Transcript
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Welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged with Coach Ken Carpenter, presented by Athlete One.
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Baseball Coaches Unplugged is a podcast for baseball coaches, with 27 years of high school baseball coaching under his belt, here to bring you the inside scoop on all things baseball, from game-winning strategies and pitching secrets to hitting drills and defensive drills.
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We're covering it all.
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Whether you're a high school coach, college coach or just a baseball enthusiast, we'll dive into the tactics and techniques that make the difference on and off the field.
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Discover how to build a winning mentality.
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Inspire your players and get them truly bought into your game philosophy Plus, get the latest insights on recruiting, coaching, leadership and crafting a team culture that champions productivity and success.
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Join Coach every week as he breaks down the game and shares incredible behind-the-scenes stories.
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Your competitive edge starts here, so check out the show weekly and hear from the best coaches in the game.
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On Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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I'm your host, coach Ken Carpenter.
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Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.
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I'm your host, coach Ken Carpenter, and Baseball Coaches Unplugged is a podcast that helps equip you, the listener, with strategies to help elevate your coaching.
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You'll gain practical insights from the best coaches across the country that you can implement with your team.
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Today, you're probably wondering why are you releasing a podcast on Christmas Day.
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Well, I thought I'd be different than a lot of podcasters who'd like to take the week of Christmas off.
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I decided to re-release my most talked about episode from 2024.
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I was fortunate enough to get Randy Mazey, the head baseball coach at WVU, which is West Virginia University, right after retiring and being knocked out of the regionals against the University of North Carolina.
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I also wanted to do something a little different.
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Every coach that's out there has a spouse that is in the background and they're the most supportive person that that coach has, and I thought why not ask Coach Mazey if he would get his wife Amanda to join us?
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He agreed to do that and she was all in.
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They share their journey of nearly 40 years of coaching college baseball.
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They tell an incredible story about their son, wham, who suffered a near fatal injury on the baseball field and he just now committed to West Virginia University to play.
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I hope you enjoy this and if you're a subscriber and you've listened to all of these shows up to this point, I would recommend listening to it again and if you're new to the show, give it a listen, because Coach Mazie and his wife are really good people and they're what's right about the game of baseball.
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Before we start, I have to thank Will Miner and his team at the Netting Professionals.
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They do a great job and they are the go-to company when you're looking to improve your field and your facilities for baseball and softball.
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The Netting Professionals improving programs one facility at a time.
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The netting professionals specialize in the design, fabrication and installation of custom netting for baseball and softball, including backstops, batting cages, bp turtles, screens, ball carts and more.
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They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches and cubbies.
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The netting pros also work with football, soccer, lacrosse and golf courses.
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Netting professionals continue to provide quality products and services to many recreational, high school, college and professional fields and facilities throughout the country.
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Contact them today at 844-620-2707 or visit them online at wwwnettingproscom.
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Check out Netting Pros on Twitter, instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn for all their latest products and projects.
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On today's show, you'll hear from Coach Randy Mazey, recently retired WVU head baseball coach, discussing what it took to turn around a baseball program that was on the verge of extinction.
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You'll also hear how important a supportive spouse is, as we are joined by his wife, amanda.
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And finally, you'll have to wait till the end to see how a tragic on-field baseball accident to their son is now benefiting families who need the help the most.
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Yeah, you know, you actually gave me the option to have Amanda here with me or not, and I chose to have her with me, so good for both of us.
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He does love me.
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Thanks, Ken.
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Well, you know, when I first did this, I thought I've never had a coach with his wife on the podcast and you know, my wife was almost like an assistant coach when I came home at night.
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So I thought, with Amanda, with your sports background, I thought this is the perfect opportunity to get the two of you guys on.
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Yeah, it's.
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We've always had this unique relationship because he's always been the coach.
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I'm the TV sports reporter, so it's a kind of a cliche that I'm the sports reporter that married the coach.
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But yeah, that's kind of like always been our unique little connection and I've always loved sports long before him, so it's been fun.
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It's a unique relationship and partnership, so I've really enjoyed it.
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You said, it's almost like having an assistant coach at home.
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She actually has been writing my lineups for the last 20 years.
