BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED
What if you could discover the secrets of the most successful coaches and athletes and become the best in the game. What separates the best coaches and players from the rest? Become the player coaches dream of having on their team. Step inside the dugout with the Baseball Coaches Unplugged, where every episode is a journey of triumph, resilience, and inspiration. Hosted by Ken Carpenter, a 27 year veteran high school baseball coach with a passion for unlocking the secrets of athletic greatness.
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BASEBALL COACHES UNPLUGGED
Baseball Blueprint For Effective Coaching
Ever wondered what separates a good coach from an elite one? Learn from Ryan McGinnis, a two-time Wisconsin State Championship baseball coach and Athletic Director, as he shares the secrets behind his success and the indispensable role of high effort from everyone involved in the game. From players to umpires, Ryan discusses the expectation of giving one's best and the crucial qualities he seeks when hiring coaches. Our episode also takes you on a journey through Ryan's beloved Door County, Wisconsin, and reflects on how his formative years at a minor league ballpark influenced his approach to coaching and leadership.
Relive the nostalgia of a baseball-infused childhood and discover the essential virtues of humility and passion in sports. Drawing inspiration from his experiences as a bat boy, Ryan stresses the importance of staying humble and continually striving for improvement. He delves into the significance of understanding each player's unique background, balancing competitiveness with empathy, and fostering a supportive community. Ryan's reflections on receiving the ABCA ethics award emphasize the value of accountability and humility, drawing parallels to the humility exemplified by Jesus Christ.
Unlock the blueprint for effective coaching through meaningful communication and personal growth. Ryan offers insights into the attributes of elite coaches, focusing on active listening, continuous learning, and the courage required in leadership. From managing parent-coach dynamics to maintaining respect within the team, this episode is packed with practical advice for aspiring coaches. Learn how to foster a culture of respect and accountability, navigate umpire interactions, and support the development of young athletes. Join us for a wisdom-filled conversation that promises to elevate your coaching game and enrich your approach to leadership in baseball.
Join the Baseball Coaches Unplugged podcast where an experienced baseball coach delves into the world of travel baseball, offering insights on baseball coaching, leadership skills, hitting skills, pitching strategy, defensive skills, and overall baseball strategy, while also covering high school and college baseball, recruiting tips, sports coaching, and fostering a winning mentality and attitude in baseball players through strong baseball leadership and mentality.
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high effort from everybody that's involved, and the umpires are a huge part of a game, so I expect high effort from our players. I expect high effort from our staff, myself included. I expect high effort from the umpire.
Speaker 2:You're locked into Baseball Coaches Unplugged. I'm your host, ken Carpenter, and thanks for joining the show. In this episode, you're going to discover what two-time Wisconsin State Championship baseball coach, ryan McGinnis at Kimberly High School and he's also the athletic director shares what he looks for when he hires coaches, why you should expect high effort from everyone who's involved and this includes the umpires and a step-by-step process to handling parents who are unhappy.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged with Coach Ken Carpenter, presented by Athlete One. Baseball Coaches Unplugged is a podcast for baseball coaches, with 27 years of high school baseball coaching under his belt, here to bring you the inside scoop on all things baseball, from game-winning strategies and pitching secrets to hitting drills and defensive drills. We're covering it all. Whether you're a high school coach, college coach or just a baseball enthusiast, we'll dive into the tactics and techniques that make the difference on and off the field. Discover how to build a winning mentality. Inspire your players and get them truly bought into your game philosophy Plus, get the latest insights on recruiting, coaching, leadership and crafting a team culture that champions productivity and success. Join Coach every week as he breaks down the game and shares incredible behind-the-scenes stories. Your competitive edge starts here, so check out the show weekly and hear from the best coaches in the game. On Baseball Coaches Unplugged show weekly and hear from the best coaches in the game on Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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Speaker 2:For those listeners who are just joining the Baseball Coaches Unplugged podcast, thanks for joining. But to the loyal listeners who check in every Wednesday, I need to answer the question why switch from Athlete One podcast to Baseball Coaches Unplugged? I've decided to go all in with baseball coaches and give the listeners the coaching insights from the best baseball coaches across the country, whether it's high school, college or at the professional level. I'd like to explore what makes them successful and hear great stories along the way. I hope you'll stay with me and make sure and tell your friends about Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
Speaker 2:If you enjoyed today's show. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave us a review. It helps us to grow the show. Now to our guest, ryan McGinnis. In 2022, he received the ABCA National Ethics Coach of the Year Award. Let's jump in. Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged. Joining me today is Ryan McGinnis, two-time state champion head coach at Kimberly High School in Wisconsin, and he's also spent four years at Xavier University as a coach Coach. Thanks for taking the time to be on the baseball coaches unplugged.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate it, Ken. Good to be here.
Speaker 2:I almost slipped up and said athlete one there. So making that transfer over. Well, I got to start off by asking you you're an athletic director and a high school baseball coach. You've got to be slammed throughout the entire school year. What's your favorite place to take a vacation?
