Ron Clark, Terry Bevington and Dave LaRoche are defined as ”coaches.”
Walt Hriniak and Sammy Ellis are ”coordinators.”
Joe Nossek, according to official White Sox literature, neither coaches nor coordinates.
He eyes.
Nossek, a Sox coach during 1984-86, returned to the club this season as its ”eye in the sky.” Essentially, he`s Jeff Torborg`s bench coach, but he does it from 100 feet up, communicating with the manager electronically.
”I wanted him,” said Torborg, who, as manager of the Cleveland Indians in the late `70s, had Nossek as a coach. ”I always said if I got another manager`s job, I`d like to take him with me. And the people who knew him when he was here before liked what he did and liked him and wanted him back.”
So he`s back, after a couple of years as an advance scout for the Houston Astros, in a job he clearly enjoys and consistently tries to undervalue.
”It`s just another man giving Jeff input,” said Nossek, 49, a former big-league outfielder. ”He`s got the five coaches on the bench and me upstairs.”
Most of the work, Nossek said, is done pregame. ”If I see anything that doesn`t jibe with what we talked about pregame, I`ll mention it to Bevington, who`s got the outfield, or Clark, who`s got the infield.
”It`s really a game of adjustments. When you start a certain way, and on a particular day a guy might not be swinging well due to injury, not swinging the bat like he can, you make adjustments.”
But Nossek has another skill, one that may be a dying art. He steals signs.
”Joe is the best I`ve ever been around,” said Torborg.
”I`ve gotten a few over the years,” Nossek conceded, ”but it`s much tougher now.”
It`s tougher because, after nearly a century of doing it the old way, managers have come up with new ways to tell players a play is on.
”People are more aware that they`re being watched, and they take steps to guard against it,” Nossek said. ”Tony LaRussa (Oakland manager and Nossek`s ex-boss with the Sox) is very good at disguising, hiding signs. He`ll set things up in the dugout and won`t even use a sign when he puts something on, so you have no chance of getting one.”
But what took managers so long to change?
”The running game`s so much more prevalent now,` said Nossek. ”You see a lot more pitchouts than you did 15, 20 years ago, when the running game was not an important part of the game. There`s a lot more emphasis on it both ways, offensively and defensively.”
Enter Nossek.
”If I have a strong suit, it`s intuition into the running-game situation, tendencies of other clubs, which I try to help Jeff with.”
Away from the distractions of the dugout and armed with both that intuition and pages of computer data, he`ll spot something from time to time and relay it to Torborg.
”We try to give him all the information we can to help him make a decision, the one with the best percentage for us. And that`s what the game is all about-percentages,” Nossek said.
”There`s always a few ways to do things, and you like to go with the best one at the right time.”
But don`t get the idea that baseball is turning into a game of computer analysts and high-tech espionage. It will never be that.
”To put any great emphasis on it would be wrong,” said Nossek. ”The bottom line in this game is between the white lines.
”The players doing the job is what wins you ballgames. We just try to make it a little easier for them to do it.”
