Dennis Rogers is my mentor. He never coached me, but he’s always been my coach. I’ve always said that you don’t have to be a mental skills coach to teach mental skills in your coaching, and that’s Dennis Rogers. He’s an ABCA Hall of Famer and he was interviewed in our previous issue of Inside Pitch, but I wanted to use this particular column to celebrate Dennis and explain why he has meant so much to so many of us in the baseball world.
I grew up in Riverside, California and I knew of Dennis Rogers long before he ever knew of me. He was already a legend at nearby Riverside City College when I was a senior in high school. I heard friends and teammates talk with reverence when they mentioned playing for Dennis, but it would take me a dozen more years before I had that fateful first meeting. I had attended UC Riverside and had always been close to Jack Smitheran and Doug Smith at UCR. When I started my first coaching and consulting business, they asked me to come speak to the UCR baseball team. A few weeks later, Dennis called and asked me if I’d be willing to come back to Riverside to meet with his team and a few of his players, too. I agreed, of course, and we began a longstanding tradition of talking mental game, baseball, and life together. But what really changed me that day was the way Dennis talked about my abilities as a mental skills coach. He believed in me, and spoke about me with a credibility I hadn’t heard before, and in a way I had never thought of myself before. He told me that he thought I should be in the big leagues, and he agreed to help introduce me to the right people to make that happen.
Over the years, I’ve met many people in the game who either played for or coached under Dennis. My first day of spring training with the Pittsburgh Pirates, I told an A-ball pitcher, Chris Hernandez, that I was from Riverside. Dennis was the first thing he brought up, I talked about our friendship, and Chris told me that Dennis was the most important person in his life. My first day of spring training with the Atlanta Braves, I told Tommy Hanson the same thing, and without prompting, he told me that Dennis was not only the best coach he ever had, he was the most influential person in his life, too. I kept hearing the same thing over and over. Dennis helps people be better baseball players, better coaches, better men. But how?
The building blocks that Dennis utilized with his teams isn’t all that different from most coaches. He’s tough, but positive, demanding and detailed, and he pushes people to work harder than they knew they could. So do a lot of great coaches. The separator for Dennis is a seemingly magical ability to assess talent and predict a path for future success. Dennis and about 30 of his former players and assistants (and me) went to dinner one night at the ABCA Convention in Anaheim in 2012. At the end of the night, each of us stood up and toasted Dennis with something that meant the most to us. Mike Ashman, who has been with the Los Angeles Angels for decades, told the room that if Dennis ever tells you to do something to set yourself up for future success…do it! Ashman told us how Dennis mapped out what educational steps he needed to take, where he would coach as an assistant, and other career milestones along the way one night when he was younger. Mike’s career turned out exactly as Dennis had foreseen it. He did this many times with me in my career. I didn’t always listen, but when those moments played out as he’d forecasted, I called him and told him he’d been right.
In my profession, I listen a lot and give a lot of advice. People ask me often who I turn to when I need wisdom and the advice of someone who has been where I want to go. My answer is Dennis Rogers. Thanks to a great coach who has molded so many of us and is still there for us whenever we need him. Thanks to all of you reading this who may be that person for the people in your circle. Keep being there for them. I’m grateful for Dennis and someone out there is grateful for you!
Geoff Miller has spent the better part of two decades working in Major League Baseball for multiple organizations. His mental skills training series and commentary are available through Optimize Mind Performance, an app that links athletes with some of the most renowned mental skills coaches from around the world. For more information, visit www.optimizemindperformance.com.