Las Vegan Aaron Rowand enjoys first job as baseball manager
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Aaron Rowand endeared himself to many fans in 2006 for charging face first into a chain-link fence at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
The longtime Las Vegas resident made the catch, but came away from the collision with the wall battered and bloodied.
As a player, Rowand was known for his all-out style. So it’s not surprising that in his first foray into managing — Rowand is leading the Glendale Desert Dogs, an Arizona Fall League squad — he carries with him a similar style.
“He brings that attitude as if it’s Game 7 of the World Series every time,” Chicago White Sox outfield prospect and Desert Dog Courtney Hawkins said. “That’s just him. Every day he’s coming out here geeked up just like us, ready to rock.”
After a major league playing career that spanned 11 seasons and included two World Series titles, Rowand retired in 2012 after being released by the Miami Marlins following spring training.
He spent the next few years “being a dad.”
In November 2015, he got back into affiliated baseball, rejoining his former organization — the White Sox — as a minor league outfield and base-running instructor, a role that has him back in the game while still letting him spend plenty of time with his family.
During his first season doing that, he got a phone call that came “out of the blue” and led him to Arizona this fall.
“Somehow, somewhere my name got brought up, and so they asked me to do it,” Rowand said. “Being this time of the year and not being six, seven months long, I jumped at it. I want to use it, one, as a learning experience but, two, to see how much I enjoy doing it.”
So far — the fall league season started Oct. 11 — he’s having a good time, though he said there was a lot more involved with managing than he anticipated, including paperwork and dealing with restrictions placed on prospects from organizations, such as inning limits and pitch counts.
“After the first four or five days, I found my routine and what I needed to get done every day,” Rowand said. “It’s easy, the game part of it is easy, running a game.”
But it’s also still relatively new to him, and Rowand leaned on some resources within the White Sox organization, including Buddy Bell, a former major league manager and current vice president and assistant general manager, and Nick Capra, his former minor league manager and now the White Sox’s third-base coach.
As a manager, Rowand said he’s player-oriented, a style he tried to pick up from two of his former managers — Ozzie Guillen in Chicago and Charlie Manuel in Philadelphia.
“He hasn’t been out of the game long, so he knows what he liked when he was playing, what other guys liked when they were playing with him,” Hawkins said. “He brings that to the clubhouse every day. He tries to relate to the guys. He tries to be that guy for the players, that guy that people can come to if they need help.”
And in return, he demands just one thing from his players.
“The only thing that really lights him up is when you don’t play the game or if you disrespect the game or if you don’t hustle,” Hawkins said. “That’s his button that will just snap if you don’t play the game right, you don’t play the game hard. As long as you play the game hard (and) it doesn’t come out the way that you wanted it to, he’s never going to be mad at you.”
Rowand’s first managing stint ends next month at the conclusion of the fall league. But he said now that he’s tried managing, it’s something he might be interested in doing.
“I don’t have any aspirations of really anything other than I enjoy being in the clubhouse and being back in the game, and trying to share the knowledge and experiences that I had in my career and (trying) to help them become better players or better pitchers or whatever to try to achieve their dreams and their goals of playing in the big leagues,” Rowand said.
Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.
