DICKERSON BUILDS BONDS WITH SARCASTIC BANTER
‘... if the relationship is right, you can say anything to anybody’
Bobby Dickerson may be the best coach in the major leagues. The country’s preeminent baseball magazine said so in 2020, anyway.
His players’ remarks about him this spring — no matter the question — are preceded almost without fail by mention of his award from Baseball America.
“Oh, man,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said with a chuckle. “Ever since he got this coach of the year, I think it went straight to his head. I don’t know if he’s going to be able to bounce back from this.”
The playfulness between the Padres infielders and their relentlessly driving coach, who this year will add third base to his responsibilities, says a lot about how Dickerson has built bonds. The back and forth is perhaps the quintessence of their connection.
He coaches hard. He stresses fundamentals of fielding over and over and over — and over. He demands adherence. Not even the biggest stars are spared from his saltiness.
Yet he considers relationships the cornerstone of what he does.
“I just believe if the relationship is right, you can say anything to anybody,” he said last year after joining the Padres staff. “And I’m open, too. You can get in my (rear), too. I’m good. You show them you’re vulnerable.”
His style can be a jolt, especially to
some members of the current generation of players who tend to have been coached a different (friendlier) way than in decades past. But Padres players quickly became convinced of his affection for them and his one goal.
“You know he’s got the best intentions for you,” Hosmer said. “He just wants you to be the best you can be.”
Another thing Padres players know is that Dickerson, 55, won’t ever stop. He has literally put his heart into coaching them.
On one of the final days in May last year, while MLB was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dickerson was hitting grounders to Fernando Tatis Jr. in a nearly empty Petco Park when he felt short of breath and a tightness in his chest. He kept hitting grounders.
A short while later, pain began shooting down his arms. He showered and readied to go home before eventually being persuaded by a team doctor and Padres physical therapist Scott Hacker to go to the hospital.
Dickerson had a total blockage of one artery and underwent surgery to insert a stent to open the artery.
“Amazing medicine nowadays — and doctors, nurses,” Dickerson said. “It was pretty seamless. I got lucky and they were able to get me back underway without too much intrusiveness, you know? So I was right back on the field pretty quickly.”
Before June was over, Dickerson was back at Petco. By July he was back on the field.
“I just felt like I needed to be at work,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of great baseball people out there. It’s like I’ve always told my son, if he wants to stay on the field playing, then he better not let anybody else have an opportunity. They forget you pretty quickly in this industry.”
That hardly seems possible for the Padres at this point.
Dickerson is one of the loudest and most entertaining people on a baseball diamond at any given moment.
One example from the past week: After offering correction to Tatis, who had failed to get to second base in a situational drill, Dickerson shouted: “You already gave me one (expletive) heart attack.”
He has a flair for a certain curse word, shouted in his Mississippi drawl and paired with other words that make it charming, as well as effective and, at times, hilarious.
And now everyone gets a little bit more of him.
With Glenn Hoffman retiring after 45 years in uniform and the past 15 as Padres third base coach, Dickerson will take over that job. It is a role he served from 2013 to ’18 with the Baltimore Orioles.
“Bobby is one of the most trusted guys I have,” manager Jayce Tingler said. “Trying to replace Hoffy, with all his experience, Bobby has the most experience over at
third base. It’s just a confidence, trust factor for myself, put your most reliable, experienced guy over there. … That job over there is maybe the most pressure on the coaching staff. You never really get noticed on good sends. You only get noticed on close plays at the plate when your guy is out. I’ve got tons of respect for guys who do that job. We’re fortunate enough to have Bobby, who has a ton of experience doing it.”
A third base coach is like another player on the field in terms of how involved and crucial he can be on any given play. That suits Dickerson.
“You’re more involved in the actual outcome of the game, like decision-making,” he said. “Just keeps you closer to the players and stuff like that.”
What Dickerson has done with his players already was a crucial component of the team returning to the playoffs in 2020 for the first time in 14 years.
Hosmer, who won four Gold Gloves in Kansas City, was relentlessly ridden by Dickerson to clean up some fundamentals last year. The result was a drop from one error every 89 chances to one every 107.
With slowing down Tatis in the field as something of Dickerson’s pet project, Tatis went from 28th among MLB shortstops with negative-12 outs above average in 2019 to leading all shortstops with seven OAA.
Manny Machado first was coached by Dickerson in the minor leagues and then spent the better part of seven seasons playing for the Orioles while Dickerson was on that staff.
That Machado in 2020 became the player the Padres are paying for after a disappointing debut season with the club is something for which those inside the organization give Dickerson no small measure of credit. He’s basically a Manny whisperer.
Their dynamic is fascinating as well as amusing.
During infield fundamental drills, as each player has a different coach hitting fungoes to them, it is always Dickerson paired with Machado. The smoothest of third basemen, Machado is among the team’s hardest workers, but everyone knows it doesn’t always look like it. Most often in these sessions, Dickerson alternates between a sarcastic remark about Machado’s effort and/ or execution and muttering not quite under his breath about same. Eventually, Machado barks back. At some point, Dickerson will shout some words of encouragement. And around they go.
“He gets the most out of Manny,” said one staff member.
Said Machado: “He’s one of the best guys out there in doing what he’s doing. Whenever you have a guy like that, that loves this game, who has a passion for what he does, you just admire it, enjoy it. He makes you come to the ballpark every day wanting to work and get better.”