Frank Coppenbarger (Transcript)
Robby Incmikoski: All right, Frank Coppenbarger, interview number 78. Frank, you've had a hell of a career. I think so many baseball fans would have loved to trade places with you, just for the stories and the relationships that you've developed. How many years did you spend in total with the Phillies?
Frank Coppenbarger: With the Phillies, a little over 30 years in Philadelphia. I was with St. Louis before that for about two years in the minor leagues, two and a half years in Triple-A, and seven and a half with the major league team.
Robby Incmikoski: If you don't mind me asking, what was your first job in baseball and what year was that?
Frank Coppenbarger: My first actual job in baseball was as a bat boy for a minor league team in my hometown of Decatur, Illinois. The San Francisco Giants had a team there in the Midwest League. As an 11-year-old fifth grader, I got the opportunity to be the bat boy, and I worked around the ballpark from fifth grade till I graduated from high school. That was 1974 when I got out of high school. And that was, ironically, the final season of our team. We lost our franchise and they tore the ballpark down kind of before it fell down. It was in pretty bad shape. So I never really thought about being in baseball for a life's work, but it ended up that way.
Robby Incmikoski: Frank, what was the name of that team? And what was the name of that stadium when it folded in '74?
Frank Coppenbarger: The name of the team was the Decatur Commodores. Our town was named after Commodore Steven Decatur in the Navy. So Decatur is D-E-C-A-T-U-R and the Commodores like a naval officer. It was a Giants farm team and the name of our old ballpark was Fans Field.
Robby Incmikoski: They were a Giants affiliate from '62 to '74. Baseball Reference tells me that's when they were there. Do you remember roughly how many people Fans Field could hold?
Frank Coppenbarger: Around 5,000, give or take. Old wooden structure ballpark.
Robby Incmikoski: From that ballpark back in '74 to the time you set foot in Citizens Bank Park—in your experience, I'm going to say you've been in about over 150 ballparks in your life. Does that sound about right?
Frank Coppenbarger: That's probably at least that, yeah.
Robby Incmikoski: How have you seen ballparks evolve in your time?
Frank Coppenbarger: They're really something. I mean, our ballpark in Decatur was old and kind of in disrepair, but it wasn't out of the ordinary for minor league baseball at that time. And nowadays, these ballparks are all in fabulous shape. Almost every ballpark is pretty modern, and now there's actual standards that they have to adhere to as far as the facilities—the clubhouse, a batting cage, a weight room, a dining room for the players. All those things didn't exist back in the late '60s.
Robby Incmikoski: On that '74 team, I'm just looking here, Johnny LeMaster was on that team, who I assume you had with the Phillies, didn't you?
Frank Coppenbarger: No, he wasn't with the Phillies. He played for the Giants.
Robby Incmikoski: I'm thinking of Frankie LeMaster who played for the Eagles.
Frank Coppenbarger: Yeah, Eagles player. Johnny LeMaster was actually the Giants' number one draft choice.
Robby Incmikoski: So what years were you with the Commodores as a kid?
Frank Coppenbarger: From 1967 through 1974.
Robby Incmikoski: You had quite a few players come through.
Frank Coppenbarger: So we had guys there like John "The Count" Montefusco and Gary Matthews "The Sarge," John D'Acquisto... Don Hansen, who was the opening day center fielder for the very first Montreal Expos team. We had a decent number of guys over the years that played there. Rob Niekro, great pitcher for the Astros. Gary Lavelle, a lot of Giants players. Steve Ontiveros, the infielder for the Cubs.
Robby Incmikoski: Those were some pretty good teams there. I could do this for hours with you, but I want to be respectful of your time.
Frank Coppenbarger: I'm retired. I have nothing but time. Take all the time you want.
