Isotopes’ Hill wields approach all his own
Glenallen Hill’s name invariably comes up anytime one of those precocious Cubs of Chicago blasts a home run far beyond the brick wall at Wrigley Field.
It was Hill who stood at home plate at the Friendly Confines, 35-inch bat in hand, on May 11, 2000, in a whole different era of Cubs baseball, staring down unfortunate Brewers pitcher Steve Woodard. Hill connected on a pitch and, according to ESPN’s Home Run Tracker, the baseball left his bat at 116.7 mph and sailed 500 feet onto the roof of a five-story building across Waveland Avenue. Impressive then. Impressive now. But not to Hill. The other day he sat in the home dugout at Isotopes Park, where he serves as manager of our local Triple-A ballclub, speaking in a measured, thoughtful tone.
“People who have never experienced swinging a bat and having a good reaction in the ball going very far, they might be impressed with that,” he said.
“But that was something that was a natural
gift for me. That was happening when I was 10 years old. It started when I was hitting balls over the trees when I played on the church ground. That translated to when I was hitting balls over the trees when I was on the Little League field. And that translated to hitting balls over the trees in the Colt League and Pony League.
“So it’s part of my DNA. It’s not something I’m proud of, or not proud of. It’s something that just is.”
Spoken like a Zen master — quiet, confident, realistic, with a touch of sly humor.
Hill’s pupils are ballplayers, each with visions of shedding their Isotopes uniforms for one with a major league logo. Hill sees his job as to help, but not to coddle.
“There are a lot of different reasons the players are here,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, you’re here. So we need to figure out — accurately — what it is that you need to do to put yourself in the best possible situation to get out of here.
“We have to sift through a lot of unrealistic evaluations that players have of themselves and get to the real nuts and bolts of it, so we can start to repair that and put them in a good position.”
As a player, Hill had his share of minor league ball, beginning in 1983 with the Medicine Hat (Alberta, Canada) Blue Jays of the Pioneer Rookie League.
“I was in A ball (in Kinston, N.C.) and struck out 200 times,” Hill says. “The next year I made the adjustment and got challenged at a higher level.”
That was at Double-A Knoxville, where he hit 31 homers and drove in 96 runs.
Hill uses his minor league experiences as he relates to where his players “might be mentally in their pursuit of trying to get to the major leagues.”
He played for seven different major league organizations between 1989 and 2001, and witnessed a number of managers and their styles.
“Talk about the spectrum, from a Billy Martin to Ozzie Guillen to Cito Gaston to Joe Torre to Dusty Baker to Bruce Bochy,” Hill said. “They all have different things. Lou Piniella.
“One of my favorite managers — and I didn’t play for him but I worked with him —was Jim Tracy. The way he connected with people. When you had a conversation with Jim Tracy, you really felt like you were talking to him and he was talking to you.
“I think that serves you well when you’re trying to lead men to a common goal.”
And what did he look for in a manager when he was a player?
“I didn’t look for anything,” Hill said. “I’m just going to tell you the truth. I didn’t look for anything from a manager as a major league player. I was just focused on the best I could be, and preparing myself to go out and compete. I know a lot of people may be shocked at that kind of attitude. But I didn’t look at or judge a manager based on what his style was.”
Hill’s managing style is a mix of analytics and gut instinct.
“I think there’s a lot of useful information that comes out of compiling data,” Hill said. “I think there’s a place for it. It’s not the answer to everything, but it’s a very, very valuable resource. You have a picture of what’s happened before, and you have a picture of consistencies that have happened before.
“Then you have the human element. What do you know about the player? What do you know about his personality? What do you know about how he responds? What do you know about the past week in terms of his performance? Where is he with his confidence?
“You have to take all those things into consideration, then make the best decision.”
Hill recently turned 51, far removed from his childhood days of hitting baseballs over trees in Santa Cruz, Calif. Today he is in Tacoma, Wash., trying to coax the best out of his Isotopes.
Impressing him, that’s a whole other matter.