So awesome when a baseball lifer reaches the mountaintop

By Steve Melewski

Orioles

November 03, 2021, 1:35pm

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When the Atlanta Braves won the World Series on Tuesday night - as Atlanta beat the Houston Astros in six games - a Braves employee since 1977 could exhale and realize he got to the baseball mountaintop. He was a world champion - one who started with the organization as a minor league player in 1977.

He is a former longtime minor league manager and a man who was promoted to the position of major league coach three times over the years, only to be sent back to the minors each time. He is the Braves manager, 66-year-old Brian Snitker.

I've never met Snitker and might not know him if we passed each other today on our way to lunch, but I probably know many baseball lifers just like him. Lifers who give everything they have to the game every day and most, heck almost all of them, never experience a night like Snitker on Tuesday.

It's clear he may not have a big name or reputation, but he has big respect from his players. That jumps out at you.

"Brian Snitker is an amazing human being," the Braves Freddie Freeman said in a postgame interview on FOX television that was quoted in this excellent article on Snitker (subscription may be required) in The Athletic. "It's absolutely amazing we get to call him a world champion now. For everything he has done for this organization, for all the people he coached in the minor leagues to build up this organization, and now he's a world champion, Manager of the Year, he has every single award you can get as a manager, and that is just the coolest thing ever."

Snitker got his first minor league managing job at 26. Then-Braves farm director Hank Aaron had to give him some bad news - he was not a good enough player to make the majors. But how about managing?

Thus started a career continuing on in the game after his brief playing days. One for Snitker that saw him manage 20 seasons in 10 cities on the farm. That is a lot of bus rides, late-night meals, bad hotels, and long days and nights in cold, damp, small dugouts and clubhouses. A lot of time missing your kids play a Little League game.

Find me someone that has been in the minors that long and I will show you someone that loves the game.

I don't have to know Snitker to know the story. I've seen it and I've known others who fit his profile. Others I wish could experience just once what he did this season. This is one of hundreds of things that makes baseball great. But it's the Snitkers of the world that also make it great. Every organization has them. We are lucky they are there.

I think of a guy like former Triple-A Norfolk Tides skipper Gary Kendall, a longtime friend and a baseball man I hold in the very highest regard. Yes, the Orioles are moving on next year without him, and that is hard for me to write and even to think about. One of the best nights I've enjoyed in the game was watching Double-A Bowie win the Eastern League championship in 2015. When Kendall gave me a big bear hug in the clubhouse, my eyes got moist. Because I was so happy for him and I knew what this meant to him and how hard he worked to get there. It was special and I'll never forget that night. It's why many of us want to be in and around this game.

Kendall spent 22 years in the O's organization. Triple-A pitching coach Kennie Steenstra, who spent 17 seasons with the club, also is not returning. I fully respect the O's decision, and their front office needs to hire and retain anyone they feel they want to and need to. Of course, this is true. I look forward to meeting their new hires and hope they go on to have careers like Kendall and Steenstra's.

And those two will land on their feet. I'm sure of that, and I don't bring them up today to be critical of a decision the club had every right to make. We all know good friends in many different businesses who parted ways, and it was not easy.

But they, to me, are like Snitker in a sense. Not quite his age, but they've spent a lot of years in the game and they rode the same sorts of buses and had those mediocre late-night meals in cramped clubhouses. They did it because they loved it, and they seemed to get just as much satisfaction in helping a player they had to know in their heart would never make it as much as they did in coaching a first-round pick surrounded by expectations and hype.

As an aside here, The Athletic article on Snitker mentions that he got choked up late Tuesday night thinking about several longtime Braves staffers no longer alive, including, of course, Aaron. But the piece also mentioned Jim Beauchamp and Phil Niekro. From 1989-92, I worked on the Triple-A Richmond Braves radio broadcasts. I don't remember meeting Snitker, but Beauchamp was the Richmond manager during two of my four seasons with that club, and Niekro was for a third. What classy gentleman, and I've met few who could see an inning or two ahead in the game as well as Beauchamp. He and Niekro were both once very, very kind to a young guy who thought he knew the game but really didn't.

The game is filled with people like Snitker, Kendall and Steenstra, and that may be what I love about it the most. It is certainly near the top of my personal list.

So today I am so happy for a man I've never met, while hoping that some that I have known will be in his shoes someday.

Roster notes: The Orioles made some roster news on Wednesday. First the Pirates claimed pitcher Eric Hanhold on waivers. Later the Orioles waived and outrighted to Triple-A catcher Pedro Severino and pitchers Conner Greene and Marcos DiplÃ¡n. That trio is expected to become free agents. These moves leave the 40-man roster currently at 30, but that will grow to 35 when they add back five players currently on the 60-day injured list. Click here for more on the roster moves.

Finally, see the tweet below - the O's Trey Mancini and his girlfriend, former MASN broadcaster Sara Perlman, got engaged in Ireland.

ICYMI: Moments after the #Braves recorded the final out, I caught up with an emotional #Braves Manager Brian Snitker.#WorldSeries #BattleATL #Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/YeUwWAHo2t
-- Hazel Mae (@thehazelmae) November 3, 2021

"You guys are going to be World Champions the rest of your lives" - Brian Snitker pic.twitter.com/jK8hmcz3e1
-- Matt DeBary (@MattDeBary) November 3, 2021