Robby Incmikoski: Frank, when I get my podcast going, I want to have you as a guest. I want to talk about these old stadiums because this is amazing stuff. But out of respect for time now, let me ask you this: when you look at your life now as a guy retired, hanging out in Clearwater and Ocean City as a baseball coach, how crazy is it to reflect on your career? Teams don't exist without guys like you, Frank. You were an integral part of that organization for three decades. When you sit back now and look at your career, how do you put into words going from a kid in fifth grade in Decatur, Illinois working as a bat boy in a decrepit stadium to a retired guy who was one of the faces of the Phillies franchise?
Frank Coppenbarger: It's a little tough to believe. When I retired, I actually kind of wrote a farewell email to my co-workers and I talked about where I started and where I ended up. To think that a kid from a small city in the middle of Illinois could end up in a grand, ultra-modern major league stadium is pretty hard to believe. Interestingly, the first game I ever bat-boyed in 1967, Charlie Manuel, who was our manager for 10 years with the Phillies, went four for five on opening night. He was playing for the Twins farm team in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Charlie won the Triple Crown in the Midwest League that year. And 41 years later, we're standing next to each other in the dugout about to win the 2008 World Series. So it's kind of hard to believe, really.
Robby Incmikoski: Frank, tell me about that moment when Brad Lidge was on the mound facing Eric Hinske. Can you get into as much or as little detail as you'd like? Where were you at that moment? And where does that stand out in memories of your life?
Frank Coppenbarger: I was down on the bench. Of course, I wanted to see the last out. I mean, that's why I got into baseball—because I loved it. So I had the best seat in the house right there at the dugout. I was sitting by Charlie and Rich Dubee and some of the coaches standing there. And we had an armload of t-shirts and hats. We still had a job to do. We had to get out on the field and give the world champs their swag so they could put it on and celebrate in style with the clubhouse shirts and hats.
What it felt like was just the joy of it, of course, and the realization not only of that season but a lot of years of hard work, that we were finally going to have a world championship and a parade and go to the White House and all the other things that come with it. It was an excellent night and a great memory for sure.
Robby Incmikoski: I grew up in South Philly. Mike Schmidt was my favorite player growing up. I remember Tug McGraw striking out Willie Wilson in 1980. I was at that game. I was in the 400 level. That night when Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske, it was one of the greatest nights of my life. I was there with my little brother and it was a memory we have forever. Let me ask you this: what did that 2008 championship mean to the city of Philadelphia in your experience?
Frank Coppenbarger: I think it meant a lot. I think there was finally some relief that we had won something again. I think it was also a lot of hope for the future because we had a really good nucleus of players. The '93 team that stepped back a little bit before that still remains one of the most popular Phillies teams of all time, and they didn't even win the World Series, but those guys related to the fan base. But the fact of the matter is, the year before '92 and '95, we were in last place. We weren't a good ball club. With 2008, I think people thought, "Okay, we're going to be good for a while." And we were.
Robby Incmikoski: I could ask a million questions to you, but I want to get to the most important things that we're going to put in this book. Can you just explain how you impacted that clubhouse? You had been around a while. You're very well respected. People know who you are, but at the same time, they're there to play baseball and you're there to put those guys in the best position to have success on a daily basis—from how physically clean the clubhouse is, to whether somebody needs to come in and sit in your office and just drink a beer and blow off some steam, and everywhere in between. Can you just kind of describe what your day-to-day was? How does a clubhouse manager know when to talk to a player and when to sit back? How do you describe that "feel" that you have to have to do that job for so long?
Frank Coppenbarger: I don't think you have that feel right away. I was lucky, probably more fortunate in some ways than some other clubhouse managers because very few of them ever worked in the minor leagues. I worked in the minor leagues for quite a while. So I kind of saw how it was coming up through the minor leagues for the players, what they dealt with—six guys in the two-bedroom apartment and riding on a bus all night and really roughing it. A lot of clubhouse guys were assistants in the big leagues or they were a bat boy in the big leagues when they started. They were at the top level all the time.
