CONNORS ON TIME AT A’S
CAIRNS baseball coach Al Connors was more than an interested observer when the Oakland Athletics faced the Seattle Mariners in the first game of Major League Baseball’s Opening Series last night in Tokyo.
Connors was part of the A’s coaching staff during the club’s Instructional League in 2004, an experience he described as one of the best he has had in baseball, and was part of the team which delivered the MLB Opening Series when it was played at the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2014.
He earned the experience at Oakland as part of a coach exchange with Baseball Australia.
Connors and Wally Marks worked with the organisation for eight weeks during the team’s Instructional League.
“Basically it’s an opportunity for teams to bring their draft picks into the organisation,” Connors said.
“They’ll teach them the main core values of each organisation. It’s their first entry in pro baseball out of college.
“It’s in the lead-up to the Arizona Fall League, so you’re working with No.1 draft picks and a lot of the Major Leaguers coming back from injury.
“The other point is if you have a pool of athletes who might be promoted or cut, they want to put them through a final test to get most of the coaching staff to look them, evaluate them then make a decision about if they fit.”
The A’s are more commonly known to non-baseball fans for the book-turned-film Moneyball, which starred Brad Pitt, and told the story of how legendary manager Billy Beane and the organisation changed the game through its use of analytics.
Connors was there just two years later, and got an inside look into how a Major League team operates.
The most notable player Connors worked with was Dallas Braden, who played for only four years but is famous for pitching the 19th perfect game in MLB history.
“I can’t speak highly enough – they’re one of the best, and their farm system is something else,” he said.
“I went across two years after the Moneyball change.
“It was already underneath that program and it was a very big thing to have the coaching staff understand they’re there for the athletes.
“They had to make themselves better and make themselves more accountable, something that’s now seen by coaches daily. Back in 2004 they were one of the main instigators of that system.”
Connors has coached at both state and national levels, but it was that opportunity to work with Oakland which steered his baseball career.
Much of the development, he said, was about the mental aspects of the game, and how prepared players must be.
“Baseball is a game of failure,” he said. “Everything to do with baseball is about failure.
“If you miss the ball seven times out of 10, you’re going to have a Major League career.
“That’s what it’s about.
“If you can handle that failure, you’re going to become a pretty good professional athlete. If you can’t, and you constantly have this battle in your mind, you’ll never make it through to that upper echelon of athletes.”