這是來自 NJ.com Star-Ledger
在介紹新任投手教練Dave Eiland
從家庭背景到球場上...
A LEGACY OF CARING
Sunday, March 23, 2008
BY ED PRICE
Star-Ledger Staff
ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla. --
His dad was lying in a coma in a hospital. He wasn't going to come out of it.
And still, Dave Eiland knew what he had to do. He had to leave his father's
bedside and go to work.
"We knew on Saturday he wasn't going to get any better," Eiland says,
recalling that day -- April 7, 1996 -- clearly. "We were going to take
him off life support.
"I said, 'Well, I'm going to go pitch first.' I know that's what
he'd say: 'Don't worry about me.' He said that when he (first)
got sick: 'You've got to do what you've got to do. You've got your
family. So go pitch.'
"So I did. And I tried to pitch knowing after the game ..."
Eiland, his eyes watery, couldn't finish the sentence.
Bill Eiland, a few months into retirement, had accompanied Dave as he
broke camp for the start of the season. The St. Louis Cardinals had
assigned the right-hander -- currently the Yankees' new pitching coach --
to Louisville, Ky., the ninth of 13 straight seasons that Eiland spent
at least part of in Triple A, and Bill was going to stick around for
the first few games.
Bill, 67, had lung cancer. That Friday, he suffered a heart attack and had
to be rushed from his hotel room to a Louisville hospital.
Two days later -- on Easter Sunday -- Dave made the toughest start of
his career. He got through a couple of innings okay but then fell apart
and allowed nine runs.
"It was a disaster," Eiland says.
That night, Bill Eiland died.
Eight hundred and fifty miles away, an entire town mourned.
PART OF THE TOWN'S FABRIC
U.S. 301 leads northeast from Tampa, where the Yankees hold spring training,
and the city soon gives way to farms, lakes and small towns.
It's one of the parts of Florida that people who only associate the state
with Disney World, Spring Break and South Beach don't know about.
About 30 miles from Tampa is Zephyrhills. And while recent years have seen
the sprouting of the big-box stores and fast-food restaurants that are
ubiquitous throughout the country, Zephyrhills still has the remnants of
an old-South downtown.
There's a grid of closely space streets with the library next door to
city hall. In the center of town is a small square anchored by the
Bill Eiland Memorial Bandstand. A couple of miles north, a section of
State Route 54 has been renamed Eiland Boulevard.
The town wanted to honor Eiland, who served as Zephyrhills' police chief
for 34 years. Robert Howell, who worked under Eiland for 33 years before
succeeding him as chief in 1996, says there's an obvious reason why.
"He was probably as popular and well-liked as anybody has ever been in this
community," Howell says.
Eiland, one of 17 members of Zephyrhills High's Class of 1948, began as
police chief in 1961, when the town was 1 1/2 square miles with a population
of 2,000. He had a force of three, including himself.
"He was the chief, and he was also the day patrolman," Howell says.
Bill married June Arnot, from one of Zephyrhills' patriarchal families.
They had two kids: Beth, born in 1964, and Dave, two years later.
The family was as much a part of Zephyrhills as its famous spring water.
Bill Eiland's days began with a morning check at the police station. Then
there was a block's walk to Neukom's Drug Store, where locals gathered for
breakfast. The chief would chime in on the ribbing and take part in the
daily "scratch" game to see who had to pay for everyone's coffee.
He knew everyone, and everyone respected him, and that was how he kept law
and order.
"A lot of potential problems were handled without the law getting involved,
if you know what I mean," Howell says. "If a kid was doing something he
shouldn't be, or somewhere he shouldn't be, or involved in something he
shouldn't be, Chief would tell him that next time that happens, he'd let
his folks know about it. Or it might be a situation where he did let his
folks know about it."
Zephyrhills, like so much of Florida, could not escape the statewide
population boom. By the time Eiland retired, it had more than 8,000 residents
and a police force of 34.
But Bill Eiland was a constant.
"You say 'Chief' around here," says Craig Milburn, a close friend of the
Eiland family and Dave's high school baseball coach, "and everybody knows
who you're talking about.
"He cared a lot about this community and gave a lot to this community."
One day, he found out how much the community cared about him.
CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN
In 1976, a newly elected City Council fired Bill Eiland and a few other city
officials.
"Small-town politics," says Howell, who was one of the fired.
Eiland walked up to the dais at that meeting, calmly turned in his badge,
and walked away, dignity intact.
Dave Eiland learned what it meant to be true to oneself.
"He stayed calm," Eiland, now 41, recalls, "and assured everybody involved,
'We'll get this thing right.' And they did."
While Bill Eiland sold used cars for three months, the town was in an uproar.
In the second-ever city recall election in Florida history, two council
members were ousted, and Bill Eiland got his job back.
"The citizens just didn't stand for that at all," Howell says.
Bill Eiland went back to work. But he was more than just police chief.
When Milburn needed help raising money to build a baseball field at the
high school from scratch, Eiland -- who was president of the Zephyrhills
High School booster club at the time -- led the fund-raising effort.
"People just didn't say no to him," Milburn says. "He was that kind of
person."
A few years later, Dave Eiland starred on that field. But not because he
was Bill's son.
"He was one that on the weekends would work on his own," Milburn says.
"David has worked for everything he's gotten from an early age.
"He has a lot of talent, but I've had bunches of athletes that had talent
and didn't have the determination or the work ethic. You learn it from
somebody, and I'm sure a lot of it came right from his home life."
Eiland's talents helped earn him a scholarship to play both baseball and
football at the University of Florida. But while serving as the scout-team
running back -- "I grew up fast getting beat up every week," he says --
Eiland suffered a shoulder injury.
