Former AUM player Brad Holman is a pitching coach for the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx.
West Tenn's Holman fond of Montgomery
By Tim Gayle
Montgomery Advertiser
Brad Holman remembers his first trip to Montgomery. A standout high school pitcher from Wichita, Kan., Holman had accepted an offer to play at AUM, a first-year program. He knew little about the school and less about the town in which it was located.
"I was a high school senior who had never been out from under mom's wing and I got in my Chevy Love pickup truck and drove down here not knowing anybody," Holman recalled. "The welcome I received from the people in this community was tremendous and the friendships I made are lifelong friendships."
Holman returned on Thursday as a pitching coach for the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx, which opened the season against the Montgomery Biscuits in Riverwalk Stadium.
The city has grown, he noted, particularly on the east side of town where AUM is located. And wasn't Riverwalk Stadium an old converted train station?
"I remember coming down to this area for Jubilee," he recalled. "When I was in college here, I worked at Brendle Rentals and we used to come down here and set up parties at the train station."
Holman came to the capital city in the fall of 1986 as Senators coach Q.V. Lowe was attempting to field his first baseball team. Holman's older brother Brian had pitched in the Montreal Expos' minor league organization where Lowe had been a pitching coach.
"Q.V. just heard of me through my brother and offered me a scholarship to come play," Holman said. "It was a neat experience, an amazing turnaround. The first year we were 7-28 and kids were coming out in tennis shoes, jeans and hooded sweatshirts. Q.V. just lost it. My senior year, we were second in the nation."
Holman went on to become AUM's most famous baseball alumnus, pitching for the Royals, Mariners, Orioles, Rockies and Padres farm systems before breaking into Major League Baseball with the Seattle Mariners in 1993 when he made 19 relief appearances. He continued to pitch in places like Venezuela and Italy, "trying to hang on to my career," he said, before returning home to Wichita to take a job with Boeing as a aviation mechanic. It didn't last long.
"When 9-11 happened they had a big layoff," Holman recounted. "It just so happened that a lot of the guys I had played with and played under were still affiliated with the Mariners."
He landed a job as a pitching coach with the Mariners, working for four years at the Class A level for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. Last year, he moved up to the Class AA team in San Antonio. This year, the Texas club's affiliation changed and Holman was relocated to Jackson, Tenn.
"As a player, I felt like I was always a coach, a student of the game who took advantage of the intangibles," Holman said. "Compared to my peers in professional baseball, I didn't have the stuff a lot of them did, so I took advantage of the hard work, the knowledge of the game, understanding the hitters and their tendencies. It really materialized into this."
While in Kansas and employed by Boeing, he started a baseball school to instruct aspiring young baseball players. With a baseball field in his backyard, he instructs between 75-90 kids during the offseason with help from brothers Brent and Brian and stepfather Dick LeMay.
"Baseball just chases you," he said.
So does Montgomery. Twenty-one years later, he finds himself back in the capital city.
"It's home away from home," Holman said. "This area is special to me. I came here and the one thing I noticed right away is what I had always heard about Southern hospitality. I came to find out quick that that's for real."
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