I was at the bottom level and sort of worked my way up too. So I had respect for what the guys went through to get there. As you get more time and seasoning in, you learn things. Like, Curt Schilling doesn't want to talk to you on the day he's pitching. If he needs something, he'll come to you. Don't hang out with him or go saddle up next to him. He doesn't want to have small talk today. The other four days, no problem.
There are other guys that it didn't matter. Some of them like to talk—it took their mind off of it and loosened them up. Cole Hamels, he and I had a little routine we used to work out. I'd act like I was a football coach and give him this huge pep talk and tell him to go out there and shove the ball up there. All that kind of stuff and he'd laugh, and then he'd go out there and do it most of the time. So it didn't bother him. Everyone's different.
Robby Incmikoski: How do you describe the relationships that you create with players, coaches, trainers, bat boys? How do you describe the baseball relationships that you've developed over your life and what they mean to you?
Frank Coppenbarger: They mean everything. That's what I miss the most. I don't really miss, after all these years, the actual doing of the job anymore or even the road trips. I thought I was gone so much that I would kind of miss traveling, but I don't miss that. But I was at the St. Louis Cardinals fantasy camp last weekend and Willie McGee asked me, "Do you miss it?" And I said, "No, honestly, I don't miss it. What I miss is this." And it was me hanging out with him and Vince Coleman and Ozzie Smith for an hour. I miss that. I miss seeing my co-workers in the office and my counterparts on the other teams, like guys like Greg Johnson and Bones and Roger Wilson and Kevin Conrad and all those Pirates guys. That's what I miss and that's what I treasure—all those friendships.
Robby Incmikoski: So let's shift a little bit because I can go forever. Let me ask you this very simply: How the hell do you take on a project of getting a team out of the Vet after the 2003 season and get them into Citizens Bank Park in '04? How do you even begin something like that?
Frank Coppenbarger: In some ways it's easy. It's kind of like moving from an old house to a new house. We didn't take the furniture with us. We got all new furniture. So a lot of that stuff got auctioned off, whatever it might have been—locker room chairs, something like that that had the Phillies logo on it. A lot of the stuff couldn't be moved or you wouldn't need it. So everything we started fresh, brand new. A lot of the baseball equipment either went into a trailer and stayed in the trailer, and another trailer went to Florida because we were going to need it in spring training anyway. So after the final season at the Vet and before the first year of Citizens Bank Park, there was a period of time where the clubhouse was inaccessible.
You could still be in the Vet, but there wasn't much left of it, and you couldn't be in Citizens Bank Park yet unless you had a hard hat. In fact, Jeff Cooper, our trainer, and I, we were pretty unsure of what we were walking into. We saw all the artist renderings and architectural blueprints, etc. But we flew up on our one and only off day in spring training that year to eyeball the place, and it looked like a bombing in Beirut. It was unbelievable. And we were three weeks from opening the season. There weren't any lockers in the clubhouse. It was just a cement floor. And I'm like, "Man, I don't know if we might be opening on the road."
I remember telling him that—somehow they got it all done—and even the night before when we got back from Florida, we came in, there were plywood walkways going over muddy areas to access the ballpark. And that whole concourse was full of just, you name it, concession equipment, whatever it was. You couldn't picture fans—43 or 44,000 fans—being there the next day for an afternoon game. Somehow in the middle of the night, that stuff all disappeared. They did it. And don't forget, we opened up two ballparks in two months. That was also the first year of our new ballpark in Clearwater. So it was a lot, but a lot of people really had to do a lot of hard work.
Robby Incmikoski: Frank, can you just tell—whatever memories you have—do you remember getting to the ballpark that morning when you played the Reds in that first game? What do you remember about that day? Were players asking, "Where's the training room?" or "Where's the batting cage?" What was that like?
Frank Coppenbarger: Not for the game against the Reds, because we played two games against the Cleveland Indians—two exhibition games first—so we got the familiarity a little bit that way. And then we went on the road to start the season so they could dot all the i's and cross all the t's before the regular season home opener.