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I don't know if people realize that.
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There you go.
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Now you know, Now you know she gets all the credit for the wins and I take all the blame for the losses.
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Well, it's been, I think, a little bit over a month now and you know I got to ask how's retirement treating the both of you retirement?
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treating the both of you.
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You know what, ken?
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I've never realized that you could live life stress-free for the most part.
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You know, it's been 35 years of coaching and every day you wake up you're just trying to compete and trying to find a way to be better than your opponent, and you don't realize what kind of lifestyle that is until you get out of it.
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And now the biggest stress in my life is you know, we're going to get enough rain for my tomatoes down in the garden, you know, and I wake up in the morning and there's a little bit of a sense of freedom.
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It's early, of course.
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It's only been a month.
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If you're going to miss part of the season as a coach, the recruiting in the summertime is probably the part you want to miss.
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It's going really well so far.
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We'll see how it goes when the season starts and the games come along.
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I'm not with the players every day and the staff every day in the office.
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All the stuff that I really enjoyed hasn't come around yet, so, but so far so good.
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How would you rate his retirement starting off?
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You know what?
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It's actually been pretty nice to have him home and doing things.
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I'm typically the one that kind of runs the show at home, so I'm I'm the one doing the gardening and I'm doing all of this.
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So it has been nice.
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I will say he loves to cook.
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I hate to cook.
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Hate it, hate it, hate it so he's in the kitchen cooking, but he doesn't make it easy, like, if it's gonna, if it's a recipe that calls for broth, he's gonna make the broth homemade.
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So like everything is organic and from the beginning.
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So I've been telling our friends it's like having a toddler in the kitchen.
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There's just stuff everywhere and it's a mess.
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And you're like, okay, this is great.
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But you're like, oh, this mess, but he's, he's enjoyed himself.
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It's nice to have them not stressed honestly.
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So it's it again.
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Like he said, it's only been a month.
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Talk to me next month.
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I might be ready to kill them.
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There you go.
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Well, now that you've had some time to reflect on your career, what has it meant to you for 40 years to have such a huge effect on young baseball players' lives?
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You know the relationships to me were always the best part.
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You know I was never that guy that when I died I didn't want it to say on my tombstone how many games I won.
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You know I literally could care less about that.
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I know a lot of people are that way, but I'm not.
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When I retired I just wanted to have a network of friends and and coaches that I have relationships with and you know, just yesterday I was sitting out on the back porch with a drink in my hand called Dan Fitzgerald from Kansas and Pete Hughes from Kansas State friends of mine that I've built in this profession that I can still be friends with and I will leave with that, with great relationships with a lot of people and in the big scheme of things, like I said, I could care less what my record was.
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But the relationships with the former players and the coaches.
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I got a text from a former player literally right before we started this podcast.
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His son was born this morning and he sent me a text.
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Give me his name and his birth weight and all that.
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And it's just stuff like that that when I reflect back that I'm proud of what I accomplished off the field way more than on the field, I'm proud of what I accomplished off the field way more than on the field.
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That's the secret to coaching, in my opinion, because everybody I get on this podcast, all the coaches seem to get it and they talk about the importance of the relationships they have with their players and their assistant coaches and everybody associated with the program.
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And you know, amanda, you've been along for this ride.
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What has it meant to you to be every step of the way?
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It's been a blessing to see these guys kind of grow up before our eyes.
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I mean, when he and I first got together we're about 10 years apart, so I wasn't much older than some of these players and to watch them go from college to the real world and become fathers and dads, that's been really rewarding too.
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So you kind of have like this vested interest in their life beyond baseball and it's just been really incredible to be a part of a lot of those kids journeys through baseball, through adulthood and to see where they are now and they come back and we always tell them our house is always open, you're welcome back anytime.
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If you need us for anything, we're there for you.
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So we just have like this network of kind of like children out there all across the country, which is pretty special.
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Well, wvu baseball has changed forever under your leadership, coach.
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Talk about.
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I grew up in eastern Ohio and right across the river from Wheeling, and I know how the fan base can be in West Virginia.
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They're really passionate.
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But talk about how the whole state fell in love with your program.
