If there was an equivalent to hitting for the cycle in terms of a lived baseball experience, Troy Glaus has done it.
A four-time MLB All-Star, Glaus has been everywhere when it comes to baseball. While at UCLA, he was twice selected to represent USA Baseball as a member of the Collegiate National Team in both 1995 and 1996. In 1996, he also helped Team USA to a bronze medal at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
Making the jump to the major leagues in 1998 with the Los Angeles Angels, Glaus would spend 13 years playing with five different teams before his retirement. He’d finish his career after 1,537 games, crushing 320 homers and driving in 950 RBIs during his time in the pros. Glaus will be enshrined forever in MLB history after he helped the Angels capture the team’s only World Series pennant in 2002, being named World Series MVP in the process.
He is one of three players to play for USA Baseball, win an Olympic medal, and be named World Series MVP, along with David Eckstein and Stephen Strasburg. Eckstein had headlined an 18U National Team coaching staff previously before his return this year, while Strasburg made his coaching debut this summer at 18U National Team Training Camp.
Now Glaus is joining Eckstein and Strasburg in bringing his wealth of experience to a new role in the dugout, this time with USA Baseball’s National Team Development Program. The NTDP is a bridge program, bringing in 16-and-17 year olds to work on fundamentals and allowing coaches to get a look at players who may be on the next 18U National Team.
This year, 65 players have been split into three teams; Red, Navy, and White, and these squads will play both each other and the Canadian Junior National Team from July 26th to July 28th. Glaus’ role this week to be the skipper of Team Red, one of four total coaches for the squad.
“It feels great. I’ve been in all three phases; I've been a player, I've been a parent, and now I get to be a coach,” Glaus said. “I really enjoy the coaching part, coaching guys who are this talented, this eager to learn. These are the easy guys to coach, they already know what they're doing for the most part. Our job is to maybe give them any tidbit we can that they can take home with them and improve their game. As coaches, I look at it more just like fine tuning. Little tidbits, what to do during practice. These guys all know how to play.
The former big leaguer is especially excited to be able to pass on fundamentals to the young, up-and-coming players taking part in this year’s NTDP. Part of his excitement comes from this being something that Glaus wasn’t exposed to when he was in their shoes over 20 years ago.
“Growing up, I had a lot of great coaches that were willing to put in the work to help me out, but in terms of fundamentals that really came later into my college career, maybe into pro ball. I would have loved to have had my 22-year old fundamentals when I was 16. That would have made life a whole lot easier, right? So that's kind of what we're trying to do here, create good habits, create a situation where we can improve their fundamentals, to win, and to allow them to be as good as they can.”
Glaus admitted that he and some of his fellow coaches at the NTDP this week believe the players they’re working with are even better than they were at the same age, which is high praise considering several of the coaches reached the major and minor levels of professional baseball. He highlighted exposure and the fundamentals as two of the key reasons why.
“They’re way better players just because they've had more exposure. I never really got out of San Diego, these guys have an exposure level to really quality teams that we never had. They’ve played more and they've played at a higher level,” Glaus explained about the players he’s working with. But despite the players at the NTDP coming in with this level of talent, Glaus also pointed out how great of an experience working with them has been so far.
“It's awesome. I really, really enjoy it. These are good kids, good players. Everybody's been super open to suggestions. It's an honor for me to come back and do this. I was glad they asked me to do it, and I would be willing to do this for the foreseeable future and at any age.”
Glaus elaborated on what the coaching process meant and what he looked to leave this week having accomplished in his first stint as a USA Baseball manager, speaking on what it looks like for him to give the players suggestions. He noted that each individual player has different things to work on, so part of the job as a manager is to both educate the group but also take time to work with individual players.
“I want to watch kids get better in four days, be a better player Sunday than they were Friday or Saturday. You know, see if some tip or some little suggestion that one of the coaches gave him makes him better and watch the lightbulb go off like ‘Oh, wow, yeah, that makes sense,’ because I remember having those those lightbulb moments and going, ‘Oh God, I wish I'd been on this three years ago, you know?,” he explained. “Maybe it's a tidbit on the mound, maybe it's something about fielding a ground ball, maybe it's an outfield play, maybe it's an approach at the plate, whatever it might be. When a player leaves here and goes and plays his next tournament, if he remembers what he’s told then he's going to be better for it. That's my goal.”
