Don Cooper

Don Cooper, the pitching coach of the 2005 World Series champion White Sox, had exactly one win as a major-league pitcher.

His sole victory came September 2, 1981, in his rookie season with the Minnesota Twins. Over the course of four years in the big leagues, Cooper would win one, lose six, and put in 44 major-league appearances with the Twins, Toronto Blue Jays, and New York Yankees. He had three starts, all with the Twins. His lifetime ERA was 5.27.

Cooper’s sole triumph came against the Yankees at now-gone Metropolitan Stadium in the Twin Cities. He got the last five outs in relief and became a winner when the Twins scored two in the bottom of the eighth. The Twins won 4-3. Cooper struck out Reggie Jackson looking to end the game.

While his major-league playing career may have been short, Cooper’s coaching career was long and distinguished. His one win as a pitcher was dwarfed by 1,441 major-league victories as the White Sox pitching coach. Cooper took the job July 22, 2002, under manager Jerry Manuel. The team was 46-54 then. It went 35-27 the rest of the way to finish at exactly .500. Cooper served the next year under Manuel and then all of the Ozzie Guillén, Robin Ventura, and Rich Renteria years, through 2020.1

Coaches tend to be overlooked in baseball history. The Total White Sox Encyclopedia has entries for players, managers, front-office personnel, and even broadcasters, but no list of coaches.

Patrick Comiskey of Sportsnet wrote that “[f]or one assistant to survive four different managers is something out of a science fiction novel.”2 Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune commented that the average tenure of a pitching coach is akin to the “life span of a fruit fly.”3

And while there are lists of “best” this and “best” that by position in the game, lists of best pitching coaches seem to be few. Bleacher Report has a 2012 vintage list of best pitching coaches.4

Cooper was ranked 40th best on the list. It’s a list that includes some ex-catchers, like Dave Duncan; some former stars, like Johnny Sain; and a whole lot of folks like Don Cooper. Those players were pitchers like Cooper who had to use every ounce of guile and training to learn their craft to make, to remain and even to come near the big leagues. A more modern list of pitching coaches would include a fourth category – the numbers experts who know what pitch works at what spin to what batter at what moment.

“When I started (as pitching coach) my goal was to help the team win a world championship,” Cooper said. “That was always my goal. The first part of that goal is to make the playoffs each year. I was named pitching coach in 2002 and can remember driving around, thinking to myself that this would be a hell of a place to win the World Series. The fans were hungry for it, and that was always my goal. You have to get to the playoffs for it to happen, though.”5

Cooper called Sammy Ellis his mentor. Ellis won 63 games in the ’60s for the Reds, Angels, and White Sox. He was an All-Star in his best season, 1965. After his playing days ended, Ellis was a pitching coach for a dozen years, serving the Yankees, White Sox, Cubs, Mariners, Red Sox, and Orioles. In 1989 Ellis was the minor-league pitching coordinator for the White Sox.6 When Cooper listened to Ellis speaking Spanish to Hispanic pitchers, he went out and learned Spanish.7

Cooper says that Ellis was the best “delivery and mechanics guy I’ve ever been around.”8 Ellis died of cancer in 2016.

Cooper also cited Pat Dobson, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Johnny Podres as coaches he learned from, along with tips picked up in discussions with Dave Righetti, Roger McDowell, and Leo Mazzone.

Cooper, naturally, learned his pitching craft in the minor leagues, where he appeared in 289 games. He had stops in Oneonta, Fort Lauderdale, West Haven, Columbus, Nashville, Toledo, Syracuse, and Rochester. He tried both starting and relieving. In 1982 he was in 28 games for the Toledo Mud Hens, all starts. The next year, 1983, he was the International League reliever of the year, saving 22 games for the Syracuse Chiefs. In all, Cooper won 65 games in the minors, including a no-hitter for Class-A Fort Lauderdale in 1978.9 In coaching, though, he consciously wanted his pitchers to have a better career than he had.10

As he came up, Cooper was the type of player who absorbed coaching. “I would say, ‘Give me help.”11

Cooper’s coaching work showed the same propensity to work and learn. Hired on October 11, 1987, by the White Sox as the pitching coach for Class-A South Bend, he steadily climbed the ladder with stints at Sarasota, Birmingham, and Nashville, as well as being a roving instructor and the minor-league pitching coordinator at times. In 2000 the White Sox gave him an award for player development. He also served as pitching coach and manager for Caribes de Oriente in the Venezuelan Winter League. He had an interim assignment as pitching coach for the major-league White Sox in 1995. Overall, though, it took 15 years of work to earn the permanent big-league job.12

Major-league coaches can come and go quickly. Cooper rapidly became “the longest-tenured member on the White Sox coaching staff.”13

Communication, Cooper said, is a key. He tried to listen to the pitchers because they needed to listen to him.

