Celebrating Rich Donnelly’s 72nd Birthday
To have a conversation with Brooklyn Cyclones bench coach Rich Donnelly is to journey through more than five decades of a baseball lifer’s memories.
From being the young manager of a minor-league team whose stadium burned down to coaching third base for the 1997 World Series Champions, he has an endless trove of stories to share, each seemingly concocted in a Hollywood writers’ room.
Though he insists he has no interest in the milestone, today marks Donnelly’s 72nd birthday, one of the many times throughout the year that the Steubenville, Ohio native hears from hundreds of former players and colleagues who still call him “Coach.”
Those texts and calls are more valuable to him than any birthday celebration or material present he could receive.
“When I was coaching in Pittsburgh, my sister sent me one of those guys who dress up as a gorilla with the balloons,” Donnelly said. “I cursed out the gorilla and told him to get the hell out of the locker room. I told her, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ And my wife [Roberta] knows now. I don’t want any cake, I don’t want any ice cream.”
In his second go-around with the Cyclones after managing the ballclub from 2011 to 2013, Donnelly’s return to Brooklyn is a welcome homecoming after two seasons spent away from affiliated baseball.
It also comes on the heels of two tragedies that have shaped the longtime coach’s perspective on life.
On Oct. 1, 2017, two of Donnelly’s daughters, Tiffany and Leighanne, were at a music festival across from the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire on the crowd. As they shielded themselves from the barrage that killed 58 people and injured 851 more, both women sprang into action to save the lives of nearby strangers who had been struck.
About three months later, on Jan. 7, 2018, one of Donnelly’s sons, Michael, was killed in a car accident on a highway in Texas. The 38-year-old had stopped to help a woman whose car was disabled on the road, and he died protecting her from the impact of an oncoming vehicle barreling towards them.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself,” Donnelly said. “My wife said, ‘You need to go back and coach. You need to go back on a field somewhere.’ And magically, a week later, [Mets director of player development] Ian [Levin] called me and offered me this job.”
Now that he’s back on a baseball field on Coney Island, Donnelly hopes to impart the same lessons he’s shared with everybody from Mike Hargrove to Barry Bonds to Brandon Nimmo.
One of his greatest messages? If you think you have it bad now, you’re wrong.
After four years as a minor-league catcher in the Minnesota Twins and Washington Senators farm systems, Donnelly made his managerial debut in 1972 as the 25-year-old skipper of a Class-A team in Greenville, S.C.
The Greenville Rangers played the season — their only one in existence — at a ballpark nicknamed “The Alamo” because, after a Valentine’s Day fire ravaged the complex, all that remained of the stadium were a charred outfield wall and ashes.
“I talk to about 10 of those guys all the time. They still remember that year, the Greenville Rangers,” Donnelly said. “We had no clubhouse. We dressed at home every game. There was no ticket booth, no nothing. There was barely even a field. When the lights were bad, a guy would come in with a light meter, but he needed a flashlight to read his meter. And then, part of the outfield wall fell in about halfway through [the season], so I had two batboys go out and hold up a rope. Under the rope was a double, over the rope was a homerun. It was a cement wall that just fell down. And so every time we’d come up, I’d tell them to lower the rope.”
Rich Donnelly has been gifted with gratifying successes throughout his 50 years in baseball. He’s won a World Series. He’s mentored hundreds of players on their path to the big leagues. He’s coached in all 30 MLB ballparks.
He’s also coped with heart-wrenching tragedy that no parent can imagine.
But today, on his 72nd birthday, he’ll remember where he was at the start of his baseball journey, the novice manager of a team with “the worst ballpark in the country.”
“I think about that [Greenville] team every day,” Donnelly said. “That year, we were everything. We were the grounds crew. We cleaned the place up as much as we could. And I said if I could it through this, I could make it anywhere. Nothing could beat that year. When our players complain about something, I just laugh because they’ve got no idea.”
