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Glenn Sherlock was a Globe All-Scholastic baseball player in 1979.Globe Archives<\/p>\nThese are among the bits of wisdom collected through the decades by Glenn Sherlock, a North Shore native and behind-the-scenes baseball lifer who recently retired after 43 years in the professional ranks, including 31 seasons coaching in the major leagues.<\/p>\n
He was a Globe All-Scholastic as a St. John\u2019s Prep standout in 1979. He served as Mariano Rivera\u2019s first manager. He helped put The Yankee Way into writing, and he helped launch the Diamondbacks as a franchise. He won a World Series in 2001 and once in a while breaks out the ring to prove it. He threw batting practice to a batting champion (1994 Paul O\u2019Neill), coached a catcher to a Gold Glove (2021 Jacob Stallings), and had up-close views of stars from Deion Sanders to Randy Johnson to Jacob deGrom.<\/p>\n
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Over the offseason, a generation after he first nearly stepped away from baseball, Sherlock decided: It was time. He and his wife, Lisa, along for the whole ride, moved to Nahant, the tiny peninsular town in which he grew up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing on my body that didn\u2019t hurt was my arm,\u201d Sherlock, 65, said with a wincing laugh. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing it a long time. A long time. I\u2019m gonna miss it. I\u2019m gonna miss the camaraderie with the players and the coaches. But it\u2019s time for somebody else to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
From contractor to new contract<\/p>\n
In the Sherlock household, catching was a key skill. One did not merely walk through doorways. He was the youngest of six, five boys.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very competitive place to be,\u201d Sherlock said. \u201cMy house was like \u2014 you had to be careful if you came in, because they would throw a basketball at you or a football at you. Something was coming at you, so you had to be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Appropriately, then, he found his first baseball home behind the plate, which wound up creating all sorts of opportunity. Coaching staffs are filled with former catchers.<\/p>\n
Sherlock graduated from St. John\u2019s Prep and headed to Rollins College in Florida. Four years later, the Astros selected him in the 21st round of the 1983 draft. His signing bonus was \u201c$2,000, a glove, and a pair of spikes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll you need,\u201d he continued. \u201cGood luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glenn Sherlock was a Globe All-Scholastic baseball player in 1979.Globe Archives<\/p>\n
By the winter of 1986-87, after several seasons bouncing around the lower minor leagues, Sherlock\u2019s mind-set shifted. He had been released. He had become a father. He was working his usual offseason gig, in Florida for a contractor, and intended to make it a full-time job \u2014 even planning to go to contractor school.<\/p>\n
Mentally, he was sort of retired.<\/p>\n
Then the Yankees reached out with a no-frills minor league contract. He signed, not knowing how it would go. It marked the start of a decade-long run with the organization.<\/p>\n
In his first assignment, with the Triple A Columbus Clippers, he played for manager Bucky Dent, who nine years prior had hit his famous division-deciding popup over the Green Monster.<\/p>\n
Dent\u2019s advice: Go into coaching. Sherlock played 10 games all year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose were tough discussions, tough things to say, but telling the truth is the most important thing,\u201d Dent said in a telephone interview. \u201cWhen Glenn was with me, I just saw that he did everything right. He understood the game. He wanted to learn the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
He came to want to teach it, too.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Dent] sat me down many times and said your future is in coaching. You need to start thinking about that. I was like, \u2018 \u2026 OK.\u2019 I wanted to play,\u201d Sherlock said. \u201cHe was very realistic, and I\u2019m glad that he took the time to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Front-row seat to history<\/p>\n
In 1990, his first year fully done playing, Sherlock was tasked with managing the Yankees\u2019 squad in the Gulf Coast League (now the Florida Complex League), the lowest level of the minors in the United States. The season was short but the days were hot.<\/p>\n
The bold name on that roster: a 20-year-old Panamanian pitcher named Mariano Rivera, making his professional debut. He didn\u2019t throw a cutter yet but did put up an absurd 0.17 ERA in 22 games, including a seven-inning no-hitter in his finale.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Rivera] could hit, he could play shortstop, he could run them down in the outfield,\u201d Sherlock said. \u201cAnd he may have been our best outfielder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another formative experience in Sherlock\u2019s initiation into coaching: He was among the farm system personnel charged with developing the Yankees\u2019 player development manual, an instruction book that became a bible for the department.<\/p>\n
How would the Yankees teach baseball? They defined how to handle every piece of minutia for about every situation in the sport.<\/p>\n
It laid the foundation for their homegrown stars and the dynasty later in the decade, and helped groom almost as many coaches as players.<\/p>\n
