Coaching challenges can’t get much more daunting than the one faced by Brooks McNiven of the North Shore Twins this season, who not only had to take over for a Hall of Fame legend but also inherited a championship team with expectations of a repeat performance.
The former national team and minor league pro pitcher has been a coach with the Twins for several years, but took over the head role this season with Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer John Haar taking a step back from the day-to-day grind to act as the director of baseball operations for the entire Twins organization. With Haar at the helm the Twins won four B.C. Premier Baseball League titles in the past nine years, including last season when the team won the first regular season title in franchise history before claiming gold at the BCPBL championships and silver at nationals.
“Taking over for John, those are some big shoes to fill,” McNiven admits. The results so far, however, show that the 35-year-old McNiven is more than ready to keep the team running at full speed. With three weeks left in the regular season the Twins are back on top of the standings with a 23-6 record, two games ahead of the second-place Victoria Mariners. McNiven has a simple explanation for his early success as a head coach: John Haar.
“I knew his time as a head coach was coming to an end, just because he was in his 70s, so I just tried to watch carefully and tried to continue doing the same things that he had done that brought us success,” says McNiven. “I just watched how he managed the players and the relationships that he’s able to build with them.”
McNiven, who grew up in Vernon, has a wealth of baseball experience himself, having played seven seasons as a professional minor league pitcher after getting drafted in the fourth round by the San Francisco Giants in 2003. The lanky righty also suited up for the Canadian national team on several occasions, including at the 2007 and 2009 Baseball World Cups and the 2008 Olympic Games. It’s those national team stints that stand out as his favourite moments on the mound.
“There’s something to be said about wearing your country’s colours, wearing Canada across your chest and going out there playing for your country,” he says. “If I could have made a living playing for the national team, that would have been my first choice.”
Making a living playing for Canada, however, was never an option, and so McNiven needed to find something else to do to pay the bills over the years. It’s a problem faced by many minor leaguers who don’t make anywhere near what their Major League counterparts earn, and the solution for many is to get into coaching.
“None of us are getting rich playing pro ball,” says McNiven. “Signing bonuses are one thing, but your monthly salary is nothing to write home about. And so we were all looking to pay for our cost of living and our rent and stuff and so most guys would go on to do baseball lessons and clinics and things like that.”
Looking for coaching opportunities is what took McNiven to an indoor training centre in Richmond that was co-owned by none other than John Haar.
“I went in there and asked if I could work there,” says McNiven. “One of the guys said ‘Yes, as long as you meet with John and he OKs it.’ That was my introduction to John.”
McNiven worked a few camps with Haar and made an impression.
“At the end of that he said to me when you’re done playing I would like you to come coach with me with the Twins,” McNiven recalls. “Obviously for a young kid like myself, to hear that from a Hall of Famer was very meaningful.”
Since joining the Twins McNiven has earned a masters degree in John Haar baseball. Communicating with the players and learning how to motivate them are two of the biggest lessons he learned while watching the Hall of Famer.
“At times he knew when to open his mouth, give guys a hard time and that kick in the ass that improved performance, and then he was really good at other times of being very supportive and giving the pat on the back and letting them know everything is going to be OK,” McNiven says. “The other thing was how he runs a practice, and what he demands of his players every time they’re on the field at practice. … One of his famous lines is ‘you have to come to the field every day and make yourself better and make everyone else around you better.’ I think we’ve done a pretty good job of sticking to that this year and making sure we’re developing as a team and as individuals.”
McNiven isn’t just doing a John Haar impersonation though. He’s been studying to be a coach for a long time, he says.
“When I played – and this is weird, maybe I was destined to be a coach – I remember listening to some of the great managers that I played for in their pre-game talks and explaining drills that we were going through. I remember them making their points and I was like, I need to remember that because if I ever coach that’s going to be something that I could really use.”
That studious approach is paying off so far with the Twins, and McNiven is hoping the team can stay hot right through the playoffs as they go for a repeat title. The main focus for the team, however, will be to maintain the club’s longstanding goal of developing ballplayers who are ready to reach higher levels once they leave the Twins.
They’ve got a great example of that in former Twin Louis Boyd who is starring for the Arizona Wildcats in the NCAA College World Series this week. The Twins also have several players who are currently part of the National Junior Team program. That junior team commitment takes the players away from the Twins for long stretches during the season but in the end makes the players, and the team, stronger, says McNiven.
“I want to win as badly as anybody else does, but I think when you look at this league and you look at the path these kids are on, they’re still at the early stages of their baseball careers,” he says. “We really focus on the development part of the game, really spend a lot of time working on the little things to make these kids better. It’s amazing to win provincial championships and we were fortunate to do that last year, but these guys are going to go on to bigger and better.”
The Twins will continue their quest for a second straight title Monday, July 4 when they host the Coquitlam Reds in a 4 p.m. start at Parkgate Park.
