Following a 12-Year Hiatus, Dews Is Back in Big Leagues

Bobby Dews likes to arrive at the ballpark hours before the game begins, when the stands are empty and the players are still lounging around in the clubhouse.

He’ll wander outside and gaze at the field, after the ground crew has finished watering the outfield grass and smoothing the infield dirt.

“It’s a clean slate,” Dews said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re 59 years old, like I am, or a 19-year-old rookie. If you work hard to prepare yourself and you’ve got some talent, you’ve got the opportunity to write whatever you want to on the field that day. It’s clean every day, just waiting for us out there. That’s what I love about it.”

For the past 11 seasons, the slate for Dews has been minor league fields from Macon, Ga., to Durham, N.C., to Richmond, Va.

He served a variety of important but unheralded jobs within the Atlanta Braves’ organization, from roving instructor to director of player development to minor league field coordinator, helping to develop future major-leaguers like Chipper Jones and Ryan Klesko.

But Dews, a decade removed from majors, never lost the desire to make it back to Atlanta.

“Some people will admit it and some people won’t, but I think everybody has a dream to be at the top of this game in some capacity,” he said. “There was never a day that I went out on the field to work with the kids . . . that my heart was not set on being a third-base coach at the big-league level.”

The chance came this winter when Jimy Williams, the Braves’ third-base coach since 1990, was named manager of the Boston Red Sox. A few weeks later, Dews was picked to take Williams’ spot on the Atlanta staff, fulfilling a dream he had managed to conceal--even from those closest to him.

“My wife and family and all my friends had no idea that I wanted to do this,” Dews said. “They didn’t know that part of me, how that can be dormant inside of you but not really be dormant. It’s always there.”

Dews was born in Clinton, Iowa, the son of a man who would play 14 years in the minor leagues. He grew up around the ballpark, often serving as a batboy during the summer in whatever small town his father was playing.

After starring in baseball and basketball at Georgia Tech in the 1950s, Dews was an infielder in the Cardinals’ organization for more than a decade. Once he realized he wasn’t going to make it to the big leagues as a player, he turned his attention to mastering aspects of the game that others find tedious--base running, defensive alignments, relay throws.

“All the things that are boring but so important,” he likes to say.

Dews made it to Atlanta as a coach in 1979 during Bobby Cox’s first stint as manager. One publication named him a likely candidate to become a big-league manager, but he wound up returning to the minors when Joe Torre replaced Cox in 1982.

Dews came back to Atlanta in 1985 to serve as first-base coach under Eddie Haas. When Haas was fired midway through the season, Dews was considered for the post of interim manager, but the job went to Bobby Wine instead.

Dews’ best--and perhaps last--chance to become a major-league manager had passed him by. More than a decade later, he readily accepts that coaching third base for the defending NL champions might be the highlight of his career.

“I’ve worked hard every day with this in mind,” he said. “Right now, it’s been almost 12 years since I’ve been up here. But right now, sitting here right this minute looking out over that field, I feel like it’s been about 12 minutes.

“I don’t feel like I ever left.”