As someone who has also worn the U-S-A logo across his chest, Glaus also wants the players to understand what it means to represent the United States both now with the NTDP and in the future, when some of these players go on to represent the country as part of the 18U National Team and beyond.
“Playing with this logo on your chest is equal to and as close to what you're going to experience in terms of college and major leagues on the importance of playing for the name on your front, not the name on your back. Travel ball isn’t necessarily designed for playing for the name on the front, the showcases are a lot about playing for the name on the back,” Glaus pointed out. “Just because you may not be the best shortstop in camp doesn't mean that you're not valuable. Are you the pinch hitting guy? Are you the guy who puts bunts down? Can you hit behind the runner? That kind of thing, that's what wins games.”
Off the field, Glaus spoke glowingly about how the NTDP program also offers players seminars on financial literacy and social media, with the prospects of representing the U.S. on the national stage and going professional potentially looming. It’s one more thing that he says wasn’t available to his generation growing up, and is happy that these players are being educated.
I think that's wonderful. It's probably going to happen at some level to almost all of them, and to go in with an idea and not go in blind, is great. I got very lucky, I've had the same agent, same financial guy, and same tax guy since I was 20 years old. But there's so many bad actors out there, and you don't know a lot of the time until it's too late,” Glaus explained. “So that was super informative. I hope that they really took that in, because there are so many horror stories about it going wrong, and there's only a couple ways to do it right.”
Glaus is trying to leave his players with messages just as important on the field as well, guided by his lived experience at the different levels of baseball. Beyond having played for USA Baseball, on an Olympic squad, in college, and in the majors, Glaus’ goals as a coach can also be traced back to a pair of personal factors. The first is his own experience with coaches at USA Baseball, tracing back to the Collegiate National Team in 1995 and 1996. Nearly two decades later, the bonds are still as strong as ever.
“I remember the coaching staff in 1995, 1996. We had Skip Bertman, Ron Polk, Ray Tanner, and these are guys that I still see and talk to when I'm in their area, when I have the opportunity. I still get Christmas cards and birthday cards from Ron Polk almost 30 years later, and I only played two summers for him. I still get Christmas cards and birthday cards every year,” Glaus recalled with a laugh.
The other factor molding Glaus into his role as an NTDP coach is his son, Ty. A two-time gold medalist with the 12U National Team in 2023 in both Mexico and in Taiwan, Glaus couldn’t be any prouder of his son. It’s not hard to see where he draws the inspiration for what he wants to try and inspire those at the NTDP to be.
“He's all about it. He loves U-S-A, what it stands for, what the organization is, because that's the kind of player that he is. He's the kind of player that USA Baseball looks for, right? Yeah, he's good, he’s also that teammate guy, the versatility guy. That's who this organization wants. He understood his role, he accepted it, and tried to do the best job he could on that role. And that makes me proud as a parent, to watch what he has worked for, all the time he's put into it, to start to see some results out of it.”
It’s also not too difficult to see what Glaus is striving to be as a coach this week, based on how he spoke about Ty’s experience with coaching during his time with USA Baseball.
“I like being able to come to a function like this and be a parent, be a dad, not have to coach. These coaches around here are high-quality, high-character coaches. I would be proud to have him play for any of them. It's so nice to be able to hand him off and go sit under a tree in a chair and listen to some music and watch a game, I love that,” Glaus said with a smile.”
His current goal this week with the National Team Development Program is to be one of those high-quality, high-character coaches at USA Baseball similar to what Ty has had. Asked what he most wanted to achieve this week to reach that status in his view, Glaus kept things simple.
“I'd like to win three games. I probably even hate losing more than I actually like winning and I really like to win,” Glaus admitted with a grin, “But if I can have my Red team come out as a group with my players and coaching staff better in four days then they were when they got here, then we've done our job, right?”
