First-year Eugene Emeralds manager Pat Murphy spends a good portion of Tuesday’s team practice playing catch with his 10-year-old son, Kai, who is wearing a team practice jersey with the number 1 on it.
As Murphy talks of his 15-year tenure at Arizona State and how he ended up as the Emeralds’ manager, his son’s crisp throws pop in his mitt every time.
Murphy joined the San Diego Padres, the parent club of the Emeralds, as a special assistant to baseball operations in 2010 after being fired by Arizona State during an NCAA investigation of his program and the university’s athletic department.
He says he didn’t do much in the role, but he took the opportunity to adjust from the college game to the professional ranks.
“You think you know it from being in college ball for all those years,” Murphy says. “But the truth is, you need to experience it.”
To do this, the Padres sent him to the first-year draft and some major-league games, and he took on a more active role at spring training and rookie-level baseball.
“When you’re running a college program, you’ve got kids for three or four years, sometimes five years,” Murphy says. “It’s more of a life development job — it’s about developing them as people first and foremost, as men.”
Murphy accidentally throws the ball over Kai’s head and into the patio above PK Park’s right-field line.
“You do teach winning baseball here, or you try to, but who you’re coaching, you have a lot less control and the game is dictated to you more,” Murphy says.
The past
If the Arizona State athletic department hadn’t been found by the NCAA to have a lack of institutional control stemming from the Sun Devils’ football team in 2005, Murphy would never have left Tempe. He had a 1,000-457-4 record as a college head coach, and his list of accomplishments includes a 1998 Baseball America Coach of the Year award, four Pacific-10 Conference Coach of the Year awards, four Pac-10 titles and four College World Series appearances.
The NCAA’s sanctions put Arizona State’s entire athletic department on probation, which meant that every one of the school’s sports teams had to toe the line.
“So they’re on serious probation, because what the NCAA is saying is, ‘You can’t fuck around; you’ve got to get your procedures right,” Murphy says, swearing one of two times during his interview.
After four minor violations were turned into another lack of institutional control charge because the school’s compliance officers failed to adequately monitor the program, Arizona State forced Murphy to resign.
“Once that happened, the NCAA came in and ASU said, no it’s his fault, it’s not procedural, because they couldn’t go before them again, but the NCAA zapped them anyway for lack of institutional control,” Murphy says.
The NCAA levied a postseason ban against the Sun Devils for the 2011 season and forced them to vacate the 2007 season, which included a trip to the College World Series. Murphy was given a one-year “show-cause” penalty by the NCAA, banning him from making recruiting phone calls before Dec. 14, 2011. In comparison to the school’s heavy sanctions, Murphy’s were light, placing the blame on Arizona State’s athletic department.
“The NCAA saw it that way too, but the perception around the country is, I’m a bad guy, I got fired for NCAA rules violations — now even people say recruiting violations,” Murphy says. “It’s bullshit, but I’ve got to deal with it.”
Murphy goes to catch Kai’s throw, but the ball bounces off the heel of his mitt and rolls to his left.
“It’s been tough for my family; it’s been tough for everybody, you know,” Murphy says. “You just have to deal with it.”
The present
As Murphy discusses his goals as an instructor — “It’s a great mix of trying to teach them four or five things that they’ll remember about their game” — he spots Oregon State head coach Pat Casey walking around the PK Park concourse in a plain black T-shirt and sunglasses.
“HEY! HEY! HEY, CASEY!” Murphy bellows at his former Pac-10 rival and close friend.
Before making his way to talk baseball with the Beavers’ two-time NCAA champion manager, Murphy meanders through his players, before being stopped by Emeralds reliever Will Scott.
“Hey, can I aks you somethin’?” Scott asked.
“Aks me somethin’? You wanna aks me somethin’?” Murphy replied.
“Yeah, I do.”
“What do you want? Why are you Johnny Junior College for a week? I’ll give you two weeks if you ask.”
“Nah, I’m not gonna aks that. I’m gonna ask you to give us some advice today. We need some motivation.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yeah, we need a little bit of motivation.”
“Want me to walk through and motivate you?”
“Confucius.”
“Want me to walk through and motivate you?”
“Yeah.”
Murphy goes back to walking through his players, reciting a proverb from Bruce Springsteen’s “Badlands”: “Poor men want to be rich, rich men want to be king, and the king wants to rule everything. Think about that one, think about that one. You’ve heard it before.”
Murphy’s a devotee to Springsteen’s music — the only two accounts he (@coachmurphy42) follows on Twitter are Springsteen’s and the Emeralds’, and his “About me” section is another quote from The Boss. Having Springsteen as his philosopher of choice is a good reflection of Murphy’s demeanor as manager.
