Marlins coach aims to balance MLB duties with pursuit of college degree
Miami Marlins coach Fredi Gonzalez has put together a solid career in baseball.
Sure, his playing career didn’t develop as hoped. Gonzalez will be the first to tell you that. But he’s enjoyed a smooth transition to coaching, working his way through the ranks to serve as manager for both the Marlins and Atlanta Braves before returning to assist in Miami under current manager Don Mattingly.
[Ditch the pen and paper on football’s biggest day. Go digital with Squares Pick’em!]
Yet despite his success as a baseball lifer, Gonzalez recently realized something important was missing. It was actually during Thanksgiving dinner with his family that he looked around the room and came to the realization that everyone had gone to college and earned a degree.
Everyone except for him, that is.
According to the Miami Herald’s Clark Spencer, Gonzalez is now in the process of fixing that self-perceived shortcoming. In a story published Wednesday, Gonzalez revealed his decision to enroll in classes at Immaculata University in Philadelphia and opened up on his attempt to balance his MLB coaching duties with school as he pursues his degree.
Back to school
Like countless other baseball players with high hopes, Gonzalez didn’t attend college full-time right out of high school. Instead, he signed with the New York Yankees after graduating from Miami’s Southridge High in 1982. Gonzalez, then a catching prospect, was the Yankees’ 16th selection in that year’s draft.
Gonzalez says he took a few classes during the offseason while playing in the minors, but the goal was to have a long career playing baseball professionally.
When Gonzalez had not yet advanced beyond the Double-A level six years later, it was clear a big league career wouldn’t be in the cards. That’s when Gonzalez transitioned to coaching, while again making time for college classes on the side. Then his coaching career took off and baseball took priority again.
Now, after managing 1,402 games in MLB, the 55-year-old Gonzalez is determined to teach the game he loves while expanding his mind as he seeks personal validation.
“Instead of going home after a game, opening a bottle of wine and watching Netflix, now I’ll open a book and try to expand my mind a little bit,” Gonzalez said of his studies.
“I’m stressing out”
Of course, no one said it would be easy.
Though Gonzalez is only currently signed up for one online course in business leadership, he’s still knocking off some rust as a student.
“The first eight or nine days, I told my wife, I’m stressing out. It’s been 35 years since I opened a book.”
Gonzalez is drawing motivation from his wife and her two daughters, all of whom graduated college, as well as his mother, who earned college degrees in Cuba and the United States, all while trying to learn English. He plans on taking more classes in the offseason as he doesn’t want any overload to impact his job.
“At the pace I’m going, it’ll take me a while,” Gonzalez said. “But if you don’t start, you’re never going to finish. Do I need it? Probably not at this stage of the game. But at least it makes you think. It gets your juices flowing. You can still learn. We can all still learn. We can still get excited.”
The Miami Herald story has more on Gonzalez’s future plans, and how his wife says the new challenge has changed his mindset.
It’s a path many players before Gonzalez have taken. One of the most notable stories came three years ago when Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman returned to Duke University to complete his degree while rehabbing a knee injury. But that doesn’t make the message Gonzalez is delivering through his words and his actions any less inspiring.
Never stop teaching.
Never stop learning.
More from Yahoo Sports:
• NFL commissioner breaks silence on blown no-call
• Did Saints coach take a shot at Goodell with his T-shirt?
• TV station worker fired for label on Pats’ Brady
• Wetzel: Browns QB turned the tables on all the doubters