But I remember coming to the ballpark for the first exhibition game and not knowing what it was going to look like, because I remember what it looked like when I left the night before. I still to this day can't believe how they got rid of all those things.
I brought my son with me that day. He was 9 years old, and it was an exhibition game. I normally wouldn't have done this, but I knew it was an opportunity for dad to make something happen here. And my son was the bat boy that day for the Phillies. So to have a picture of he and I together out on the field and him standing there next to Larry Bowa during the national anthem—a couple photographers took some nice photos—and just for him to always be able to say he was on the field the very first game ever played in that park. I wanted to do that for him.
Robby Incmikoski: I want to talk about the locker layout. How do you go about laying out a clubhouse? You've got veterans, you've got Jim Thome who's on that team, and you've got rookies coming up. How does an equipment man, a clubhouse manager, go about laying out the clubhouse lockers in the order?
Frank Coppenbarger: We did it the same way at the Vet. We basically took a piece of poster board and drew a diagram of the clubhouse—here's the door to the shower, here's the training room, here's where the TV is, here's the manager's office. And we would make little spots on that chart, make a diagram of the clubhouse. And then the guys that were there the year before, we assumed that they wanted the same locker. We would already fill their name in.
So then I literally would go around the room near the end of spring training. I'd wait till they reduced the roster till we got down to the last 28 guys or whatever, and then I would go around to the players, the new guys, and by seniority let them select the locker that they wanted.
When we went to Citizens Bank Park, there was no carryover from the year before. So we also went from a rectangular clubhouse to an oval-shaped clubhouse, which we did on purpose. We didn't want to have any cliques in any corners anymore. So everybody was looking at everybody all the time. And we again started with the most senior guy and worked our way around the clubhouse with the players at the end of the spring and let them pick their locker. And then you fill in—the rookie gets what's left over, basically.
Robby Incmikoski: That's something important. You went from a square or rectangle to an oval. What went into that decision?
Frank Coppenbarger: I had seen one in Toronto. It was really round at what was called the Sky Dome, now Rogers Center. The Blue Jays' clubhouse at that time was a round clubhouse, and in the middle they had couches and hangout areas, and then they had an outer corridor around there where the offices would be and the coaches and so forth. I just liked the layout of it.
And when we got the chance, the Phillies and David Montgomery in particular had us sit in with the architects and tell them what we wanted. So Ed Wade would be in that room. He was the general manager at that time. David Montgomery would be there, a couple other guys, the architects, myself, and Jeff Cooper, and we laid out the clubhouse and they basically gave us everything we wanted.
Robby Incmikoski: That was my next question. You would think, you respect the owner, you respect everybody, but why the hell would they not go to you for design? You know more than anyone else about clubhouse design.
Frank Coppenbarger: I agree with you. Great question. They should, and after all, we're the ones who are going to be working in there, but there were other counterparts of mine that didn't know anything about their clubhouse.
We actually toured some ballparks before Citizens Bank Park was built. We went on a tour in the wintertime, maybe a dozen Phillies people, and I was included in that. I don't want to say the team—the guy's still working there, I don't want to make it uncomfortable for him—but honestly, I saw his clubhouse before he did, and that was terrible. I saw what his place was going to look like before they even welcomed him to go have a look. In the case of that ball club, somebody that didn't work in the clubhouse was calling the shots for that. And it doesn't make any sense to me.
Robby Incmikoski: A lot of people don't understand—you think sometimes, if you have a GM or a scout or a coach, somebody who wants to really know something about a baseball player, why would you not go to the equipment guy who has the pulse of that entire clubhouse? Clubhouse managers really can serve a role in every possible facet in the organization. Would you agree with that statement?
Frank Coppenbarger: Wholeheartedly. It's funny you mentioned podcasts because I have a podcast myself now that I do once a week, and yesterday I had Pat Gillick on there, who was the perfect example of a guy that asked for that kind of information from all sources—trainers, traveling secretaries, clubhouse managers. He wanted to know their thoughts and what they saw, and then he would make his decision, but he included everyone.
