He played for Major League Baseball’s Montreal Expos after having been chosen by them in the ninth round of the 1997 MLB Amateur Draft out of Jacksonville University. At that school he hit better than .330 each season with the Dolphins, including a school record .450 batting average in 1997, when he earned multiple honors. As a student-athlete he had previously played at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Alabama, where he was a two-time all-conference selection. After having been an administrator and coach for the Pensacola Pelicans/Blue Wahoos Baseball Club for nine years, he currently runs Coach T’s Hit Lab, offering professional batting lessons and baseball clinics, as well as youth, high school, college and pro evaluations and analysis.
Notable guest quotes:
“Both sides of the family were Catholic… I was part of the parish of St. Paul’s Catholic School… I was an altar boy for many years, was in the choir.”
“You don’t probably realize it at the time, or at least I didn’t realize it at the time, just the value of that ministry with the church and the people that you have, from priests and nuns and teachers… in the Catholic faith and having people as role models in your life, just understanding how powerful the Catholic church is and the resources that you have there.”
“It really helps when you’re an athlete too because the Catholic faith kind of has a structure, a very similar discipline to it, that, a lot of resources with it that really affect you. It’s just a good fit for me as far as that discipline goes.”
“I was facing Greg Maddux that day and things didn’t work out too well for me, but I think the moral of that story is just God’s hand moving in that direction to allow a blessing to a very important figure in my life.”
“I remember asking him, I said, ‘What sort of wisdom would you pass on to me,’ and he said, ‘Just trust Jesus, Talmadge.’ You just think of something that simple, but it made such a big impact on him and something he lived every day and was just fervent every day. I think about it a lot and reflect on it a lot.”
“I went out to the field that day and I was just hitting by myself and I just said a little prayer. I said, ‘Ya’ know, God, I have no idea what I’m good at or the plans that you have for me, but there’s one tool, there’s one skill, that I seem to be pretty decent at, and that’s baseball.’ And I made a commitment right there, I said, ‘I just want to go play college baseball and I want to do everything in my power to prepare myself to do that and I just need your help in making those avenues open’.”
“Every venue that I’d been to, I always had somebody there that kept me in check with my faith.”
“I remember his dad telling me one time, ‘T, just, if you seek Him and you follow Him, it makes your life so much easier’.”
“When you’re on the road and traveling, it really becomes your biggest source of comfort and peace. In fact, I used to get these little devotionals called The Daily Bread. And I remember reading one day and it became my life verse… it was John 15 verse 16… I remember reading it on the field… ‘You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go forth and bear fruit, and fruit that will last’.”
“I had been to many churches, just in my travels and stuff like that, and it was a great experience, but my heart had always – always – had been in the Catholic faith.”
“Being an athlete you’re very much in control of what you do, but in this realm, a lot of times you just have to take a lot of things on faith.”
Related link:
Website for Coach T’s Hit Lab
(This episode contains a prayer from the National Catholic Coaches Association’s “The Leadership Papers,” although originally credited in there to The Coach’s Bible.)