Speaker 1:Well, we have a place just about an hour and a half north of us, door County. Our family loves to go there. It's on the water, a lot of water, a lot of good eating places and just a good relaxing place. But I have an athletic family too, so we like to go to the ballpark. We have a minor league team here, and when the kids were young, kind of our vacations were to the fan fests and futures games. Before we didn't go to the all star games because those were high price deals, but we'd go the weekend before and go to the fan fest. We did probably four or five different ones of those. But yeah, door County, just north of us, a little bit north of Green Bay. We're about a half hour south of Green Bay, so that's our place to go to relax.
Speaker 2:So it's safe to say you're a Packer fan and a Milwaukee.
Speaker 3:Brewers fan.
Speaker 2:There you go. I like that Well. As a kid you grew up around minor league baseball. Did you realize that was going to have an impact on you and your future?
Speaker 1:career, no question.
Speaker 2:Or you're now a baseball coach and athletic director.
Speaker 1:Yeah, without a doubt I was so blessed to live where we lived and be raised in the family I was raised in. I mean, I was at a minor league park, probably when I was four years old until I bat boyed, probably when I was four and five, and I could only partially do it because I couldn't reach the top of the dugout to put the helmets up there. You know, that's, that was the deal, and it was the old minor league park. You know that you could probably suspect a little grandstand and then a bunch of a bunch of fiberglass bleachers down the lines and um, but we were in the clubhouse and I have two older brothers and my family, we, we hosted players and so, um, they were the white socks organization at that time.
Speaker 1:But just being at the ballpark every day, um, really kind of shaped who I am and you got to see what I really love about life is just people's stories and I learned early on man, everybody's got a story, you know, and no better place to hear a story or tell a story than in a clubhouse. And I'm just grateful my parents allowed me to do that because obviously a clubhouse is not the place you necessarily want to send young kids but we had a good upbringing, kind of could tell right from wrong and met a lot of great people in in the baseball world. So it was, it was a love of mine from the get go and I'm just forever grateful I was. I was in a minor league town.
Speaker 2:Well, you I believe it was in 2021, you received the ABCA ethics award for coaching and you got to speak at the ABCA convention. That to me I haven't met you prior to this podcast. That says a lot about you.
Speaker 1:I think, well, I appreciate that, yeah, and there's. Yeah, it was certainly humbling to get that, because I have plenty of flaws, there's no question about it. But to have other coaches kind of recognize you as someone who tries to do things the right way and when I don't, I'm accountable to that, I don't try to shy away from that, and that's what we as coaches try to do with our kids is you raise them to be accountable and try to make good decisions, but we all make poor ones. But that award I'm not sure anybody on this earth is worthy of that award, you know, because we all are broken and flawed. But that was a neat award to get and with some of the names that are on that award who have won it in the past, it was pretty special.
Speaker 2:Well, you've been very successful as a coach. Like I said earlier, you've got two state titles under your belt and, uh, being, you know, talking about being the ethics side of thing with with the coaching. How important is it for players to be humble when they're part of what I from my tells me, one of the top programs in the state of Wisconsin?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I think, if you understand the goal and our goal on the baseball field is to get better every day, individually and collectively, and if that's your goal every day and that's a chore to get kids or adults to believe because we want to chase trophies and we want to chase headlines or clicks or, you know, money or whatever it is but if it truly is to try to get better every day and to get better collectively every day, we know that that is going to be imperfect and bumpy road at best, and so I think our kids have bought into that, our parents have bought into that we have a community that's invested in in their kids. So I'm fortunate to be that, probably similar to the Dublin, you know it's a, it's a good Midwestern values and people that know the value of work ethic. So that's you know. And then we try to continue to like any coach, and then we try to continue to like any coach. You try to kind of pepper your kids with not new things but different ways to go about it. So our team motto we have SHSH on the back of our hats, for stay humble, stay hungry, and so when you break apart the term humility, there's a lot to that word and I'm a former English teacher to that word and I'm a former English teacher and so we spend a lot of time in our program defining words and understanding that there's a connotation and denotation to every word. And so you can look up a word in the dictionary and get the definition. That would be the denotation, but then what that word brings to a person is the connotation.
Speaker 1:And we all bring different when we say trust. If you're talking to a kid who's from a broken home, whose dad cheated on mom or mom cheated on dad, or maybe it was abusive or whatever, the word trust is much different than somebody who was raised in a home that was fostered with a loving mom-dad relationship, and that doesn't make one kid better or worse than the other. That's just their story and they have to hopefully own that story and share that story and then receive the story of their teammate or classmate respectfully and openly and meek and mild, and you don't want to win and you're not going to be competitive and we spin that on its head and say, no, that's not true. Our creator, jesus Christ, was as humble as they come and he could have done whatever he wanted at the turn of a hand and so loving people and accepting their stories, but also competing and wanting to win.
