It is hard to make this a real Rockies post, but I will try. I had two great coaches in my life, Coach Scolinos and Marcel Lachemann. Both of these guys new each other very well.

Lachemann of course was a coach for the Rockies.

Coach Scolinos had a thousand stories. I will share three here. He saw a fly trying to get out of a window, and said to a player, "That fly is smarter than you are." Then he would show how the fly is trying over and over again to get outside through the window, hitting the window in a different spot each time. He then said to the player, "If you were the fly, you would be doing this!" and coach would make a buzzing sound as he hit the window at the same spot with his finger over and over. His point to the player was that he was trying the same thing repeatedly and getting the same result.

Coach had a favorite story about meeting an ex-player who played for him in college. Coach asked him what he was doing, and the player said that he was a street cleaner. Coach was visably surprised and saddened that this college grad was cleaning the streets. The player then said to coach, "Don’t worry coach, I got the cleanest streets in the city." His point was that every job was important, and always worth doing the best you can.

Coach would get one of his players every year to help him illistrate a point. He would tell the player that everytime he would fake hit the player, the player would fall down, then get right back up. Couch would do this in front of all of his players, and tell them that if you get knocked down, you get right back up, and don’t just lay there.

Coach would have pitcher and catcher meetings. I was neither, but I went to all of them, as did many other players and non-players. It was the most instructive baseball class imaginable. It was so fun, that I could not wait for the next one to start. Ex-Rockie Mike Munoz was in those classes most days I was.

Longtime pitching coach Mark Wiley played for coach Scolinos. He was an assistant to Dan O'Dowd for a short while, and in that time convinced O'Dowd to bring Rodrigo Lopez to the Rockies.