The football coaches wanted him to have surgery, but it would have affected
Eiland's pitching. So he wound up transferring to South Florida, in Tampa,
to concentrate on baseball, and in 1987 the Yankees drafted him in the
seventh round.
BETTER TEACHER THAN PITCHER
Eiland's career typified the journeyman. The baseball term is
"Four-A player" -- too good for Triple A but not good enough for the majors.
Eiland rose quickly in the Yankees' system, making three starts for the
team in 1988. But over the next 13 years, he bounced up and down, pitching
for six different organizations -- including three different stints with the
Yankees. He returned to the Yankees in 1995, spent the next two seasons
entirely in the minors and got back in 1998 with the expansion Tampa Bay
Devil Rays.
In the end, his major-league playing career may not be known for his 12 wins,
27 losses or his 5.74 ERA, but an oddity: He is the only player in history to
allow a homer to the first batter he faced (Paul Molitor) and homer in his
first at-bat (off Bob Ojeda).
When he was with the Devil Rays, from 1998 to 2000, Eiland found himself
talking pitching with and advising some of his younger teammates. He went
to Oakland in 2001 but blew out his elbow, requiring Tommy John surgery.
And when he tore the ligament again less than a year later, he knew it was
time to retire.
But Eiland went ahead and got a second ligament replacement operation.
"I wanted to be able to play golf the rest of my life," he says, "I wanted
to be able to throw the football, and if I was going to get back into
baseball, I'll be throwing BP."
Mark Newman, who oversees the Yankees' farm system, had let Eiland know
they would be interested in having him coach.
"When reality set in," Eiland says, "I said, 'You know what, I still want
to be out on the field. I feel like I have a lot to offer pitchers.'"
Not because he was so good, but because he wasn't.
"I can help guys in a lot of ways because I really had to work at it,"
he says.
And he had the leadership qualities he learned from his dad.
At one point last summer at Triple-A Scranton, Eiland sensed his pitchers
were worrying more about who was being called up and who wasn't than their
own pitching. He called the entire staff down to the bullpen and let them
have it, right in front of Nardi Contreras, the Yankees' roving pitching
instructor.
"Here it is fellas," Contreras recalls Eiland's saying. "We're not going
to do this crap. This is the Yankees and this the way Nardi wants stuff.
This is the way we do it."
Contreras saw a leader.
"He takes charge," Contreras says.
EMPATHY IS A STRENGTH
With a new manager in Joe Girardi and a commitment to an influx of young
pitchers -- many of whom Eiland already had worked with in the minors --
the Yankees picked Eiland to be the coach entrusted with those valuable arms.
"First and foremost, pitchers get better under him," general manager Brian
Cashman says.
Phil Hughes, the top Yankee pitching prospect in the past decade, is a
believer.
"There's no aspect of the job that he takes lightly," Hughes says. "He
knows what he wants and he knows how to get it done, and it's just a matter
of you following through on your end of the deal."
John Flaherty, the YES broadcaster and former Yankee who caught Eiland
with Tampa Bay, says it all goes back to Eiland's playing days.
"He didn't have all the ability in the world, but he knew how to get hitters
out, he knew how to read hitters' swings, he knew how to pitch," he says. "
From a catcher's standpoint, those are the guys you really enjoy working
with.
"He's very smart. Some players who play the game really don't ever know
about their mechanics. They have so much ability that they never have to
think about what they're doing. The rest of us mere mortals have to pay
attention to what we're doing."
Eiland knows more than just mechanics; he knows the mind-set.
"I know what the guy feels like who comes up in the middle of the year to
pitch a game and (thinks) if he doesn't pitch well, he'll go back down,"
Eiland says. "I've made teams out of spring training and been part of the
rotation from the get-go, too. A guy has a bad game, and he comes into the
clubhouse, I know exactly what he's feeling, I know exactly what he's
thinking. When a guy's on the mound pitching and doesn't have his best
stuff and he's battling, I know what it feels like. I also know what it
feels like to have everything going, too -- how to deal with success,
deal with failure."
Here is how pitchers describe him:
"He's calm. I don't think you see too much panic."
"Very thorough ... There's no aspect of the job that he takes lightly."
"It's almost like he had a military background if you didn't know,
just because he can be tough on you."
And here is how the people of Zephyrhills have described his father:
"Undisputed integrity."
"Honest, straightforward."
"Calm and competent."
No coincidence.
"I try and live my life like he did," Dave Eiland says.
STILL TIED TO TOWN
Dave Eiland has hit the big time, but he has not left Zephyrhills behind.
He lives in Wesley Chapel, just a stone's throw west of Zephyrhills, with
his wife Sandra and daughters Nicole (14) and Natalie (11). His mom still
lives in Zephyrhills, as does his sister, Beth Tuscano
(her husband and Sandra are brother and sister, also from Zephyrhills).
Howell says Dave "is probably Zephyrhills' favorite son," and Bill "was
as proud of him as he could be."
Not because of Dave's athletic accomplishments but because of the man he
became.
"His dad was a man of integrity," Howell says. "Easy-going, but he got
excited sometimes like all of us. He just had a whole lot of common sense.
... He was usually the guy that would say what everybody else was thinking
at the time.
"A lot of (Dave's) good qualities, a lot of the pluses for him, are things
his dad exhibited."
Things his sister saw on that fateful Easter Sunday 12 years ago in
Louisville.
"I think that's when David really grew up," she says. "Even though I was
married and I was pregnant, and his wife was pregnant with their second
child, he felt he had to step in and take over.
"I think that's when he really showed his true colors as a man, and from
there he just knew what to do."
Ed Price may be reached at eprice@starledger.com
http://tinyurl.com/2g9pz9
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 140.109.23.119
※ 編輯: yyhong68 來自: 140.109.23.119 (03/24 16:44)