Asst. coaches step up to plate for Laval
Assistant coach Turtle Thomas came as close as he possibly could to laughing.
But Thomas, a serious baseball man, only had a smirk on his face.
Instead he said he would not give assistant coach Dan Canevari a hard time when he gets his first runner thrown out while coaching third base.
“I know that the instantaneous decision making you’ve got to make; sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong,” Thomas said. “You hate to get a guy thrown out in a crucial situation when you shouldn’t have sent him or get a guy thrown out by too big of a margin because you look pretty stupid when it happens. He’s done it on a level before, he can do it and he’s going to be fine.”
Canevari will add third base coach to his title of pitching coach this season. He takes over for former volunteer assistant coach Bill Dailey, who left after last season.
“It’s a little less than what people think,” Canevari said of his new gig. “Coach Laval calls all of the signals from the dugout, so I’m not actually giving the signals. The biggest thing I’ve got to do is to coach the [occupied] base, control the runners and direct traffic.”
But it isn’t so much that job that Canevari is devoting all of his attention to. Canevari is essentially the pitching coach for the Tigers, being more concerned with getting the most out of a starting pitcher than waving around a run trying to score. Still he said his pitching coach duties will include one big change.
“My primary responsibility is to handle the pitching staff, which I’ve done for Coach Bertman with the exception of calling pitches, which he always did,”
Canevari said. “I’m just calling the pitches this year, that’s the added responsibility.”
Meanwhile, Thomas is a busy man. Known as quite possibly the best college baseball recruiter in the country, Thomas said his main job is to fill the Tigers roster with top-notch players.
“Without a doubt, my number one responsibility is recruiting because if you don’t have the thoroughbreds, you’re not going to win the race,” Thomas said. “You have got to have some studs to be able to win in college baseball. It takes a lot of phone calls, travelling, being away from home and being on the road.”
Thomas also is the hitting instructor, catcher instructor and first-base coach for the Tigers.
Thomas said being the hitting coach, he coaches nearly half the roster. He said that if a team is not able to score runs in college baseball, it will encounter problems.
However, Thomas said a job that might get overlooked would be dealing with the catchers. A catching mistake could cost a game for the whole squad.
“Catcher and shortstop are probably the two most key positions out of the nine, outside of pitching,” Thomas said. “If a catcher makes a mistake and the ball gets by him, he doesn’t catch a ball, lets a dirt ball get by him or if he doesn’t throw a guy out, that can really lead to not winning a ball game.”
In addition to Canevari and Thomas, the coaching staff also has two more members. Jody Autery, a 2001 LSU graduate, will be an assistant coach, while Brady Wiederhold, a 1994 graduate of Kennesaw State will fill head coach Smoke Laval’s former position of administrative assistant.
Both Canevari and Thomas say things are nearly the same with Laval as they were with former coach Skip Bertman at the helm.
However, Canevari, who has been around Bertman for 21 years said there are some differences.
“Coach Laval is the way Coach Bertman was when he first got to LSU and coach as an assistant at Miami,” Canevari said. “He’s hands-on at everything and wants to make sure everything is done the way he wants it. So that’s what you do when you come in and step into a program and you’re taking over your club.”
Thomas believes Laval can handle the job. He said he has something most coaches do not possess.
“We’ve got so many signals and plays and things in place that you have to be pretty intelligent and be able to see the inner game of what’s going on on the baseball field,” Thomas said. “[Laval is] one of those
guys. Probably 90 percent of the coaches in the country can’t see the inner game of baseball, which
guys like Coach Laval and Coach Bertman could definitely do that sort of thing.”
Chris Gibson