Coach makes best use of time
Don Kelly was supposed to be on the North Shore on Friday afternoon, preparing for a series-opening home matchup with the Philadelphia Phillies.
That game, along with every other one, will have to wait, for now.
Instead, Kelly, the Pirates’ bench coach, spent his Friday afternoon about a mile North of PNC Park, at the Light of Life Rescue Mission. He and his wife, Carrie, are charitable people anyways, but amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for charity has increased.
So Don and Carrie, in a partnership between Pirates Charities and Silver Star Meats, helped distribute meals at the mission from 4:30-6 p.m. Friday.
“It’s something that’s always been important to us, to be able to give back in that way,” Kelly, a Mt. Lebanon native, told the Post-Gazette. “But going through this, everybody’s been struggling with a lot of different things, so just being able to be here and serve in this way has been awesome.
“... Being from Pittsburgh, but to be able to give back, it’s been tremendous.”
Still, Kelly is well aware of the situation at hand. He knows he’d normally be out on the field with the Pirates this weekend.
Even if he wasn’t aware of it himself, Pirates manager Derek Shelton would keep him in the loop. Shelton joked earlier this week that he and Kelly talk 80 times a day. Kelly says that is, obviously, an exaggeration, but the point stands that the two are in contact a lot. When asked to categorize his and Shelton’s topics of conversation, he smiled and said “wide-ranging.”
“With the unknown and you’re speculating on a lot, because you don’t know the date, where it’s going to be, how many players, how many people are going to be allowed to congregate at one time, there’s a ton of unknowns,” Kelly said. “But just trying to work through some of the stuff that we can and try to get somewhat of a plan going. There’s a lot of ideas right now, but you can’t really make any plans until we have further clarity.”
The things Kelly, specifically, can work through mainly surround strategy. Shelton has said that he and some of his staff have been able to watch videos of Pirates games from last season.
That’s no different for Kelly. He said he sat down and watched a full Pirates series from last August with a card outlining different managerial strategies, so he could think along with the games. It was partially an exercise to warm up and get used to how he might think things through and partly a way of seeing what information Kelly and Shelton don’t have yet that they might want when the season does roll around.
Plus, Kelly says he’s watched video on individual players, too, using that and his knowledge of them from spring training to build a mental profile on them and think of ways for each player to be put in the best position to succeed under his and Shelton’s regime.
It’s all in an effort to keep the team moving forward in a time when it’d be easy to stay in neutral. Some progress has to be made even with the actual games on hold. So the Pirates stay in communication as much as they can, as they all eagerly wait out the beginning of the season.
“Everybody on the staff has a different role, if you will, so everybody’s kind of diving in,” Kelly said. “The staff has been unbelievable, the players have been unbelievable, in spring and also now, connecting in different ways. I know that everybody’s been on Zoom calls as far as the staff goes, and the pitchers and the position players, we got together on a Zoom call, so we’re just trying to stay connected as much as we can.”