Sherlock still possesses the physical document \u2014 and referred to it periodically throughout his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never forget . . . we spent hours deciding whether [outfielders] should catch the ball on their glove side or if they should catch the ball on their backhand side, and then throw,\u201d Sherlock recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I was sitting there \u2014 as a catching guy \u2014 thinking, are you kidding me? It was so thorough. But we went through the whole thing like that, position by position.\u201d<\/p>\n
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In the early 1990s, Glenn Sherlock was among the farm system personnel charged with developing the Yankees\u2019 player development manual.Courtesy of Glenn Sherlock<\/p>\n
In those early years with the Yankees, Sherlock met Buck Showalter, who became a close friend and key figure in his career.<\/p>\n
To Showalter, Sherlock (and his then-strong accent) was \u201cright out of a scene from \u2018Cheers,\u2019 \u201d the longtime manager said. They hit it off. Showalter\u2019s obsessive attention to detail was of great interest to Sherlock, who wanted to learn it all in pursuit of being a great minor league manager. Showalter wound up hiring Sherlock three times \u2014 in 1992 with the Yankees, in 1996 with the Diamondbacks, and in 2022 with the Mets.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very talented. Players have a way of trusting him,\u201d Showalter said. \u201cAnd he was the gold standard of batting practice. He knew that was always going to be his fallback ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sherlock also had an initial stop with the Mets (2017-19) and worked for the Pirates (2020-21). But that Arizona tenure was by far his longest, staying for 19 seasons under eight managers. <\/p>\n
When Bob Brenly became manager ahead of the 2001 season, he retained Sherlock because of his track record with catchers. Sherlock came to be a mentor of sorts to Brenly\u2019s son, Mike, then a teenage batboy and aspiring catcher (and now the Red Sox\u2019 replay coordinator).<\/p>\n
\u201cHis reputation in the game preceded him,\u201d the elder Brenly said. \u201cThis game is full of [expletive], so when you run into one of the good guys, you keep him around.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most famous Arizona season was 2001, when the Diamondbacks won the World Series.<\/p>\n
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Glenn Sherlock will occasionally show off his 2001 Diamondbacks World Series championship ring, but only at \u201cspecial events.\u201dCourtesy of Glenn Sherlock<\/p>\n
Sherlock remembers clearly the day of Game 7. The night before, Johnson had thrown 104 pitches across seven innings. But in the hours before the last game of the season, he had his cleats laced up because \u201cyou just never know,\u201d he told teammates.<\/p>\n
The bullpen coach that year, Sherlock watched as Johnson made the slow midgame walk down the left-field line, deeming himself available just in case. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe place is going crazy,\u201d Sherlock said. \u201cI was in the bullpen going, man, this is unbelievable. The excitement in the stadium, they had these white towels, it was so loud. He came right down, sat down, calm as can be and said, \u2018Just let me know.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson recorded the final four outs. A quarter-century later, Sherlock shows off the ring \u2014 but only at \u201cspecial events,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sherlock\u2019s swan song came with the 2025 Mets, whose members he still holds dear. A midseason bout with the flu and pneumonia sidelined him for weeks. The team missed the playoffs on the last day of the season, and change was coming to the staff. He decided he had had enough.<\/p>\n
And so Glenn and Lisa returned to Nahant. The fixer-upper they had bought a couple of years prior was fixed up. Lisa, originally a Florida gal, was cool with the cold of New England. Part of the point of retiring was to spend time with family, and there still are plenty of Sherlocks in the area. And it\u2019s nice not to have to check for scorpions.<\/p>\n
In a lot of ways, home was much as he left it.<\/p>\n
The ballfields next to Johnson Elementary School were Sherlock\u2019s first. As a teenager, he worked the grounds \u2014 a prelude to contracting, maybe \u2014 for the Conigliaro brothers, Tony and Billy, at their Drumquill Golf Course, now Kelley Greens. The same beaches still are busy year-round; lobstermen still help the town go.<\/p>\n
Even the family\u2019s former home, where his great-grandfather settled after arriving from Ireland in the late 1800s, still is there.<\/p>\n
The Boston skyline, visible across the Broad Sound, has grown.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally,\u201d Sherlock said, \u201cnot a lot has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
It all came flooding back, the landmarks and the history and the people: Cole Gaudet and Jim Brown, volunteers running the youth league; Lou Falkoff, of the nearby American Legion squad; Pat Yanchus, the legendary St. John\u2019s Prep coach. These are some of the folks who through baseball shaped Sherlock, who went on to shape untold others.<\/p>\n
Normally, at this time of year, he would be in the sun at spring training \u2014 Fort Lauderdale or Tucson or Scottsdale or Bradenton or Port St. Lucie.<\/p>\n
This year, it is still winter. He can see the frigid ocean from his front window.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely an adjustment,\u201d Sherlock said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m definitely happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tim Healey can be reached at timothy.healey@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him @timbhealey<\/a>.<\/p>\n