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And the other side of it is why should a college baseball player out there consider West Virginia as a place to play?
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Yeah, you know there's a real sense of pride too.
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When I retired that the difference in the program now compared to 12 years ago.
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I feel like the entire state right now has a program they can be proud of, and most coaches don't get to retire when they feel that way.
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You know it's a lot of times.
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I mean the amount of retirements that are voluntary in our profession is way less than the forced ones, as we know.
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But it's pretty cool to retire when you feel like you can be really, really proud of something.
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And you know West Virginia is a unique place.
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I know you know that and you know West Virginia is a unique place.
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I know you know that and you know we played North Carolina in the Super Regional.
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In the state of North Carolina there are 19 or 20 Division I baseball schools.
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So in the state of North Carolina all the fans, their loyalties, are divided among those schools.
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Everybody I mean Duke and NC State and Wake Forest all have their own followings of fans.
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But in our state, as you know, there's only two Division I schools us and Marshall and they're pretty safe to say that we probably have 90% of the fan base in the state of West Virginia supporting the Mountaineers.
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So this really means a lot to a lot of people that this program is in a place right now that everybody can be proud of.
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So that gives me a sense of pride.
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In retirement I want to travel the state and stay connected with people, and I feel like you know when I go speak at events, regardless of what event I'm speaking at.
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I always wear my uniform that says Mountaineers across the chest, and I do that because that uniform in itself, because of our state, makes people listen to what you have to say.
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You know, and we've done some great things here.
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I'm not naive enough to ever think that I did it by myself.
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This one beside me had a lot to do with it my staff, the players, the fans, the administration.
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It's a collaborative effort to get this program where it's at today, but really, really proud, when I did announce my retirement, that we left this bad boy in a pretty good place.
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Yep, without a doubt.
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Well, you know, the unique thing about this podcast is having, you know, the wife of a coach on.
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I have had a ton of coaches on but I've never had a wife.
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And you know, I talked to a coaching friend of mine.
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They made it to the state championship and played a great game, lost by one run.
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Parents were just Very vocal and, knowing that the wife was right there in the middle of all of it and she was having to hear a lot of this, what would be the best advice that, if a coach is listening to this, he could share with his wife when she's having to attend games?
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You know it's pretty unique because I've had to sit in situations when we're at home.
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obviously most people know that I'm his wife and and, like you said, mountaineer fans are passionate and there have been times where they've been yelling at him and I just know, that's part of the territory you know if, if fans want to criticize him because he sent a runner from third or called a bad pitch, like that's part of it, and I understand that.
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The thing that I never liked was if they got personal about him or me or us or our children, but even then I just sort of like, let it roll off my back.
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You kind of have to be like a duck with the water.
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It just has to kind of like roll off because you can't engage as much as you want to.
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It just makes it worse.
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And I also stay off social media because people love you when they're winning and they hate you when they're losing.
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And even when you're winning, there are going to be people out there that if you win by 20 runs, why didn't you win by 21?
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I mean, there are always going to be detractors no matter what you're doing.
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So I've just made it a real point to just not engage and it's hard.
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I mean sometimes it's hard because you want to turn around, especially at an away venue right Like that's where it's really bad because they're yelling and this and that, and yeah, it's just.
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You just have to have really thick skin and and not let them know who you are, Like I never wanted people to know who I was, because then they tend to like turn it up and not well, that's the coach's wife Like let's really dig in and see if we can get a reaction.
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No reaction is the best, but it's hard.
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I mean, this is being a coach's wife at any level.
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It's not for the faint of heart.
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You have to have thick skin and you have to be tough and just.
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Man, don't, don't wear your emotions, you know, and just wait to get back to the hotel and the car, and then you can MF them all you want.
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Just don't do it to their face, Don't let them know.
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Be sure to follow us on all socials, at athlete one podcast, and hit up our website at athlete onenet.
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That's athlete the athlete1.net.
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That's athlete the number one dot net.
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This is the Athlete One Podcast.
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Of all the recruits Coach that you've recruited throughout the years, there's got to be one, I think, that stands out among all of them.
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And your son, you know, is Weston.
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He's now committed to go to West Virginia University and talk about I know how my experience was with my son being in the dugout, both as a player and as a bad boy when he was younger.