Speaker 1:And that's the stay hungry is. We all need to get better all the time, and so where in there do we find time to celebrate? Where in there do we find time to really buckle down and get after it? And that's really the secret I think to life is a lot of people go through life chasing things and they wake up one day and they're 75 and they don't know what they've been chasing.
Speaker 2:And so we need to know what we're chasing, we need to know why we're chasing it, and we need to take time to enjoy and appreciate all of the things we come across throughout our journey well, I'm a big fan of celebration and enthusiasm with a team, uh, but a lot of stuff you see now with you know, from high school, all the way up to the professional level, is the celebration that, uh, I don't know. I guess you could say is a little bit over the top. What is your take on? Um? I I've always been a big fan of saying act like you've been there before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think my take on it is this if it's and we spend quite a bit of time, you know, with our leadership group in our program we call it unity council. We spent quite a bit of time with those guys saying what do we want to put on social media as a program? Cause I personally have a problem with self-promotion. I think your actions speak for who you are and you know I used to when I was a player, you know I was back in the college player back in the early 90s. I played NAIA baseball at St Xavier University in Chicago and on my batting gloves, you know, I had Franklin batting gloves, so they had a little thin strip that you, you put over Um and I had initials for the work praises the man, meaning you don't need to speak, man, you just got to let your actions speak, and that's not only in a baseball field. You don't have to walk around saying this is what you did, because that's just to me a turnoff. But but I do say, if it's genuine, if your passion and celebration is genuine, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:And I get goosebumps and teary-eyed and fired up when I see anybody doing anything productive with passion playing a guitar, playing the piano, singing, dancing, riding a skateboard, dunking a basketball, hitting a baseball. Dancing, riding a skateboard, dunking a basketball, hitting a baseball, making a great pitch, digging a volleyball, construction crew, finishing a home, you know, or whatever it is that somebody does with genuine passion and sincerity, that's reason to get fired up. So what we? So our guys, we've been blessed with guys that kind of you know, understand that or believe in that, and so if it's for us and for our guys and toward us, and not directed to putting someone else down or embarrassing somebody or trying to humiliate or or just for a social media click, then it's, then it's fair game. Man, be fired up to do things. You know, after someone hits a home run, go meet them at home plate, but keep the keep the celebration in house to our guys and to our team, and that's been successful so far.
Speaker 2:But we revisit that all the time, because I don't take for granted that can go sideways in a quick hurry, you know, with one kid saying one word, yep.
Speaker 1:Well, what do coaches around the state expect when they play Kimberly baseball? Well, first of all, you know I'm so fortunate to be in Wisconsin. We have such great high school baseball and such great travel baseball, where our travel coaches respect the high school game and kids and coaches for that matter, and it's really been a positive relationship overall. And so we have a lot of great programs, a lot of great players and I think we've kind of seen that even in the major league draft over the last many years quite a few first round picks, quite a few top five round picks, a bunch of division one college players, hopefully. What they expect when they play Kimberly.
Speaker 1:I don't want to speak for them, but what we work hard to do when we walk into a park is I don't want anyone feeling comfortable playing us. They know that we are going to play collective and not individual. We are going to be blue-collar from the get-go when we walk in. We're there to compete and we're going to play the game hard and we're going to play the game right when it's over. It's a respect. We only want to play teams that are going to give us their best shot. I don't want to play a rough shot team so we get a quick, easy win and it helps our seeding. I want to play teams that are of the same mindset. Man, they're going to swing the bats. They're going to know how to play baseball. They're going to keep you on your heels on defense and they can bunt the baseball. They're going to have catchers that can throw the ball on a stolen base is not a token. Their pitchers are going to compete and not be a you know they're going to have a pace to the game.
Speaker 2:So hopefully that's what other teams feel like when Kimberly shows up like we're in for a dogfight. Well, I wanted to lean toward a little bit here the athletic director side of things, because you've been a teacher, you're a coach and you're also an athletic director and what it doesn't necessarily have to be just baseball, but what separates the good coaches from the great coaches?
Speaker 1:In no particular order, I would say the ability to build relationships with their coaches and kids and then with parents in the community. So the ability to build relationships, a work ethic, a tenacious work ethic, um, a knowledge of the game, um, whatever game or subject matter they're teaching, because that matters. You know, sometimes I think the last five to ten years it's the we want to make these better people in life, and we do absolutely. But you better know your dang content. And so what I tell our coaches and our parents is you know, when I was an english teacher, if they're coming to class every day and they love mr mcginnis, but they're not learning how to read, write, think or analyze any better than what they did when they got there, I'm, that's not a success. You know, um and so, and then I think an underrated one by far to the elite coaches is they have to have the ability to listen and know what their players are thinking, and you only do that by listening to them, asking really good questions and listening to them and not feeling like you have all the answers. We can certainly tell some things, I think, early on. I mean, the longer I coach, the more I realize I don't know, and I think that's true to life and I think that's true to anything that has any substance to it. The more you learn, the more you figure out you don't know and the more you keep learning. That's the fun of what we have.