In What It Means to Be a White Sox, Cooper said, “I enjoyed the whole 2005 season, the beginning, middle and end. I enjoyed all of it.”

“It was a wonderful season,” he said, “and it’s one that we will always be trying to duplicate,” That didn’t happen again during Cooper’s tenure, but the White Sox did make postseason appearances during his time in 2008, when they lost in the Division Series, and in 2020 when they lost in the wild card.

He remembered the 2008 season fondly. That team, he said, had to fight 163 games to make the playoffs. “We maxed out everything we could get out of our guys and pitching staff.”14

The 2005 season was even better.

Phil Rogers of NBC Chicago, giving a retrospective of Cooper’s career, said, “There’s no way the Sox win the 2005 World Series without Cooper, who did a yeoman’s work handling a patchwork pitching staff for Ozzie Guillén.”15

Pitching is important for any champion, but the 2005 White Sox cobbled together an amazing staff under Cooper. The group combined for an ERA of 3.61 and 54 saves. They were even better in the postseason, dropping their ERA to 2.55.

“Our pitching staff exceeded my expectations,” Cooper said, and “I don’t know if anyone has higher expectations than me.”16

Dustin Hermanson arrived as a free agent and saved 34 games before a late-season back injury. Hard-throwing, wide-bodied Bobby Jenks, claimed off waivers, took his place. Jenks went on to save 173 games for the White Sox in his career. Jenks closed out a clinching World Series game, a real feat for a rookie (but one that was duplicated the very next year by Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals).

Cliff Politte, 7-1, with the best season of his career, was the right-handed set-up man. Neal Cotts, 4-0, set up from the left side.

Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez had just enough left in the tank at age 39.17 In the Division Series against the defending champion Red Sox, El Duque was called on in a bases-loaded nobody-out relief appearance. He got two popups and struck out Johnny Damon to help preserve the clinching game in a 3-0 sweep.18

“He’s a New York legend,” Cooper said of El Duque. “Now he’s going to be a legend in Chicago.”19

The big four of Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddie García, and José Contreras was 63-33. In the American League Championship Series, they fired four complete-game victories in a row, a feat unlikely to be repeated in the modern era of pitch counts.

“It did cross my mind that it wouldn’t stink to get to four,” Cooper said of the complete-game streak.20

Cooper had links to many of his pitchers. He had helped develop Buehrle and Garland as they came up. Originally number 34, Cooper switched to 21 so García could have his Seattle number when he joined the White Sox.21 García, Cooper said, was a big-game pitcher.22 When the fourth game of the World Series rolled around, a García start, Cooper assured manager Ozzie Guillén that García had great stuff that day. The White Sox won the clincher, 1-0.

Cooper, having become a Spanish speaker, would wind up having close ties with José Contreras and El Duque, both pitchers from Cuba. “I’d say El Duque has 500 different pitches from 500 different places,” he said.23

Cooper recalled Buehrle volunteering to put on his spikes and be ready to pitch in relief in World Series Game Three if needed. Cooper told him that if the game went 12, 13, 14 innings, they might need him. Buehrle, the White Sox’ ninth pitcher of the night in the extra-inning game, wound up getting the last out in the bottom of the 14th for the save.

Extraordinary times, Cooper said, require “extraordinary decisions and extraordinary men.”24

The next game, the final game, was closed out by Bobby Jenks. Cooper called Jenks “the manchild, the monster, the biggest monster of the Midway.”25

“The last out in 2005 was the moment I will always cherish,” Cooper continued. “I can still see Bobby Jenks jumping to try and get that groundball, and you couldn’t slide a slice of American cheese under his feet. Juan Uribe came out of nowhere and threw the batter out at first base.”26

Cooper described the fans of Chicago as very special. For him the World Series title was “humbling.” He did not go out on the town after the last victory. He went back to his room with his family and thought about what a championship meant.

“The next day when I woke up, I had to think to myself whether that really happened, and the answer was ‘Yes.’ We did it and it was an unbelievable sense of accomplishment.”27

Born on January 15, 1956, in New York City, Cooper played his high-school ball at Monsignor McClancy High School, run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in East Elmhurst, part of the Borough of Queens.

A member of the Class of ’74, Cooper helped lead the Crusaders to three straight City Championship appearances. He was All-City in his senior year.

That earned him a scholarship to play basketball and baseball at the New York Institute of Technology. The Yankees drafted him after his junior year, but he stayed in school for his senior season and signed with the Yankees in 1978.28 Cooper is a member of the athletic halls of fame at both Monsignor McClancy and the New York Institute of Technology. In 1978, while at the New York Institute, he was the East Coast Athletic Conference Player of the Year. In 2006 his collegiate alma mater awarded him an honorary doctorate in humane letters. The White Sox Media Guide credits Cooper with passing the time with crossword puzzles and Jeopardy.

