San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Longhorns coach Pierce once led a ragtag group in summer league
“Hey, look everybody, it’s Bob Feller!”
That was a dated reference even in the summer of 1992, and I had no idea at the time I was catcalling the future head coach of one of the premiere college baseball programs in the country.
But David Pierce’s unconventional delivery on the mound indeed bore semblance to the loosygoosy release of the Hall of Famer Feller, and Pierce’s players already got a kick out of the idea he’d occasionally hurl a few pitches late in a summer-league game.
Twenty-nine years ago, Pierce was a 29-year-old assistant coach at Houston Episcopal and fullthrottle summer league coach. His current job is leading the Texas Longhorns into the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., for the second time in the past four seasons.
No. 2 UT, the top remaining seed in the eight-team CWS, faces No. 7 Mississippi State at 6 p.m. Sunday on ESPN2. We were a thousand miles from even making ESPN the Ocho that summer at Butler Sports Complex on the city’s southwest side, but you would have never known it from Pierce’s upbeat but still intense approach to coaching … a rag-tag summer league squad.
I was a scrub lefthanded reliever at Sam Houston State in search of a night summer league in Houston while working construction during the day in Bellaire, and Pierce stepped up to coach one of the handful of teams at Butler as part of an upstart Stan Musial college league.
We wore green jerseys — the extent of my memory on whether we had a team name. Years later when I crossed paths with Pierce and reminded him of our summer league adventures, he responded with an agreeable nod, “Oh, yeah, the green team.”
Andy Straub, a longtime assistant baseball coach at Episcopal, was our hard-nosed catcher who also played for Pierce at Episcopal. In what amounted to a 29-year reunion via Ma Bell (telephone) this past week, I asked Straub if we had a team name.
“In that league I think the teams just went by color,” Straub said with a chuckle. “I don’t think we had anything on the fronts of our shirts, but we at least had numbers on the backs.”
Straub enlisted the help of one of our infielders, Greg Petru, on the team name front.
“All I remember,” Petru said, “is we were green.”
The league was new in the area at the time, and a handful of college and pro scouts were in the stands on its first night. The second night was a different story. Just before the first pitch of our second game and as we prepared to take the field, Pierce pointed toward the empty bleachers, save for a parent or two and perhaps a waytoo-loyal girlfriend fanning herself in the Houston heat.
“Y’all remember those scouts who were here?” Pierce asked (of course we did). “Well, they’re not back. So just enjoy playing baseball, and keep working on the things you need to work on to get better.”
Straub, Petru and I all wonder if pictures exist from our time together at Butler those summer nights — primarily because of our now (more) famous coach. Keeping in mind this was 15 years before the introduction of the iPhone.
“My parents might have taken some pictures,” Petru said with a laugh, “but I really doubt they went to any of those games.”
Pierce’s Houston roots run deeper than Brays Bayou. He was born in Houston, attended Houston St. Pius X, Wharton Junior College and the University of Houston, helping lead the Cougars to the 1985 NCAA Tournament under coach Rolan Walton.
Pierce was an assistant at Episcopal and head coach at St. Pius X and then Pasadena Dobie. In the college ranks, he was an assistant at UH under Rayner Noble in 200102, but it was his time at Rice as an assistant under Wayne Graham from 2003-11 that really propelled Pierce forward in the coaching ranks.
“One of the smartest coaches I’ve ever been around,” Pierce said of the iconic Graham, who led the Owls to the 2003 national championship. “I had the ability to sit back and pay attention to the detail and how to prioritize guys and how to prioritize winning. I’d always felt like I was pretty good at maximizing guys, but there were just things that coach Graham showed you that other people didn’t know.”
With all proper respect to Graham — and he was tremendous as the Owls’ coach — Pierce had the characteristics of a top-shelf coach long before he began assisting Graham. I mean, who conducts exit interviews for an unwieldy summer league team?
That’s exactly what Pierce did, however, and I distinctly remember him pulling me aside following our final game.
“Look, you’ve got to get your lower body stronger if you’re going to keep playing this game,” a determined Pierce said, in then carefully outlining a workout plan to develop what amounted to chicken legs on a 20-year-old skinny lefty from Spring.
Pierce’s passion and personal attention to detail in those few minutes alone made quite an impression on me — and I wasn’t alone on that front.
“That is totally coach Pierce’s character,” said Straub, who has stayed close with his mentor through the decades. “He could be walking by a batting cage and if a kid is in there he’s never seen in his life, Coach is going to stop and watch and see if he can help. Something like, ‘Stay back and see the ball a little deeper, and go the other way with it.’
“That something I learned from him — try and help others any time you can. He’s not only a great coach, but he’s been a great mentor and friend.”
At the same time back then Pierce, not exactly an imposing figure at about 5-foot-9, was so unassuming and friendly and funny I honestly never envisioned him calling the shots at the state’s most historic college baseball program.
He’s done so at Texas with plenty of success in a short span, just as he did in winning three consecutive Southland Conference titles in his first college head coaching job at Sam Houston from 2012-14. He then had Tulane in consecutive NCAA Tournaments from 2015-16 before taking over at UT for reassigned legend Augie Garrido.
“A dream come true,” Pierce said when I visited with him not long after he moved to Austin from New Orleans. “It’s been a lot of hard work, and my former players and coaches — those are the guys who made this possible.”
Straub, who knew Pierce from his younger coaching days much better than me, was much like me in believing Pierce seemed too approachable and generally fun-loving and helpful with even the players who weren’t going to help advance his career to one day be in such a position of power.
“The thing about him — nothing has really changed,” Straub said in admiration. “Watching him now on ESPN and his demeanor with