Speaker 1:But we have to continue to have conversations with our players and with our coaches so we know where they're coming from, and we have a big deal in our program that communication is a two-way street in two ways. You have to be able to approach people and have conversations. You have to be able to be approached and have conversations, and in those conversations whether I initiate or the player initiates or parent initiates or I initiate, you have to be able to listen to understand, and you have to be able to speak to be understood. And so that's imperfect, right. We fail at that all the time. Everybody, even the best communicators, fail at that all the time, because we're human. But that is where the breakdown happens, when kids are frustrated. They either didn't receive the information properly, so the coach needs to deliver it better, or they don't want to listen to it, like I don't want to hear that. I'm not playing, I think I should be, and this isn't right, and so you usually can figure out pretty quickly where that breakdown is. But those are things that I feel elite coaches do.
Speaker 1:You work your tail off. You're able to build relationships and in that I don't want to take this for granted, if you build relationships, because this is not a given, but build relationships and you have to be able to teach. And so you have to be able to give nuggets and not overflow people. You have to be able to figure out what a person can digest or what a team can digest. You got to be timely with your information and not just spew information. So people think you're smart with your information and not just spew information. So people think you're smart.
Speaker 1:And then you have to know your content and the sport. You've got to continue to grow in that. And then you have to be able to listen to your players and your coaches and then make tough decisions. And so courage is. You know courage is. Any great leader has to have courage, because a lot of times as a leader you're out on an island when you're making a tough decision and if it works and people jump on that island with you and if it doesn't, they bolt the other way. But you have to be able to do that and keep moving forward.
Speaker 2:Well, to help a coach out there that maybe it's an assistant wanting to go for a head coaching job, or maybe a head coach is wanting to move to another school. When they come in for interviews, what do you see is that a coach needs to really get that point across to you as an athletic director. And what are some of the mistakes some coaches make that maybe keep them from getting that head coaching position?
Speaker 1:Well, I think some of the mistakes people make and I think this is in any field, but I'll just speak to baseball I think it's a race to get the job rather than a race to continue to get better. And so when they come in, when anyone comes in for an interview, or even a player, when a high school player is talking to me or a coaching staff, I don't like talking about like the job, I like talking about how are you going to, how are you going to continue to get better? And if you continue to get better that job, you're probably going to have an opportunity at that job. So a lot of times what I see in coaches and I'm getting older, you know, so I don't want to say young coaches, but I'm really blessed that I was surrounded by quality coaches growing up and then sprinkled in there were some not so good coaches and I was of the mindset like we talked about. I mean, I grew up, obviously in a clubhouse and around baseball and was was, you know I'd sit next to Bobby Winkles, was a roving instructor at that time with the Chicago White Sox, who's a legendary guy at Arizona state, you know, hall of fame coach and then was big league manager, but he was at the tail end of his career where he'd come to Appleton a few weeks throughout the summer and I would sit next to him as he's talking to players in the clubhouse, or he'd go out and hit with some guys, so I'd be giving him the balls to then feed the players and even though I didn't understand it at that time, I was listening.
Speaker 1:And to anyone that's great at their job, as we talk about, they know how to teach and they know how to develop, and so it is a process, and if we're only worried about the result or the outcome, we lose the enjoyment of the process, and the process isn't always enjoyable, but at the outcome then becomes enjoyable because of the process, and that's what we try to tell our players. You know, like Deion Sanders, when, after they won the Superbowl, he wanted to go commit suicide and he was driving around the Cincinnati Beltway to do that, you know Tom Brady saying is this all there is to it? Isn't there anything more? I don't know what after what championship, he said that. And so that's why we have to be rooted in our values and whatever our foundation is, mine is my faith, and so, win or lose. That faith is there and and my family, you know, is there. Whether we win or lose, they love me and so and that was how I was brought up with my parents is they love me Whether I played or not, didn't play, whether I had six RBIs or had zero, and far more often I had zero than six, you know. And so I just I think we're in a race, or a lot of times that I probably was a little bit.
Speaker 1:I remember getting done coaching Xavier for four years and John Morey was the coach at that time. It gave me a ton of responsibility and, um, just let me grow and put me in touch with really good people. Um, and when I applied for a high school job in Ohio and I felt like absolutely I'm ready for this and I didn't get it, and they were, you know, they wanted me to stay on as an assistant, but you know I stayed at Xavier and continue to coach there, but I probably wasn't ready and I'm not sure you're ever ready to get your to, you get into it and you grow. But what I was doing, preparing at Xavier, and what Coach Morey helped me a ton with, was have the skill set and then, when you get your opportunity, you're going to be ready, and obviously we're still growing at this.
Speaker 1:I'm still growing, but I think a lot of times young coaches say, well, once I get the job, I'll figure it all out. Now, how about you figure a lot of it out? So when you get the job, you have a template to say how am I going to deal with? What's my parent meeting going to look like? What are practices going to look like? How am I going to deal with different personality kids? Do I really have a big toolbox of drills and cues and observations that I can dialogue with players about to help make them better, knowing that one of them is not going to help all of them? And so building that is really where I would advise young coaches to go.
