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Our Mr. Brogna, managing in Mobile and, if you read the comments to this article in his hometown paper, unpopular in Waterbury.
Redefining Rico
The former Watertown star and big leaguer does some soul searching while managing Double A ball in Alabama
By Joe Palladino
The heat index on July 4 in the deep south climbed near 100 degrees. The steamy drive from Mobile to Jacksonville took 61/2 hours. Welcome to life in the Southern League, Rico Brogna. Brogna, 40, has taken on the biggest challenge of his post-MLB career: He is manager of the “AA” Mobile BayBears in the Arizona Diamondbacks farm system.
“Scouting for five years was fun,” Brogna said Sunday morning. “Being a field coordinator was great because you had the chance to oversee six teams. But then I realized I might like to get back in uniform.”
Brogna loves the day-to-day responsibility of grooming young men to be big league players. The best moment came last week when he told pitching phenom Barry Enright to join the big league club. In his first major league start, Enright beat the St. Louis Cardinals.
“I know what that moment is like for a player,” said Brogna. “Here is this grown man, a competitive athlete, and he starts crying because the moment is so unreal. Being part of that was something special.”
Is Brogna being groomed for a big league bench job, or perhaps even a managerial position?
“I am going to do this season, and then re-evaluate things,” he said. “I really, really like managing. I understand it, I feel confidant, and I feel like I can manage in the big leagues. But that is not why I am doing this. I am living in the moment is the best way I can say it.”
In a series of e-mails over the past few months, Brogna has written candidly about his nomadic coaching resumé that has taken him many places in many seasons. He has been burned by criticism for what even he described as “doing a million things, and jumping all around.”
This winter, Brogna returns to high school coaching with the Shepaug Valley girls varsity basketball program. During his recent two-year run with the Watertown High boys program he “fell in love with coaching basketball. I can’t wait. I am very excited about this opportunity.”
I know what you are thinking. More importantly, Rico knows what you are thinking.
“I need to stick with this and prove to myself, and to others, that I can do this for more than one or two years,” Brogna said Sunday.
There is a part of me that wants to tell Rico that he doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. This is a pro athlete who went home in the offseason to coach freshman and JV sports, and donate countless hours in the community, and buy uniforms and equipment.
He even reached into his own pocket to hire a physical trainer during one stint as a city high school football coach. But Brogna has moved from job to job at an alarming rate, and he knows it. If you have a revolving door to the coach’s office, a high school program can never establish a foundation for growth. Rico knows that, too.
“I took a long look at myself,” he said. “I love to teach and coach high school and prep athletes in ways that can help them beyond sports. But I also have to prove that I can stick with something. You try to teach a young athlete that you have to fight through the things that you don’t like or that disappoint you, and stick with it. I need to do that better myself.”
“I took a long look at myself,” he said. “I love to teach and coach high school and prep athletes in ways that can help them beyond sports. But I also have to prove that I can stick with something. You try to teach a young athlete that you have to fight through the things that you don’t like or that disappoint you, and stick with it. I need to do that better myself.”
You might have one more question you’d like to ask Rico. The answer is a resounding, “No.”
Perhaps you saw the coaching vacancy posted in the Republican-American Sunday for the position of head football coach at Watertown High, a position held down for the past 20 seasons by Roger Ouellette.
For decades there has been only Bill Gargano and Ouellette in that spot. Brogna always hoped he’d “be the next guy.
“But a wide, perhaps permanent, rift has opened between Watertown and the greatest athlete it has ever produced.
“I went to coach at the college level (Wesleyan, Sacred Heart) to learn football at a deeper level,” said Brogna. “This was something I was preparing for. But I can honestly say that the bridge is burned, maybe from both sides to be fair. I am upset about it. It is too bad. But the gap is now probably too deep.”
So today, Brogna is in a “AA” dugout in Jacksonville managing for the Diamondbacks on a 100-degree day.
The coaching job of his dreams is beyond his grasp, and he’s fine with that.
Instead, he’ll come home to coach girls basketball in the Berkshire League this winter and, he hopes, for many winters to come. |
Jeff wrote on Jul 5, 2010 12:01 PM:
"Enough on glorifying this guy already. I wonder if he will quit on this team like he did many times on our local youth. When Rico was a player I rooted hard for him no matter what team he was on......now in his after life he has shown us nothing but poor judgment. He seems to use his big name to get jobs and then walk out on his players when they need him most. He is solely responsible for almost ruining Nonewaugs football program.....a program that a town pulled so hard to construct. Used his muscle to get the Watertown basketball job and walk away a year or two later.....shameful! Yet we still make him an icon. "
Chet P. wrote on Jul 5, 2010 12:44 PM:
"Jeff, you are 100 percent correct. He has no loyalty to Watertown or any other town. We could have used him when the Football coach was coming to work drunk, but he was too busy searching for what will put more green in his pocket! "
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