Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo's natural positivity helped him withstand darkest season, connect with his players.
Arizona RepublicAcross the room, above the heads of two trusted front office confidants, Amiel Sawdaye and Mike Fitzgerald, a pair of black-framed posters hung on a white cinderblock wall. One was a quote from John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at Lovullo’s alma mater, UCLA. The other was a pyramid of Wooden’s leadership values. These are the tenets Lovullo carries every day. Among them, one rung from the top, are poise and confidence.
Then, the next morning, he would return to the ballpark and watch his team lose again. Fifty out of 58 games at one point. A club-record 17 in a row. An MLB-record 24 in a row away from Chase Field. Cataclysmic losing. “That was easily, easily, 100% the darkest point,” Lovullo said. There’s a credit there, though. Lovullo let the emotional toll seep into a private conversation with his boss. Never did he let it fracture his command of the clubhouse.
“I stood on that and the core of who I was,” Lovullo said. “And that got me up every day to be able to go out and talk and believe in those things. But it was hard. When you're losing, you get distorted. Things get very foggy and there's a lot of self-doubt.” “He was one of the most loved guys when he was a player by all the managers,” said Johnny Goryl, a longtime coach in the Cleveland system.
That’s true at all levels, but it’s amplified in the professional game’s lowest rungs. Walk through Chase Field and you might find five people who could locate Lovullo’s first two stops, Columbus, Ga., and Kinston, N.C., on a map. “Having somebody that you feel like you could talk to about stuff, who you feel understands what you're going through, that carries a lot of weight with a lot of guys,” said Daniel Denham, another former player of Lovullo’s.When he’s asked about this — about his persistent positivity and the connections it forges — Lovullo hesitates. It’s not easy to explain something inherent.
“Once I got to be 10, 11, 12 years old, I felt if there was a crisis at home, my dad would step up and accept responsibility, be accountable and find a solution,” Lovullo said. “He worked together with my mom and they would, as parents, push us to the next level without ever really focusing on the negative aspect of what potentially could happen.”
“At times, it became frustrating,” Lovullo said. “But I eventually wanted to thank him for making me that way because I think it's helped me persevere. In this game, perseverance is a huge word because it's not always roses and butterflies.” “You let that kid get away with that, why’d you do that?” Goryl would ask. Often, Lovullo’s response was the same. “Damn, didn’t even think about it.”
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