Speaker 2:Well, talking about your coaching toolbox that you just brought up there, what are some absolutes that you, as a coach, and your coaching staff, have for your team?
Speaker 1:Absolutes Every day. Some of these are hard to measure, but we have some ways to do in our program. Every day you got to be driven to get yourself better Individually, and every day you have to be driven to make this team better, and those two play off of one another. But what I didn't do a good enough job of probably my first, because I'm such a team oriented guy, and part of that was because I wasn't a real good player and I was blessed to be in a great high school with a phenomenal high school coach, bruce Erickson, who passed away about a year and a half ago, and I have a picture of him and I here in my office. But being part of a great program allowed me a lot of opportunity. They wouldn't have had if I would have been on a poor program because I would have been just another guy, but because I was in a great program I appeared better than what I was because the collective group worked well together, and so that's one of the biggest non-negotiables. Obviously, working hard is the core of both of those, and so we have we have um measurements for those and how we talk to our guys and and and and. Then you know, along with that is one non-negotiable for sure is the respect and um and again, you have to be careful in this world today of how you phrase it. But you know Lamarardi had in the locker room when he was the coach of the Packers what you say here, what you see here, let it stay here when you leave here. And we believe that in our program. And that's the boasting of going out and, you know, telling everybody how great we are. That's not something we love.
Speaker 1:But we've allowed our unity council to say what do we want to social media out, because it is today's kid wants. They need to. You know there's clicks and there's people on their phone and they need to kind of publicize some of that stuff. But it more has to do with never should we ever disrespect or talk about somebody within this program to anybody else outside of this program.
Speaker 1:And that goes to one thing I can stand tall on as a coach is and I tell our players just a couple of times a year I never bad mouth any player to anyone outside of this program, ever. So even if you and I, ken, we're best buddies, I'm not going to call you up and say, man, this player, man, he's really driving me nuts. That has to be just with my staff and that has to be something that we trust our players to do as well, and so that would be grounds for immediate removal from the program. If they are putting someone else down or saying someone else cost us a game, or you know, within the program, now in-house, we can have that conversation and close the door and air it out. So those are some of the non-negotiables, I guess.
Speaker 2:Do you find that over the past 25 years of coaching, that there are some drills hitting, drills that you use that have been a lot more effective for you as a coach and for your team?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what I would say to that though? Yeah, no doubt, absolutely. There are some some what we call we call our salt of the earth drills or our big five. You know, we have five hitting drills and five defensive glove work drills and three pitching drills that we kind of call our salt of the earth. So we want every player to master those and then, once they master them, if they never want to use them again, they don't have to them. If they never want to use them again, they don't have to. But we feel it's a foundational principle. But what I've found is we spend more of our time now talking to our no, when we talk about hitting, we spend more time talking to our kids. We have a Kimberly hitting system that has six buckets to it.
Speaker 1:And what I found over my years and I was guilty of this big time because we you know, I'm not trying to let myself off the hook, but I'm a student of the game and as a hitter I wanted to study everything, and before video it wasn't really before video, but for video was easy. I'm a huge sports memorabilia collector and one of the reasons I am that way is when I was a kid there wasn't video and baseball cards were my video and that was my imagination and that is how I play. So I'd be looking at cards to see where they're showing them in a hitting position and what they're doing at different things and where pitchers are in a different position, and and then you're breaking that down. And so what, what we do, what, what I was guilty of then as a coach is it's not always mechanics Everybody, seemingly, goes always to mechanics it's timing, it's are you seeing the ball, it's what's your approach, and so we built that into six buckets within our system and it's really been a. We're still got a lot of work to do, no question, but what it's given our kids is the real idea that mechanics don't have to be perfect.
Speaker 1:And even though we've always preached that, I think the way we went about it sometimes it made kids feel like they have to be, and all of a sudden you're coaching the athlete out of them and they're becoming robots and they have enough people in the world trying to do that to them. We have to really fight that and say man, be an athlete, you don't have to swing. Perfect. Okay, swing the fight that and say, man, be an athlete, you don't have to swing perfect, okay, swing the stinking bat and you might just hit it. But being able to talk about timing and what their approach is and rhythm, and do they have a perspective, after they make an out or after they get a hit, to be able to rebound and be a teammate for the next eight hitters before they go to hit again, do they have that perspective that they might line out that they're going to strike out, that they're going to pop up and it's not going to ruin their week? And so that's that's really been a huge thing for us because, again, why are we in coaching?
Speaker 1:Because of the players and because of those relationships, and this has given us a great platform to have conversations. And as I get older, you're seen more as the old guy and we better not ask this, because I'm sure he wouldn't want to change and I'm all about change, not for the sake of change, but for the sake of getting better. And this allows more because they're getting it from so many different ways and I believe so much in what we do. I don't want to be adversarial with that, but let's just lay this out.
