PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Jim Sherman has spent more than 20 years as the head baseball coach at his alma mater, the University of Delaware. He has won 581 games at the helm of the Blue Hens.
After an impressive career in the outfield for Delaware, Sherman was drafted by the Houston Astros in the 14th round in 1982. He got as high as Triple-A in five seasons in the Astros system, but in 1986, he battled injuries, which led to him making a tough decision.
"They came to me and said, let’s go down and see if you can get back in shape, because I was on the DL for a while. Let's go down to Daytona, which was our Florida State League team, and see if you can rehab," he recalled.
"I was like, 'Eh, I don’t feel like riding the buses again.' Once you get to Triple-A, you're flying. You feel you're this close [to the major leagues]. So I said I needed a little bit of time to sit down and talk about my future and take a few days off. That’s when I decided to call it a career."
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As a coach, Sherman had many players come through his program and go on to play professional baseball, even making it to the major leagues.
"It gives you a lot of pride and it gives a shooting point for young, incoming guys to understand, you can be a big leaguer coming into Delaware just as easy as you can going to a Power 5 school," he said.
"It's possible. You can get there. So if that's your dream, that's your end goal, you can make it. So we've proven that out and I think we're going to have more future big leaguers here in the near future."
You can listen to the entire interview with Jim Sherman by checking out the latest episode of the KYW Newsradio original podcast, "1-on-1 with Matt Leon." For more, subscribe on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.