Constant in a Sea of Change : Coach Sandt Helps Pirates Maintain Feeling of Family

Bobby Bonilla said goodby to the Pittsburgh Pirates after the 1991 season. And the club bid adieu to John Smiley and Bill Landrum.

Tommy Sandt stayed.

Barry Bonds departed after the 1992 season. Doug Drabek said see ya and the team said sayonara to Jose Lind.

Tommy Sandt stayed.

Mike LaValliere was sent packing by the club this week.

And Tommy Sandt, Pacifica High Class of ‘69, trotted out to the first-base coaching box.

Players come and players go and, like the artificial turf at Three Rivers Stadium, Sandt returns for another season.

A bit player in the majors for only 42 games with Oakland in 1975 and 1976, a triple-A Manager of the Year in Hawaii in 1984, Sandt, an All-Southern Section pick as a senior at Pacifica, is beginning his seventh summer as part of Manager Jim Leyland’s staff. The cast changes, and there is not much glory in being a coach, but it is baseball, and Sandt has seen enough bad carpeting at Motel 6s across the nation to appreciate a major league job when he has one.

“I love it,” he said. “I’ve gotten to see some of the greatest players in today’s game. I’ve gotten to see a team the city hated from 1984 to 1986 after the losing and the drug dealing, and I mean they hated the Pirates, and now they love the Pirates.

“It’s great to see. And we have some good guys. That’s one thing we’ve always had.”

The Pirates, who play the second of a three-game series tonight at Dodger Stadium, have run a lot of guys past Sandt and Leyland in their continuing struggle to strike a balance between contending and fiscal restraint.

But with several rookies breaking into the lineup this season, Sandt, who also is Pittsburgh’s infield and baserunning coach, has little time to think about the past. Two rookies have stepped into the infield this year--Kevin Young at first base and Carlos Garcia at second--and there are tips to offer and fungoes to hit.

“This is a big year for Tommy,” Leyland said. “He’s done a great job with Garcia and Young.

“He’s got a great rapport with the infielders. He knows how to instruct and teach.”

For the Pirates, three-time defending NL East champions, the process has become all too familiar: Develop player, player does well, player qualifies for big money--and player is gone.

While it is tough on Pittsburghers, it is even more wrenching for members of the Pirate staff, who can recall those long hours spent teaching during many spring trainings ago--not to mention those three division titles that are getting increasingly more difficult to obtain.

“It’s sad,” Sandt said. “You lose not only good players, but people you’ve been close to. People like Bonds, Drabek, (Gary) Varsho, Bonilla. We went through a lot together. We laughed and cried.

“It’s sad--but it’s the nature of the game. The game is going to go on without those guys. It’s going to go on without me.”

Sandt, 42, paused Wednesday and looked around the visitors’ clubhouse in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He scanned the lockers, inhabited already by 11 players who were not on Pittsburgh’s 1992 divisional championship team. He focused on outfielder Andy Van Slyke, one of the few remaining Pirate stars, who was playing cards in front of his locker.

“We counted in spring training,” Sandt said. “We’ve lost 30 (players’) kids--a lot of families have moved. We were a very close team. Everybody knew each others’ families and played with each others’ kids.

“That part of it is tough, but I’m sure these guys will have babies. I remember when Andy got here and had one son. Now, he’s the bat boy. It’s neat to see them grow up.

“We saw Drabek’s kids grow up. . . . That’s what hurts, I think, more than anything. We lost good players, but we lost good friends. I don’t think people realize how close you get in baseball. Maybe you do in football and basketball, too, but heck, we get to the park at 1 or 2 every day.

“Heck, we live together. I remember we were at a dinner in spring training, and Drabek’s kid fell down and cut his head open. That became a ritual. At every team get-together, something happened to one of Drabek’s kids.”

Across the clubhouse, Van Slyke continued playing cards with three other unfamiliar Pirates. On the clubhouse television, the Cubs were soundly beating Atlanta. Sandt glanced around and continued.

“One thing about Doug,” he said. “Last year he pitched the seventh game of the playoffs (a ninth-inning 3-2 loss to Atlanta), pitched his heart out. Afterward, most of the wives were crying, as we were, and Doug walks up to my wife on the plane home and asks, ‘You OK?’

“That’s what you miss.”

Sandt’s longest stint in the majors started Oct. 16, 1986, when he joined the Pirate staff. Sandt had been coaching and managing in the Pittsburgh farm system for seven years, from Portland to Buffalo to Lynn, Mass., to Hawaii, and Leyland had taken over in Pittsburgh in November, 1985.

The Pirates had dropped Mick Kelleher from the coaching staff after the 1986 season, creating the opening.

Interestingly, Sandt and Leyland didn’t know each other very well at the time. But Leyland, after having spent 18 years in the Tiger organization as a player, coach and manager without ever reaching the majors, had made a promise to himself when he took over the Pirates.

“I had guys who I was better friends with than Tommy Sandt,” Leyland said. “We’ve become good friends. But I don’t believe in that buddy stuff. That’s a sensitive area with me. I was in one spot for 18 years and never got a break.

“I wanted to promote from within, and I felt Tommy Sandt was a tremendous choice. I felt we were fortunate to have him. . . . It was a perfect scenario for us. He has been a major help to me. Tommy is one of an excellent group of coaches.”

Having accomplished about all he could in the minors, Sandt was delighted that Leyland looked inside the organization instead of outside.

“I think that’s part of our success,” Sandt said. “This is an organization. Everybody is important, from the janitors to the president of the ballclub. A large part of that is due to Jim.”

The adjustment from minor league manager has come smoothly for Sandt, and not just because of the major league meal money and hotels. While Sandt doesn’t run the club, he is in charge in some areas.

“I’m the infield coach, and Jim lets me work with the infielders,” Sandt said. “A lot of places, maybe they don’t let you do that. He lets the coaches do their jobs. You feel like you’re doing something, not just hitting fungoes.”

So he works with Young at first base. He coaches Garcia, a converted shortstop, teaching him about footwork while turning the double play.

That’s one thing about change: There hadn’t been much work to do anymore with Lind or Jay Bell.

“He’s helped me a lot,” said Garcia, who should be an NL Rookie of the Year candidate this season. “Double plays, flipping the ball to the shortstop, all kinds of stuff. How to go to the right side, how to go to the left side.

“I always listen to what he says. A couple of guys told me to listen to him, he’s a good coach.

“If not for him, I don’t think I’d be here right now.”

Said Leyland: “(Sandt) worked so hard in spring training. He’s going to have to work all year with them. They’re going to get better and it’s going to be a treat for him, I’m sure.”

Sure, Sandt treasures the times when Varsho would throw batting practice to him in less-than-serious moments during practice. He thinks about the past three Octobers, when he was so close to participating in his first World Series.

But who knows? Skeptics have written off the Pirates before. Maybe what Sandt learned most during a 13-year playing career that resulted in only 42 major league games was patience.

One day, he would like to coach a small college team in Oregon, where he and his wife, Diane, have lived since 1980. One day, he figures, he will be a part of the community and teach baseball.

Today, though, there is plenty of work to do with the Pirates.

“The new kids we’ve got make it pretty easy,” he said. “They’re just a lot younger. You get to learn what music is popular and how to dress.

“Hopefully, I’ll have some memories of them.”

He paused, tugged on a black Pirate sweat shirt, and then finished.

“I’m sure I will.”