Speaker 1:Here's our system. Tell me what your travel team's doing. Tell me what your low hitting instructor is doing with you or what your dad is telling you, and the only way that we get in trouble is if you keep any of that a secret. As long as we're open about it, I'm open to letting you do whatever it's your career. I'm just a suggester, our coaches are just suggesters, and when there's something we absolutely want you to do, you'll have no doubt that we're saying this is what you're going to do. But that typically isn't with the swing. So it's provided for so much more conversation and so much more freedom, I think, for our, for our hitters.
Speaker 2:Well, let me ask you this you know every baseball coach comes across this. You know throughout their career and you know every season, what has been your most effective way to approach umpires when. When you know what has been your most effective way to approach umpires when they're either out of position or they made a call that didn't go your way and you had to kind of go out there and stand up for your team. But the reality is, most of the time it's not going to change things a whole lot. What is your best way to approach umpires?
Speaker 1:What I try to do and I think I'm pretty good at it. You know I'm intense, I mean and that's the thing you know you get to talk about that ethics award winner and thinks you're just going to sit on your hands in the dugout oh, that's not an ethics winner to me. I mean I'm, I'm intense man and and um, so I'm going to. I expect high effort from everybody that's involved, and the umpires are a huge part of a game. So I expect high effort from our players, I expect high effort from our staff, myself included. I expect high effort from the umpires and I expect accountability. And so when I go out, what I typically hopefully try to do is ask them what did you see? Or why are you here, why are you in this position? And just have a little bit of a conversation. And then you know I listened to them. And when an umpire says, man, I missed it. I mean we had a big play in a playoff game this year. And the umpire just said is that really what I said? I said that is exactly what you yelled out. You know it was a play. I said that is exactly what you yelled out. You know it was a play. And he goes. Well, then that was my mistake and I said thanks for owning it. I turned and walked away. Big part of the game, huge play that didn't go our way, cost us big time and it ended up costing us two runs. But he owned it and if anyone's sitting there watching that game, I probably had several things that I could have done differently too. That cost our team as well. And so, um, he owned it and I moved on. Like you said, you're not going to change it.
Speaker 1:So, like we, what I think we get in trouble with and and the AD role. You know I'm a little naive, ken, you know. So I like to see the best in people and believe in the best, and I think, as an AD at the high school level, I can only imagine what it's like in the Big Ten football and some of this other stuff. The gamesmanship is crazy and I just don't have any time for that. Like I want to give our kids the advantage by working on us, not by locking the gates so they can't get in their dugout, you know, or or playing these stupid little games with them or not letting them use our cage or putting the tees away before they have a chance. If we're hitting off tees at our field and you come to our field, you dang well, can use them. Let's just arrange the time that you're going to do it. And if the fact you use our tees caused you to beat us, we're not good enough. And if we beat you because you couldn't use our tees, I don't like to win. I want to beat you when you're at your best.
Speaker 1:And so, if you know, all the gamesmanship stuff gets in the way and I think, where I and I'm sure this is all coaches, but you know we are we have really good umpires in our area that work hard and care about it and take it seriously and we're in a really good conference. So maybe, maybe that's not the case all the time. You know, if you're a lesser conference and you get a guy that shows up that thinks it's not as important. But I also like to think we have a say, we have something to do with that by. Our players play with a pace and they hustle in and out. We have a seven second rule you better be out to your position, seven and back in and seven and let's go. And so we do that, not because I want to get home to dinner. But that's the way the game is supposed to be played, like let's go and, and so I just I would.
Speaker 1:I have patience and we have not had many of them in my career. But an umpire that acts like he doesn't want to be there or is going to try to speed the game up unnecessarily or slow it down, or it's all about him and he's got to make it a show about him, then I have a little bit less patience. But I try to always do it one-on-one with the umpire. And I have two rules really with our coaches. Our coaches shouldn't say anything to the umpires I'm the only one who is able to and one I should not holler in front of everybody. It should be one-on-one. And then the second one is once I have my say, it doesn't come up again. I'm not bringing back up in the sixth inning what happened in the second. That's just not fair.
Speaker 2:So well, I was a. I was an eight second guy you're seven.
Speaker 1:I like it. We'd like to play you then.
Speaker 2:Well yeah, there you go. Well, how can we get parents to let coaches coach and keep them from trying to get the coach removed when they're not happy, whether it be playing time or the team record, or whatever it may be?
