The first time I ever met Jim Dietz was the day before my 17th birthday. A lightly-recruited, second-team All-League pitcher out of Beverly Hills High, Dietz had invited me and my mom and dad down to check out the San Diego State baseball facilities -- such as they were at the time. Less than 10 minutes later, I would begin my run as an Aztec For Life.
We all sat in his cramped office, situated above the visitors first-base dugout in a makeshift clubhouse that he himself had built by hand. "Well, we've got only a few minutes left before the deadline to register for fall classes," was the first thing he told us after a quick introduction. "What kind of stuff do you like?"
"Well, ah...I hadn't really though about it yet," I stammered.
"OK, then," he said, "you'll take this class, and this one and this one. And I always put my freshmen into this class called 'How To Use The Library.' Let me make a quick phone call." And just like that, I was wearing the Red and Black.
If only San Diego State itself could move so quickly. More than 17 years after he stepped down from a 30-year career in which he won well over 1,000 baseball games, Jim Dietz, at long last, will be inducted into the Aztecs Hall of Fame. He'll be honored during ceremonies at the Oct. 12 football game versus Wyoming. This is one of the great oversights of all time finally being corrected.
Back in that cramed office, a couple of years before I had been there, a gifted, All-American shortstop named Bobby Meacham was sitting with Dietz when another athlete quickly flashed by the open door in the hallway. "Hey," said Meacham to Dietz. "Isn't that guy who just passed by here Tony Gwynn?"
"Yes," said Dietz. "He plays on our basketball team down here at State."
Meacham, who would got on to a brief major league career as a shortstop with the New York Yankees before getting into coaching, was practically dumbfounded. "The basketball team?" he said. "Look, Coach, I've played against this guy, and he's the best baseball hitter I've ever seen. You've got to get him on our baseball team."
I think we all know how that story worked out. Tony Gwynn now sits immortalized in Cooperstown. Dietz will happily settle for a spot inside the SDSU Athletic Department's Hall of Fame display on campus. It shocks most people who knew him when he practically built the entire San Diego State baseball program by hand, and kept it alive mostly with his sweat, that Dietz hasn't already been in there for a long, long time.
I rememeber the first time I walked through the display. I looked for Dietz three different times. Surely he had to be an Aztec Hall of Famer, I thought. But he wasn't. Until now.
Nobody at SDSU could possibly, no matter how hard they tried, come up with a good reason why Dietz hadn't been immortalized practically the day after he turned over his program to Gwynn himself after the 2002 season. The only thing they could potentially come up with is that Dietz didn't often toe the company line when it came to what was best for his baseball program. If he needed something, by hook or by crook, he went out and got it. Not bought it, mind you, but got it.
I and many of my teammates jumped into his truck with him on more than one occasion to go pick up an old broken down light standard or something else from somewhere, that Dietz brought back to the baseball park and fixed up to be used. He knew everybody in the entire city, and could call on them to help out, if need be. One rainy day, he kept a game from being cancelled by calling a friend who owned a helicopter. The thing flew over right over the top of the field for a while and dried out the grass enough so the game could be played.
Speaking of the grass, it was he who would go out an manicure it during the season and even of the off-season. He painted the facility, brought in the stands so people could watch the games, and erected a scoreboard above the right field wall where fans could sit on "Ragger's Rail" and heckle opposing outfielders. He had a phone installed in the dugout so he could monitor everything that was going on -- while he was coaching, and winning, games.
After my two-year playing career at SDSU was over, he called me into that same office one day and told me the chances were that I probably wasn't going to make it all the way to the big leagues. I knew the writing was on the wall. What I didn't expect is that the day I stopped playing for him was the day that Jim Dietz became one of my biggest advocates. He immediately installed me as the team's public address announcer. He called the local newspapers and helped me to get a job writing sports.
He didn't just mold baseball players, he molded men.
Many times, while I was doing the P.A., he would call up to the press box during a game and tell me to announce that the hot dogs for sale down below were now half-price. "We need to get those hot dogs sold," he would say. "And tell everybody that it's a hot day, and they'll need to stay hydrated, so they had better buy a drink." Then he would go back to managing the game.
All of us in the press box would laugh. I'd make the announcement, and then a few minutes later, he would think of something else and call up there again to have something else taken care of.
One thing he never could quite take care of was to get San Diego State to a college world series. But he came close several times. His Aztec teams were annually ranked in the nation's Top 10, and they annually had a shot at the postseason. One year, after Gwynn had moved on to the Padres and I had moved on from by P.A. duties, the Aztecs were tied with Cal State Fullerton in the West Regional final. A trip to Omaha was on the line, and the Aztecs had the winning run at second base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. On a base-hit to right field, the winning run was trotting around third to win the ballgame -- and the throw was well off-line. But fate stepped in. The throw bounced off the side of the mound, caromed right to the Fullerton catcher, who tagged out the runner to force extra innings.
Cal State Fullerton eventually would win, and would go on to win the College World Series that particular year. Dietz would go on just winning ballgames and winning over recruits and their parents, and developing a next generation of future stars in both the baseball world and outside of it. I count myself among one of the very lucky ones.
That's because I knew a Hall of Fame baseball coach before he actually was one. Thankfully, he's one now.