 The Right Thing What does a ballplayer do when he’s not good enough to play in the majors? Well, in the case of Dave Jauss, he becomes bench coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The road was not quite that direct. In between, there were many stops – places like West Palm Beach and Harrisburg, and Venezuela and Amherst College and Westfield State and Atlantic Christian, and time with the Expos and the Orioles and the Red Sox. Dave Jauss, son of famous Chicago sportswriter Bill Jauss, who is in the Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, played basketball and baseball at Amherst College. When his college playing days were ended, Dave went into coaching. “Solely for the lack of ability, I was done playing at the end of my college days. Most guys get hurt...I have no excuse, other than a lack of ability, so I went into coaching.” At Amherst, Dave’s roommate was Dan Duquette, one time Red Sox GM. When Duquette was hired by the Expos as Director of Player Development, he hired his old college roommate as a manager in the Expos farm system. In the Expos system, Jauss managed the Gulf Coast Expos, the West Palm Beach Expos, and the Harrisburg Senators, and was named Eastern League Manager of the Year in 1994. Jauss signed with the Red Sox in 1996 as an advance scout, and spent the next several years filling various positions in the Red Sox organization. He was first base coach, Field Coordinator and Farm Director. It was while with the Red Sox that Dave met Grady Little, and when Little became the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he hired Dave as his bench coach. Which raises an interesting question...what exactly does a bench coach do?
Well, that depends on the manager. In some ways, the bench coach is like an assistant head coach in other sports. His job is to serve as a complement to the manager, doing those things that the manager assigns. While there are some managerial duties that are never passed on to the bench coach – things like dealing with the media, making pitching changes and disputing calls – there are so many duties that are so time-consuming and detail-oriented that the manager can’t do them all, and delegates them to one of his other coaches – often the bench coach. With the Dodgers, Jauss works with other coaches in developing a strategy for dealing with opposing players – an assignment which capitalizes on his experience as an advance scout. He also serves as sounding board for Grady Little during the game, as Little considers the various strategies within the game – if and when to pinch-hit, putting on the hit-and-run, positioning players, and all the nuances of strategy that develop within the course of a game. Whatever the assignment is, Dave Jauss is happy. He’s around the game he loves, and around people he loves. He loves being on the field, and he loves being around great players. An enthusiastic man – Dave likes to talk about baseball, his family, and God. He grew up in a Christian home, and knew right from wrong. He learned respect for his parents and coaches and always tried to do the right thing. In fact, he learned to measure his worth based upon always doing the right thing. “Doing the right thing...that was most important to me.” Of course, there came a time when “doing the right thing” simply wasn’t enough. “It was all slipping away,” he says. “I was a good father. I thought I had it all under control. In fact, I thought I could handle anything....but it was slipping away.”
It was Dave’s marriage that was slipping away. Dave and his wife went to a marriage counselor – a non-Christian marriage counselor who asked the couple why they were not going to church. Dave had always professed to be a Christian, and was raised with Christian values, but had strayed from going to church. “People can get fooled,” Dave says, “into thinking they’ve got it under control. They can get fooled into thinking they’re happy and complete...but they’re not.” Heeding the counsel of the marriage therapist, the Jauss’s headed back to church. They found what Dave calls a “wonderful church”, where Dave says he “learned more about relationship with Jesus in one or two months that he learned in 30 years.” “I had a hole in my heart,” he says. “With all my success, I was just trying to be better than the next guy. I didn’t cheat on my wife, didn’t cuss much, and wasn’t a drunkard. I thought those things were enough. They weren’t... Much as I loved my wife and my career, there was something missing, and that something was Jesus.” It was in 2004 that the Boston Red Sox “reversed the curse”, and beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Dave had pitched batting practice during the series, got a world series ring and rode in the triumphant parade through Boston. But there was another day in 2004 – six weeks after the world series, that Dave counts as the biggest day of the year – and his life. On December 6 of 2004, Dave and his family were baptized. “I know what Jesus has done for my life,” he says. “And I know what I will do for Jesus the rest of my life.” What does a ballplayer do when he’s not good enough to play in the majors? In the case of Dave Jauss, he becomes bench coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers – and so much more. |