I would say it this way: the good GMs were the ones that asked. Because if we didn't know, for example, there's another side to this too—if you're getting ready to make a trade, why wouldn't you ask the visiting clubhouse manager what the guy is like? Because he sees him in a different light than everybody else does. Is he liked by his teammates? Is he a problem?
And if we can't answer those questions, we can call our counterpart and get the real truth from them. They'll tell us what the guy was like. I could call Roger Wilson and he'd tell me, and he'd be honest with me because there'll come a time when he or Bones would need to know from us. But there are some GMs that don't ask those questions, and I don't think it's the right thing, honestly.
Robby Incmikoski: How often do you go to ball games now?
Frank Coppenbarger: Four or five times a year because there's a pretty good drive involved now. It's not 20 minutes anymore. It's an hour and 20 minutes each way.
Robby Incmikoski: How has that ballpark, the clubhouse, the structure, stood the test of time since '04?
Frank Coppenbarger: I mean, it still looks like it did when we moved in. In the Vet days, two teams were sharing the place. It wasn't ideal. It was old. It was getting kind of run down. Both sides kind of looked at the other one like, "You fix it." The city will fix it. Where here it's a different story. And the Eagles story is different now also. And you've got two excellent facilities.
Citizens Bank Park is—for about three years I had an office upstairs when I was a traveling secretary, director of travel, with a window, and I could look out the window and see a three-block line of people at 2:00 in the afternoon just trying to get in the ballpark. Just they were lined up for standing room tickets just to be there. They might not even see the game. They just wanted to walk around. It was the place to be and they've done a great job with it.
Robby Incmikoski: I talked to Tucker Ashton, who was your bat boy. I asked him about you. He said: "He was my boss all four years I worked there. He was great to work for. He was big on making sure clubhouse guys stayed in their lane and really helped us understand the culture of taking care of guys without doing too much extra stuff. Great working experience." What is it like to hear somebody compliment you like that who worked for you and talked about how much you impacted his life?
Frank Coppenbarger: First of all, it's hard for me to hear you say that he's 30 years old. It means a lot. In the end, that's what I'm glad somebody would say. When they're young, they're very impressionable and they're wide-eyed, and of course I was young and wide-eyed at one time, too. It was just a long time ago.
But sometimes they can be led the wrong way. To stay around, you've got to be careful around the players. You want to have a good relationship with the players, but you can't be too close to them because things can impact them. You may know that they're going to be traded in the next 24 hours or a guy may be sent down.
When I first started out, I'll tell you a story. When I was working for the Cardinals, Whitey Herzog was great about coming to the clubhouse people and asking about a player. One day they traded Ken Oberkfell, who was a buddy of mine. They traded him to the Braves. And Whitey said to me in the clubhouse—I don't think I looked sad, although I knew I would miss him because I really liked him a lot—but Whitey said to me, "Yeah, I couldn't tell you. I knew you guys were buddies." And I learned something right there. I'm like, I've got to stay a little further away—be friends, but don't be hanging out too much, because there are going to be times that I'm going to know something and it's awkward.
Another longtime big league player, pitcher Dave LaPoint, was another buddy of mine from St. Louis. He's still a buddy of mine. We go to each other's house. We do a lot of things together. He had a party at his house in St. Louis, and I had a jersey under the front seat of my car of a guy that I had just picked up or was taking out to be made the next day that was getting called up. And of course, I walked into the party and before long, it was, "Who's coming up? Who's coming up?" Somebody got hurt. I don't remember exactly the circumstances, but they knew. I knew. And I just had to say, "I don't know." I knew the guy's shirt, all the lettering, and all the numbers were in a bag underneath the front seat of my car because the next morning I was going out to get the jersey made. But if you want to last, you can't divulge that kind of stuff.