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Talk about that experience of having your son in the dugout with you throughout these years.
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The fact that he has been in the dugout keeps me from having to teach him baseball, you know, first and foremost because he's around it every day and he watches JJ Weatherholt take ground balls, and he watches guys like.
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Darius Hill hit and kids are pretty sharp, you know they.
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They pick up things from the kids around them.
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So for the first 12-13 years of his life I literally didn't teach him baseball.
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I just wanted to let him go have fun and play and he's emulating people's stances and how they feel ground balls.
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Fortunately he's around a lot of good players.
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He's developed a pretty good feel for the game.
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Now when he's in the dugout with me at his age, we'll actually talk about the game and situations.
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He'll give me his input.
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We were in a regional last year and there was a play at home plate in the regional and we were on defense and the umpire called the guy safe and he told me he said Dad, that guy never touched home plate, he slid into the catcher's foot.
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You need to replay that Call for a replay.
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So we called for a replay.
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So we called for a replay and the call got overturned.
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Because he pays such close attention to the game and I think that's uh that really helps him as a player too because, uh, physically, like most kids who are juniors in high school, he's undersized and under strengthngth, but he's got a pretty good feel for the game.
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So the other stuff will come.
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But I never wanted to be without him in the dugout.
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I always wanted to coach him at West Virginia, but I didn't want him to be coached by me.
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I thought that would have been too much pressure on him.
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I didn't want him, after the game, to go back to the apartment with the players.
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You know, as a coach, when you write the lineup, there's only nine guys on the team that are happy with you when you write the lineup.
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The rest of them would rather push you off the side of a cliff because they're not in the lineup.
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So they get back to the apartment and they're going to tell all their buddies what a jerk you are.
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I just didn't want him to be around that and have to hear that.
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So I trust the coaches that are here to coach him that they're going to develop him and teach him and unselfishly, you know, I did not want to put that pressure on him to be coached by me.
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Well, let me ask you this with your son being a college recruit, commit to a division one school as parents.
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How, how much do you really emphasize the being prepared so when he first walks onto campus he doesn't get hit with the oh my God, the weight room or whatever it is that really opens up the eyes of a freshman baseball player, regardless of how good they are?
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Yeah, he's in a unique situation that he has practiced with us in the past and he lives with our team, so he's not going to get steamrolled with what happened your freshman year because he's been through it, but it's a real thing for a kid now.
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You know we've started a program called Summer Bridge where the incoming freshmen come to summer school and take one class and start lifting and practicing.
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So when that first semester starts and all 30,000 students come steamrolling into Morgantown at one time, they don't our guys don't get overwhelmed.
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They've already been here for a month and have made the transition.
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But life as a freshman baseball player has changed here in the last two years too, because of the portal.
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You know, now, just like him, my son's a rising senior in high school.
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He's an infielder.
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I think he's going to be a good player.
00:22:23.786 --> 00:22:33.028
I don't know that, but he could come here as a freshman and they could have signed two short stops out of the portal the same year he gets here.
00:22:33.028 --> 00:22:36.367
So it's changed a lot.
00:22:36.367 --> 00:22:45.275
The high school kid that was committing to schools early on has changed.
00:22:45.275 --> 00:22:46.459
The landscape has changed.
00:22:47.280 --> 00:22:55.015
I have a lot of parents of kids my age that are kind of panicking right now that hey, we don't have a place.
00:22:55.015 --> 00:23:03.835
You know the last three years, you know you've seen freshmen and sophomores in high school committing to schools and they changed the rules.
00:23:03.835 --> 00:23:05.226
You can't do that anymore.
00:23:05.226 --> 00:23:17.431
And now, with the portal, not as many high school kids are seeing the same opportunities as they have the past four or five years, and my message to them is just don't panic.
00:23:17.431 --> 00:23:27.873
If you're a good player, you'll find a good place, and but the dynamic is definitely different than it used to be.
00:23:29.884 --> 00:23:41.111
Well, I heard an interview, I believe it was, with Nick Saban as he was coming toward his retirement and his wife played a role with the incoming freshmen.