“He’s a player’s coach. He loves to have fun,” Scott says. “When we need to get our business done, he cracks down on us … but when we’re out here, he loves just to have fun.”
First-year pitching coach Nelson Cruz describes working with Murphy as “awesome.”
“He just keeps you so relaxed,” Cruz says. “He’s just a guy that jokes around a lot, keeps everybody loose, so it’s nice to work with him.”
As first-year hitting coach Chris Prieto hits ground balls to Kai at first base, he lauds Murphy’s intensity and humor as excellent tools to teach young baseball players with.
“He knows how to create a winning ballplayer and a lot of the things he brings to the table are really good for our ballclub and for the kids in this organization,” Prieto says.
The future
Murphy stands on a ramp next to the dugout, away from the commotion of practice, to talk about what his son’s role in his life and career. Murphy is a single parent, and has had sole custody for “at least the last seven or eight years.”
“It’s about him, you know what I mean?” Murphy says. “This whole thing, you know, your priorities in life? Baseball’s not before my son. He loves baseball, thankfully, but I’ve had him on my own for most all his life.”
After every Emeralds game, Murphy seeks out his son and talks with him before talking to the media.
Kai takes advantage of his unique childhood experience.
“It’s fun, get to come out to the field every day, go on road trips and stuff, so I miss a lot of school — that’s good too,” Kai says. “I get to know all the players and the staff and stuff, so that’s cool.”
Murphy says he likes the short-season schedule the Emeralds play, as it works better for him as a parent.
“My most important thing, one of the reasons I’d consider going back to college, is that I want to keep him in school and have him raised on a college campus,” Murphy says. “So, if it works out — I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but if it works out — I’m very satisfied being in a situation like this, where he doesn’t have to miss that much school and where he can be back with his friends.
“He can do this in the summers and be back with his friends all year and develop in a more normal situation.”
Murphy still keeps his home in Tempe during the offseason, keeping Kai around the college environment and not making him change schools. As invested as Murphy is in his son’s budding baseball career — Kai has a 10-day trip ahead of him for a national tournament in Florida — Murphy says he wouldn’t like to manage Kai on a day-to-day basis.
“I’d rather have a friend like Pat Casey, somebody like that, George Horton, somebody like that who you know really knows how to do it. I think it would be too tough for me,” Murphy says. “We’re really close, as you can imagine. He’s been on the baseball field with me in diapers, he was running around in diapers on the field.”
Kai was a little more open to the idea when asked, but even he seemed somewhat apprehensive.
“Maybe. I don’t know yet,” Kai says. “It depends where he is, what school he’s at.”
Coming back to college?
Murphy, Kai, Casey and Casey’s wife, Susan, swap stories while standing around by the Emeralds’ dugout.
“I’m trying to think of what happened to me that’s strange,” Murphy says.
“When you fell at Washington State?” Kai asks.
“No.”
“The night the lights went out?” Casey asks.
“Did you hear that story?” Murphy says.
“Yeah, you told me.”
“I came out of the dugout and fell.”
“Yeah, you told me. You go, ‘Casey, you won’t believe this. I went out of there and I tripped.’”
“You know, those stairs are pretty slick at Washington State. I came running out to argue a call, and I go down. I mean, I’m sprinting out of there. I got a little, I don’t like this other team, I don’t like the other manager, and they make some ridiculous call, and I come sprinting out there — BOOM. Next day, they’ve got an outline in chalk.”
Though Murphy seems intent on staying in Eugene for the short-term, Casey wants to see him come back and coach in college.
“That’s got to be a decision he makes, but I think he’ll do what’s best for him and his son, and I think that’s where his heart is. I think he can manage as long as he wants in pro ball, but I do think that he loves college baseball,” Casey says.
Casey says Murphy is a perfect balance between the knowledge of a professional manager and the enthusiasm of a college manager. Melded with his determination to win every game,
“I think Murph would cut my throat to win a game, and I would cut his to win a game, and so I think that mutual competitiveness created a bond of respect and from that bond of respect, that created a friendship,” Casey says.
Casey acknowledges Murphy’s drive to win every game is nearly as great as his drive to be a great father.
“When you talk with him, you’re not going to have a conversation without him talking about Kai,” Casey says. “He’s a great dad and I think all real good men, the one thing they would say at the end of their lives that they would want their children to say is that they were a good father, and that will happen for him.”
Correction: Murphy’s show-cause penalty from the NCAA was only a year long and had no further stipulations than the ones regarding recruiting phone calls. The Emerald regrets the error.