Speaker 1:Well, unfortunately, I don't think we're ever going to change all of them, because they're human beings, but I think what you can do. I think what we need to do is we need to hold parents accountable and we have to help support coaches. And by supporting them, it's not just protecting them, it's making sure. Number one, I think the biggest thing we need to do as coaches is make sure in our preseason meeting we tell parents our ask of you is to trust us with your son or daughter, and with that there's nobody. There's nobody that's going to go through a season and not question a coach. But it's just like we ask our kids how do you respond to different issues and what is your role? And so a parent's role, first and foremost, is to help their son or daughter grow. And helping them grow is not stepping in and fighting their fights, it's navigating. You know, keep hopefully providing some guardrails and helping their own child. Navigate that. And I'll tell you what the other thing I would say to an assistant coach is when you're an assistant, be the best dang assistant you can be. And loyalty doesn't mean blindness, it means supporting your head coach. So when you're a head coach, you can expect and demand that from your assistants, and I think, with our parents, we have to expect that they are going to allow their kids to ask questions. And so where I, as an AD, I can stand in front of our entire school district and say that to the parents, because as a parent I've lived it. We have four kids. They've all played athletics. They played for some great coaches, right, and. But I've had questions on certain things or certain things I felt like should have been handled differently. How many of those have I handled on my own? Zero, because they're not my issues. If it escalates to something you know abuse wise, or if I think something's going on shady in the locker room as a parent, then I got to step up. That's not a kid's fight to fight. They need support on that. But if it's playing time or practice organization type stuff, or they feel like they're not getting enough reps here or there or they're not being talked to enough or they're being talked to too much, that kid's got to go and sit down and the old tired saying of, well, then it's going to be held against them. Well, ok, and it will be in the workplace too, then potentially Right. We always have that risk when we open our mouth. But if that's the risk, then I have a decision to make I'm leaving the workplace or I'm leaving the program If I don't feel like I can bring something up in a respectful way.
Speaker 1:And one of the favorite parts of my job as an AD is meeting with our student athletes who come in especially the ones who come in on their own and say they're unhappy with a coach and navigating that with them and asking them to formulate questions and trying to drill down to what they're really upset about and then saying to them okay, first of all, if they come in here, they trust me enough to come in that they know I'm not going to run to the coach and our coaches know that I'm very straightforward with our coaches, that that's the deal. And our principal is the athletic director for me as the baseball coach. So our baseball parents will go to the principal if they have issues and I have to trust that she's going to come to me, just like I would have to if I was, you know, the AD. If I wasn't the AD, that I'd have to trust from the AD, but navigating that with that child and letting them write questions down and then say, okay, we don't have to do anything with this and then but then I don't ever want to hear another thing about it.
Speaker 1:You can go talk to the coach by yourself. You can go talk to the coach with me. You can go talk to the coach and my last choice other than not doing anything, I would say the last option would be talk to the coach with your parents. Do you really think you need your parents to do this? Almost all of them say no. Once in a while you'll get one say yep, I need them, and then you let them have their parent with them, you know, and but what they do is they have to ask the question.
Speaker 1:And then I say you got to ask them all, Don't leave that. How many times you go into a meeting and you feel like, man, I got to quit while I'm ahead. You know I got good answers to the first two problems I had, but the next two I didn't. And then you leave and then you kids is. This is not a one and done. This is a constant dialogue, not about what you're unhappy about, but you got to be able to talk to your coaches. They're human beings too. So that dialogue is important and I think if parents and when parents don't allow that, eventually it's going to and this falls on a lot of parents' deaf ears you impact your kids negatively if you don't allow that to happen organically. You're going to help them with the questions, but if you're trying to influence your question and they really don't have the question, you know that's not good. And so you know, I'm proud man. I'm proud of my own kids on how they've navigated and the fact that they've.
Speaker 1:The answer is, in most cases get better and keep working. Get better, keep working. You go four for four with two home runs. Keep working. You know you go 0 for 4 with four strikeouts. Keep working. Your team wins, keep working. Your team loses, keep working. Your team loses, keep working. And so how you navigate all of that and, by and large, our parents have been really good, but I don't think we're going to change them completely. And what I worry about, ken, is we have to equip our coaches, especially our young coaches, with some courage and some good mentors alongside of them. To say and that includes administrators, you know we need that support. To say, because one parent complained doesn't mean you're doing this wrong. Now might there be a nugget in there that you can improve on, sure, but you keep doing what you're doing and you got to believe in that and you got to have a vision for that. And that's where you know that elite coach has those characteristics and one of those is courage.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think it's. To me it's critical that the athletic director has the coaches back and supports them and you know, there's obviously times when they got to step in. But to me it's critical to have that athletic director that can stand behind you and help you when you're in those situations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no question.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this. I ask this of every guest Hate losing or love winning.
Speaker 1:I've heard, I've listened to some of your podcast, I've heard that question. Here's what I would say to that. I mean, I don't want to take the easy way out. So if I had to say one or the other, I'd say love, winning.
