UVA’s O’Connor Reunited With His Heroes On USA Baseball Team

Brian O’Connor has worked wonders for the University of Virginia baseball program and at the same time enhanced the ACC’s national reputation in the sport by giving the conference its first national championship (2015) since Wake Forest’s in 1955.

Now, it was time for O’Connor to do something for his country, and a little bit for himself.

When the National Anthem played at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, N.C., on Thursday night, prior to the U.S. game versus Chinese Taipei, O’Connor felt the spine-tingling chills any American coach or athlete has felt for his country.

Standing alongside his two longtime mentors Paul Mainieri and Jim Hendry, O’Connor felt at home as pitching coach for USA Baseball Collegiate’s national team. Mainieri, the longtime head coach at LSU, brought O’Connor into the coaching business years ago. Hendry, special assistant to New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, coached O’Connor at Creighton in 1991.

Talk about a triumvirate of baseball knowledge in one dugout, this trio is always on the same wave length.

“That was one of the things that I was most looking forward to, getting a chance to be with [Mainieri and Hendry] for three weeks,” O’Connor said in a telephone interview Friday morning. “From a professional standpoint, these are the most influential mentors of my career, and also in my life,other than my father.”

Mainieri, who hired O’Connor as his pitching coach at Notre Dame for a decade prior to O’Connor taking the Virginia job, was adamant when he was asked to become the head coach of USA Baseball about one thing. He only had one demand and that was that he could name his own coaching staff.

That included Hendry and O’Connor, his two most beloved longtime associates.

Mainieri and Hendry go back 40 some years to when they coached high school football together in Miami after they graduated from college.

“Jim recruited me at Creighton and he is the reason I decided to get into college coaching,” O’Connor said. “I saw the impact he had on us as players and on people in general. He helped shape and mold the way I think as a coach.

“Paul, well I joined him at Notre Dame when I was just 23 and I learned everything I know about how to run an organization, how to run an elite baseball program the right way,” O’Connor said. “Both have made significant impacts in my life, so to wear the same uniform with them, to be in the same dugout, exchanging ideas, helping players, has been amazing.”

O’Connor certainly has done his job as pitching coach. In Thursday night’s three-week debut, his USA pitching staff was only one strike away from a combined no-hitter in a 3-2 series opening win over Chinese Taipei. The two teams play again tonight in Cary, the second of five straight games against Taipei, then a series against Japan, which will be played at various sites in Georgia. The USA Baseball experience will close with a five-game series in Cuba against the Cuban National Team.

Mainieri has been delighted to have his two friends alongside him for the journey.

“I’m kind of getting toward the end of my career now, and this was kind of a bucket list thing for me to do,” Mainieri told CBS-19’s Damon Dillman prior to Thursday night’s game. “The two guys, honestly, that I really wanted to have on the staff more than anything in the world was Brian as our pitching coach and Jim as our bench coach.”

We’ve often heard that athletes or coaching staffs are so well connected that they anticipate what one another is thinking, fits perfectly with these three men.

“I looked over in the seventh inning and Paul and Brian were talking about how we were going to pitch this guy, and I’m standing next to them like, ’Wow,’” Hendry told Dillman.

Staff meetings and dugout decisions come easy.

“A lot of like-thinking is going on because we were all influenced by the same people,” O’Connor said.

It’s a serious commitment for all three men to be away from their organizations for three weeks. NCAA rules allow O’Connor to have a replacement recruiter on the road in his absence, and he chose UVa staffer Matt Kirby.

“Our staff and assistants back at Virginia are carrying the load for me right now,” O’Connor said. “This allows Matt to get some experience out there for three weeks. Everybody is picking up the slack a little bit.”

Coming off another solid recruiting class, O’Connor’s thoughts aren’t far away from his Cavaliers’ program. After missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since he’s been at Virginia (2004), he’s eager for a fresh start and excited to weave some of the new talent in with players who gained valuable experience this past season.

For now though, it’s about figuring out how to pitch against Chinese Taipei, Japan and Cuba. There are no scouting reports, so everything is guess work, making it up as you go along.

“We didn’t know who was on Taipei’s roster until we showed up last night,” O’Connor said. “We are pitching to what our pitchers’ strengths are. That’s a little bit different, but at the same time exciting. We’re going to do what we do.”

The USA staff knows its pitchers because of conference calls among the staff and USA Baseball throughout the spring when they had to determine what players should be considered for the roster. USA Baseball works in conjunction with Major League Baseball, so there were recommendations made about people to be considered.

“We were updated all the time about players latest outings,” O’Connor said. “USA helped give us information to help make our decisions. It was a difficult process because there are a lot of guys worthy of this honor.”

O’Connor, with a strong background as a pitching coach, isn’t there to change anything with the USA players, but rather to help lead them to success.

“They’re on the team for a reason,” he said of the 19 pitchers in camp, soon to be joined by national runners-up Arkansas’ closer in the coming days.

While all the games are exciting, O’Conner is particularly interested in going to Cuba.

“Not many people get that opportunity,” he said. “We all know the history of Cuban baseball and its influence in the world of baseball. To go down there and experience it will be an amazing experience for all of us. It’s one of the more interesting places you can go to play.”

More thrills and chills in not only doing this with the men he admires, but also for his country.

“Wearing the University of Virginia uniform is a very, very special thing to me, but it’s also thrilling and special to look down and see three other letters on my chest: USA,” O’Connor said. “Wearing that uniform and knowing that people have made sacrifices for us to wear those USA uniforms is an amazing experience.”