Son of Vida Blue thriving as high school softball coach

HAYWARD – Mt. Eden coach Derrick Blue is everywhere and everything for his softball team.

He throws batting practice, coaches third base, chats with parents while scribbling the lineup onto a notepad, empties trash cans and locks the gates.

The son of Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants star pitcher Vida Blue grew up around America’s pastime, and he’s all-in as a firstyear softball head coach for the Hayward school’s program.

“I love being on the field,” Blue said. “Sunflower seeds, chewing gum and hitting some balls around during batting practice.”

To many, Derrick Blue, 54, is the son of the late Bay Area baseball legend and forever the kid who spent part of his childhood wandering the Coliseum’s clubhouse and expansive foul territory.

To Mt. Eden senior Andrea Toledo and the rest of the Monarchs, he’s just “Blue,” their upbeat former assistant coach and the obvious choice to succeed longtime leader Nick Sanchez when the 69-year-old retired in December.

“I was thrilled when I heard that he was going to become our head coach,” Toledo said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s laid back, because he pushes us to be the best we can.”

Blue described himself as a so-so ballplayer, and chuckled as he recalled the memory of his fifthgrade baseball coach in Alameda telling him, “I can’t wait to see you coach.”

Vida agreed with that prediction.

When Derrick moved back to the East Bay from Sacramento a few years ago and was mulling over whether or not to get back into coaching, the elder Blue was his biggest supporter.

Derrick, who works as a transportation analyst for the state, had coached softball in different East Bay rec leagues and then at San Leandro High when Sanchez asked him to join the Mt. Eden staff.

“I remember he was like, ‘Do you like coaching?’ And I would be like, ‘Yeah, I do,’” Blue remembered.

“Do it, and do it the best that you can,” Vida told his son.

Derrick threw himself into his role as an assistant at Mt. Eden, but had to take a step back last spring with his father’s health ailing. Vida Blue died on May 6 after a long battle with cancer.

After Derrick gave so much time and energy to the team, the

Monarchs were there for the grieving coach when he needed them the most.

“We wanted to be a support system for him,” Toledo said. “We just wanted to be sort of a community that he could come back to and count on.”

Blue vividly remembered the day he returned to the team.

He said the players stopped what they were doing when they saw him standing by the fence, ran up to the man and then embraced him in a team group hug.

“That was probably the closest moment I came to crying, because they wore these blue wristbands for me,” Blue said. “That really got to my heart.”

He had a short but poignant message for the teenagers after that.

“Make sure you hug your parents tonight.”

Blue said his father had become his “best friend” over the last 15 years, the two sharing an obsession with both LSU football and Major League Baseball.

“We’d go to dinner a couple times a month, and I remember the last time we went to dinner, I had to go to the bathroom, and he says, ‘I’m paying for dinner, man. You don’t have to hide,’” Blue said. “He always had that sense of humor, and I’ll miss that.”