Speaker 1:But what we try to say to our players is and kind of one of the models in our program is, our goal every single year is to try to work to get on the same word. So you see the old saying of we want to be on the same page. And I tell them now, because a lot of these kids were too young to remember. I taught English. I'm in my 17th or 18th year as an athletic director, but so I use the kind of the analogy of you go into a bookstore, we want to be in the same store, then we want to get on the same aisle, in the same section, then in the same aisle, then in the same book, then in the same chapter, then in the same page, then on the same paragraph. And when you think about it, in my coaching career we've won a couple of state championships, I've won a couple as a player, but never really do you ever get on the same word. But there are times you do with those best teams that you have, man, there's times when everything's clicking. It's just like the athletes. Everything slows down when I'm going well, and when everything's clicking, you're kind of on the same word for a while, and that's our quest every year. And that's why, you know, as I get older, people are like how much longer are you going to coach? I feel pretty young. I think I got a good 25 years left in me. And so, because that's the quest, like, kids change and situations change, and circumstances change and society changes a little bit, but that quest doesn't change. And so what I? So the English teacher in me says this can you become a better reader without writing? The answer is no. Can you become a better writer without reading? The answer is no. Can you become a better? I'm going to take the, I'm going to take the liberty of saying winning, losing, for you know, um, uh, you know, and if, if, if, I win right, I, I, what pushes me to win is that, that freaking feeling of losing in a lot of cases, like, I don't want this feeling. This is what I'm striving for. And then, when I lose, I know the sweet taste of winning. That's what allows me to get back up, and so we need both of those things to happen Now.
Speaker 1:I love winning and losing. Yeah, it stinks, especially a coach. I think I could go through about every loss I've had as a coach and I was the cause of it, and you just never forget those plays and things that you could have done or said. Sometimes it's something you could have said three weeks ago to maybe change that kid's mindset. That might have helped them in that moment. Three weeks later had something to do with that loss. And so I'm not losing.
Speaker 1:We take very difficult as a coach. What I think is cool that helps me stay young is our players care a ton at Kimberly and I think most players do that invest their sweat equity. They care a ton, but they're able to wipe the slate clean pretty quickly and go out with their buddies and go to Culver's and have a burger and then get to sleep and get up the next day and they got studies and their girlfriend and you know they might have an internship, and then they're coming to practice and they move on and we have to too, and um. So that would be my thing is I would say you need them both because that feeling of losing helps push me to win. And, uh, that feeling of winning is extra special because we know that Right.
Speaker 1:That seller-dweller feeling of losing, and so it just makes it a little sweeter when you win.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this If you could have a great on-base percentage team or a great defensive team, which would you rather have?
Speaker 1:Great defensive team. Defensive team which would you rather have? Great defensive team, because I think we can do a little bit more with less people on base, and if that other team's having trouble scoring man, that's a tough way to go and we can take advantage of a couple of opportunities to get a run or two. And it's hard though. It's hard if you have to win one, nothing every day, but if I had that choice, I guess I would say I want the best, because I'm assuming if you're saying best defensive team we also have some guys on the mound that know how to compete.
Speaker 2:Right, I would take that team. Well, you're coaching an MLB team, and let's just say it's the Brewers, and you could have three players to help you get to that World Series. Group A you got. Your DH is Shohei, your pitcher's Roger Clemens and your shortstop is Cal Ripken. On Group B, the DH is Big Poppy, your pitcher's Greg Maddox and your shortstop is Derek Jeter. What team are you taking to? What three are you taking to get you to that World Series?
Speaker 1:Man, I'm taking Mad Dog. You just don't lose with Maddox.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's something else. He's got a documentary actually coming out here where they talk about him calling pitches his own pitches and everything.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to see that. Yeah, clemens was a big game guy too, you know. But Maddox is to me one game to pitch. I think I'd probably choose him over anyone else in the history of the game.
Speaker 2:Well, to finish up, if you had the attention of the world for five minutes, what would you say?
Speaker 1:The attention of the world. Holy man, For five minutes Just, I think I would say I mean, yeah, I would say if I had the attention of the world, so I have the attention of the world. I would say that everyone has a story. If we can value everyone's story, this place is a much better place. And use the gifts of people and try to love on others, even if they don't see things the way we see them Doesn't mean we have to agree with everybody, and it doesn't mean everything's you know acceptable and let's just have everyone do what they want whenever they want. That's not why we're on this earth, but I think we have to start with the fact that we were put on this earth with gifts and things to make this world better and some choose to use them and some don't. And then others choose to use them and some don't, and then others choose to use it for evil, and so if we could all use it for the benefit of others, that's what I would say.
Speaker 2:Well, Coach, it's Coach Ryan McGinnis, head baseball coach and athletic director at Kimberly High School in Wisconsin. Coach, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to join me on Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to join me on Baseball Coaches Unplugged. Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. Ken, I appreciate you doing this and appreciate what you do for coaches and look forward to hearing more of others.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, coach, take care.
Speaker 1:All right, you too.
Speaker 2:There's a reason why Coach Ryan McGinnis has been so successful in Wisconsin. His love and respect for the game is so obvious. Some takeaways from today's episode is how he looks for his players to rebound and be a great teammate after mistakes, being open to change for the sake of making the team better and never disrespecting your teammates and coaches outside of the program. That, and so much of what he had to say, is so impactful and will make anyone who listens to this podcast a better baseball coach. I'd like to take this time to thank you for joining me here at the Baseball Coaches Unplugged presented by Athlete One, and look forward to seeing you again next Wednesday for a new episode. I'm your host, ken Carpenter. Thanks and take care.
