first pitch, and he'll always have that single against Randy Johnson.
 
"That's going to obviously be my highlight. At the end of the day you always want more. You wish you could have been on a winning team and had a chance to do those things. There's another reason I keep the uniform on. Hopefully we can have an impact and bring a championship to Pittsburgh."