00:23:41.111 --> 00:23:43.983
You know they would have them over to their house and things like that.
00:23:43.983 --> 00:23:49.000
As a the wife of the coach of you, did you have a similar style?
00:23:49.000 --> 00:24:07.113
And I believe, when he said he talked to his wife about this, his wife would connect with not only the players but the, the parents that would come to of those incoming freshmen, and she said that it's now all they were talking about was NIL money, and he was.
00:24:07.113 --> 00:24:13.688
You know, coach Saban can be being a former mountaineer himself as far as growing up in West Virginia.
00:24:13.688 --> 00:24:19.875
Did you play any role like that with players throughout the years coming by, possibly to your place?
00:24:26.301 --> 00:24:26.403
Yeah.
00:24:26.403 --> 00:24:29.059
So my role in all of that was we would always have recruiting dinners at our house and meet the parents.
00:24:29.059 --> 00:24:30.509
We always wanted to make it a homey environment.
00:24:30.509 --> 00:24:37.148
When we got to West Virginia, we built a house, and when we built this house, it wasn't just for our family, but it was for the baseball family as well.
00:24:37.148 --> 00:24:38.092
So we built our kitchen.
00:24:38.092 --> 00:24:44.846
It's like a nice big kitchen and so when we have meals catered and we have the team over, we have recruiting dinners, it flows.
00:24:44.846 --> 00:24:45.949
So we built this house.
00:24:45.989 --> 00:24:51.107
We wanted to make sure that we had the families over because you can get to know them better in your own home.
00:24:51.167 --> 00:24:56.819
As opposed to going to a restaurant and you're sitting, you know tables and you don't really have a chance to interact with people.
00:24:56.819 --> 00:25:09.882
So we've always made it a family atmosphere here at West Virginia and I, you know, would get to know the parents then, you know, and and they would ask me some questions, but they were more interested in the baseball side.
00:25:09.882 --> 00:25:14.313
But I always let it be known that if your kid needs anything, if you guys need anything, let us know.
00:25:14.313 --> 00:25:17.500
If you need, you know, the mom to come in and do some things.
00:25:17.500 --> 00:25:29.884
We've had some players who have had, you know, some life situations while they were here and I never wanted to, like, overstep my boundary because to me I'm like, well, I am just the wife, like I'm not a part of the staff or anything.
00:25:29.884 --> 00:25:33.291
But I always let it be known that if you need a mama.
00:25:33.491 --> 00:25:37.088
I'm here for you, so I always just kind of put the ball in there for it.
00:25:38.859 --> 00:25:46.808
And that seems like the consensus, because from my research a lot of the players talk about you coaches.
00:25:46.808 --> 00:25:53.596
You know you're not just a baseball coach, but you know in some ways a father figure.
00:25:54.240 --> 00:26:04.813
Yeah, you know I've always taken pride in the fact that you know we do a really good job of teaching guys the baseball skills that they need to be successful.
00:26:05.461 --> 00:26:12.590
You know how to steal second base or hit a curveball or field a backhand, but those skills, as you know, only last year, for a couple of years.
00:26:12.590 --> 00:26:17.969
Very few people ever get to play this game beyond their 25th birthday.
00:26:17.969 --> 00:26:23.329
So spend all this time teaching them stuff they won't use that much the rest of their life.
00:26:23.329 --> 00:26:29.647
So I've taken a lot of pride in trying to teach them the skills that they will use the rest of their life.
00:26:29.647 --> 00:26:36.487
You know how to be a good husband and father and teammate and co-worker and all that stuff.
00:26:36.487 --> 00:26:43.986
So we really would make a conscious effort to go out of our way to teach those skills.
00:26:43.986 --> 00:26:56.788
And when they're done playing, that's the part that they appreciate the most, the fact that we taught them how to be tough and overcome adversity, because everybody faces it, you know.
00:26:56.788 --> 00:27:03.988
So we would have meetings every week in our theater and wouldn't talk baseball at all.
00:27:03.988 --> 00:27:12.108
We would just talk life skills and trying to get guys in a good place mentally and prepare for the rest of their lives.
00:27:14.362 --> 00:27:20.228
Is that possibly what separates the really good, successful coaches from those who are?
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