November/December 2021 - 24

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
By Darren Fenster, Minor League Outfield and Baserunning Coordinator, Boston Red Sox; Founder and CEO, Coaching Your Kids, LLC
In June 2013, I made my
managerial debut, skippering our
rookie-level Gulf Coast League
Red Sox. Prior to that point in my
coaching career, managing wasn't
something that was truly on my radar;
I had just completed my first year with
the organization as an A-ball hitting
coach, a job that I really enjoyed
in an area of the game that I fully
expected to progress in. When the
opportunity to manage was presented
to me, it was a chance to have more
of a leadership role and one that
offered me a great way to grow both
personally and professionally with
the responsibility of coaching more
players, and in a bigger picture.
Hindsight being 20/20, when it
came to actually being prepared to
do the job I had just been promoted
to do, I didn't have any idea what I
was doing. While I am sure there
is a handbook on how to manage a
baseball team, much of learning how
to best navigate through a season
comes from trial and error more
than anything else. Like most, I did
the job the only way I knew how
at the time and did it to the best of
my ability. At various points of the
season, I mishandled everything
from game strategy, to discipline, to
communication, to schedule logistics,
and probably a lot in between.
But there was one thing I didn't
mess up: a very detailed approach to
teach the game where EVERYTHING
mattered. At one point during that
summer, a player lamented to a coach
on our staff his frustration. " Fenster
is on us about every little thing, " he
said. " Why can't he just let us play? "
Looking back, that may be one of
the best compliments I have ever
received as a coach.
For the last two and a half years,
the following tweet has been pinned
to my profile on Twitter:
" Hate that coach who works you too
hard, always on your ass? Wait until
you play for a coach who doesn't care.
You'll realize how lucky you were. "
Those 140 characters are at the
core of who I am as a coach, thanks
entirely to the influence that Fred Hill,
the coach I played for and coached
with at Rutgers, had on me; it was
the foundation of who he was as a
coach. I have always held my players
to a higher standard than they hold
themselves to because that's exactly
what Coach Hill did for me.
As a player, I learned the hard way
how valuable this approach was for
my own personal development. About
ten games into my freshman season,
we were getting crushed by UCF, in
large part because of what seemed
24 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021
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November/December 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November/December 2021

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