Page 91 - 1975 BoSox

84 ’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL
batters, though, and the game was soon over, Seattle scoring just once in the top of the ninth.
Pole was a regular in the Mariners’ rotation, starting 24 games. He ended the season with a 7-12 mark. ( e team was 64-98, but the Mariners were spared from being in the cellar since Oakland was 63-98.) Pole’s ERA was 5.15, but better than the 6.48 ERA (with a 4-11 record) he posted in his nal year with Seattle (and in major-league ball) in 1978. After the July 18, 1978, game, Pole never pitched in the majors again. He nished out the season with Seattle’s Triple-A a liate, the San Jose Missions, but was 0-4 in the Paci c Coast League. He tried to make it back to the majors the following spring but was released by the Mariners on March 24, 1979.
Pole pitched for Santo Domingo and the Paci c Coast League Portland Beavers in 1979, for Portland and the Southern League’s Montgomery Rebels in 1980, and in seven games for Birmingham in 1981. He pitched for a few seasons in the Mexican League before calling it quits as a player and getting into coaching. He spent ve years in the Cubs system, working at Quad City, Pitts eld, and Iowa. Pole’s rst job as a major-league coach came under Don Zimmer, manager of the Chicago Cubs. When Zimmer was hired to manage the Cubs for the 1988 season, he hired Pole as his pitching coach.
Pole was indeed thinking more. He said the years in Mexico had helped him in this regard, when he had begun to follow up on something Luis Tiant had told him in Boston. In 1999 Pole told the Los Angeles Times, “Luis Tiant always said I should throw changeups, but I was young and hardheaded and relied too much on my fastball. It didn’t help then, but it helped me in my coaching life.”3 Pole’s more patient philosophy helped turn guide the career of one of the Cubs’ young pitchers, Greg Maddux. Just starting his second full year of play, Maddux came to training camp with an 8-18 record in 1987 and an ERA of over 5.50. With Pole as his pitching coach in 1988, Maddux posted a 3.18 ERA and won 18 games (18-8), and he credited Pole, who, he said, “taught me how to throw pitches.”4 In July 2005, after recording his 3,000th career K,
Maddux told Rick Gano of the Associated Press: “I remember when Dick Pole told me one day, ‘Why don’t you stop trying to strike guys out? Just try to get them out, and you’ll probably strike out as many guys, if not more. He was right. I’ve always tried with two strikes just to make a pitch and get the guy out. You get a lot of strikeouts just on accident.”5
Pole served as pitching coach for the Cubs for four years, 1988-91. He was red in late June 1991, after the Cubs lost 12 of 13 games.
When Dusty Baker was hired to manage the San Francisco Giants for the 1993 season, Pole joined Baker, serving ve more seasons as a pitching coach (1993-97). e two had gotten to know each other while working in the Arizona Fall League, and when Baker hired Pole, he was quoted as saying, “I’d always wanted a left-handed pitching coach. e more I was around him, the more I saw he thought like a left-hander, though he’s a righty. Left-handers usually throw less heat, there, they have to know how to pitch more, which is what it’s all about. ...”
In 1998 Pole put on a Red Sox uniform for another year, serving as the bullpen coach. He was the pitching coach for the Angels in 1999. When Indians pitching coach Phil Regan resigned after the Indians were pummeled for 44 runs in the nal three games of the 1999 AL Division Series, Pole was hired by Cleveland for the 2000 season and served in that capacity in 2000 and 2001. In 2002 he was the pitching coach for the Montreal Expos. His nephew Hank Pole was in the Expos system that one year, with a 1-1 record in Rookie ball for the Gulf Coast League Expos.
e Cubs hired Dick Pole for 2003 and he served as bench coach for manager Dusty Baker for four years, through 2006. From 2007-09, he was the major-league pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds.
Sources
baseballlibrary.com
retrosheet.org
John orn and Pete Palmer, Total Baseball, 7th edition.