November 13, 2022 By: Mark Knudson

(Jeff) Saturday on Sunday: Broadcaster to Head Coach has actually worked before

You could hear the laughter – coming from all over the country – when the Indianapolis Colts announced that former standout center turned ESPN broadcaster Jeff Saturday was going to become the team’s interim Head Coach following the firing of Frank Reich.

The hiring, even on an interim basis, was almost universally panned as being, well…ridiculous.

How could Colts owner Jim Irsay seriously skip over every experienced football coach still in his employ – plus the many out there currently available – and hand the keys to a guy with zero experience who is a decade removed from his playing days?

Straight from the TV studio into the fire.

What kind of bonehead move was this?

While unconventional and certainly outside the box (if not completely off the wall) the move is not without precedent.

Really.

In fact, a similar move happened 25 years ago in baseball – the most conventional of all the major sports – and it worked.

Larry Dierker was signed as a 17-year-old pitching prospect by the Houston Colt 45’s (soon to be renamed the Astros) and pitched for 14 big league seasons, retiring after the 1977 season (the only one he spent with another organization, the St. Louis Cardinals.) He complied 139 wins, including throwing a no-hitter in July of 1976. As many do, he moved to the team’s broadcast booth the following season, where he spent the next 20 years doing radio and TV color commentary for the Astros radio network, with a dash of TV mixed in.

Dierk was always a little bit of a non-conformist. When we first met at spring training in 1983, he took an immediate interest in my writing, and even asked me to help him edit a book he was writing…that if memory serves, was not totally flattering to the game of baseball. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that the guy up in the radio booth, who was watching his team struggle under old-school approach of Terry Collins in the mid-1990’s, would make it known to everyone in the Astros organization that he believed he could do better.

And he did.

Without any previous coaching experience, as a head coach or an assistant, the Astros hired Larry Dierker to become the 12^th Manager in organizational history in 1997.

Many in the sport were perplexed. The only other time anything like this had happened was back in 1980, when long time San Diego Padres Hall of Fame radio broadcaster Jerry Coleman spent one season as the team’s field Manager. Coleman had been a standout second baseman for four New York Yankee World Series winning teams in the 1950’s, including being named an All-Star. He was also a decorated military veteran, having served as a lieutenant colonel in both World War II and the Korean War, earning two distinguished flying cross awards in the process.

Talk about a resume.

However, Coleman didn’t automatically have what it took to be a successful big league manager. In fact, he flopped as a baseball skipper, going 73-89 in one season before returning to his radio gig.

Straight from the booth into the fire. Not as easy as it looked.

But Larry Dierker was ready.

Over five seasons under Dierker’s leadership, Houston won four division titles. He became the sixth rookie manager in history to win a division, and the following season, when Houston won 102 games, was named National League Manager of the Year.

In June of 1999 Dierk suffered a brain seizure during a game. He required emergency surgery to prevent him from dying. After missing just one month, he was back on the bench and led the Astros back to the postseason.

Dierker resigned after the 2001 season, agreeing with ownership that the players had begun to “get tired of me.” He returned to the broadcast booth where he worked until 2005. In 2002, the Astros retired Dierk’s number 49 jersey, and he was put into both the Broadcasting Wall of Honor and the Astros Hall of Fame. He’d been inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.

Dierk did go on and write a book, called (with a touch of irony) It Ain’t Brain Surgery about his experiences as a player and manager, and a second, My Team which told stories about the best players he’d seen and competed against.

So football fans have something to compare to as they closely watch the debut of Jeff Saturday as an NFL football coach. Jumping on to take over a sinking ship mid-season is a very tough ask. It won’t really be fair to evaluate Saturday’s job performance until he’s had several Sunday’s under his belt. Will he be another Jerry Coleman…or can he come close to meeting the high bar that Larry Dierker has set for broadcasters-turned-Managers more than two decades ago?