By 2020, as he returned for what would be his last season, his 19th, he was the longest-tenured pitching coach in the big leagues. Athlon Sports simply said, “Coop is forever.”29

Cooper never had a Cy Young Award winner. “Black Jack” McDowell in 1993 was the last White Sox winner, though Esteban Loaiza once finished second and Chris Sale once finished third under Cooper.

Cooper’s tenure saw 11 different White Sox pitchers become All-Stars: Esteban Loaiza, Jon Garland, José Contreras, Bobby Jenks, Mark Buehrle, Matt Thornton, Jake Peavy, Jesse Crain, José Quintana, Chris Sale, and Lucas Giolito. Sale was selected five times as a member of the White Sox under Cooper, Buehrle three times, and Jenks and Loaiza twice apiece.

Phil Rogers cited Cooper for having a rich legacy of reclamation projects.30 One of his best was one of his first. Esteban Loaiza was an early positive surprise. Signed to a minor-league contract for 2003, he proceeded to lead the league in strikeouts with 207 and had a record of 21-9. He was the last White Sox pitcher to win 20.

The Cooper years saw four White Sox no-hitters: two by Buehrle (in 2007 and 2009); one by Philip Humber in 2012, and one by Lucas Giolito in 2020. Humber’s game and Buehrle’s second no-hitter were perfect games.

One might think that given his long stint with the team, perhaps the game changed and Cooper didn’t. Not so. Billy Ripken interviewed Cooper in his 42nd spring training before what would be his last season with the White Sox.31

Cooper said the club was now gathering data on spin rates and the vertical rise of pitches and sharing the information with players. Cooper considered himself a “teacher” and told Ripken that there were three ways of learning something: listening, watching, and doing.

Of course, it wasn’t always success. Pitcher Carson Fulmer was picked in the first round but never fulfilled his early promise. The White Sox traded for Jeff Samardzija only to see him lead the league in home runs given up in 2015.

Near the end of Cooper’s time with the White Sox, Lucas Giolito turned to Ethan Katz, his former high-school coach, to help improve his mechanics. Katz wound up succeeding Cooper as pitching coach.

Yet in firing Cooper, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn thanked him for his years and his contributions, citing his work with Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, and Chris Sale. Cooper thanked the White Sox back, but also said, “The bottom line is it hurts. When you’re no longer part of something it hurts. But I’m over the hurt and trust me, I’ve moved on.”32

When he departed at the end of the 2020 season, Cooper was the last link in uniform (player or coach) to the 2005 World Series champions.

Cooper even served two games as the White Sox manager in 2011 following the late-season departure of Ozzie Guillén and bench coach Joey Cora. The White Sox broke even in the two games.

On September 27, 2011, they beat the Blue Jays, 2-1. Mark Buehrle was the winner. It was his last victory in a White Sox uniform. The next day they lost, 3-2, to the Blue Jays. Chris Sale blew the save in the ninth, yielding a double, a single, and three walks, one of them intentional. It was one of Sale’s last appearances as a reliever. By 2012 he would be in the White Sox rotation, start 29 games and be an All-Star.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 The team won 30 games while he was the interim pitching coach from June 2 to August 11, 1995; 35 after taking over July 22, 2002, to the end of the season; 86 in 2003; 678 under Ozzie Guillén; 375 under Robin Ventura; 236 under Rich Renteria; and 1 as manager himself.

2 Patrick Comiskey, “Former Pitching Coach Don Cooper Has Choice Words for White Sox,” On Tap Sports Net, March 12, 2021. https://ontapsportsnet.com/white-sox/former-pitching-coach-don-cooper-has-choice-words-for-white-sox.

3 Paul Sullivan, “Don Cooper’s Departure from the Chicago White Sox after 32 years – 18 as Pitching Coach – Marks the End of an Era,” Chicago Tribune, October 12, 2020.

4 Doug Mead, Bleacherreport.com, February 1, 2012.

5 Bob Vorwald, What It Means to Be a White Sox (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2010), 284. The Cooper chapter, written in the first person, is on pages 284-287.

6 Richard Goldstein, “Sammy Ellis, All-Star Starter Who Later Made Dave Righetti a Reliever, Dies at 75,” New York Times, May 17, 2016: A17; Associated Press, “Former Big-League Pitcher Sammy Ellis Dies at 75,” May 15, 2016. https://apnews.com/article/98b6cb0255d142b49a6065f9a9006abc.

7 Vorwald, 284-85. Cooper would later learn that Ellis’s actual Spanish vocabulary was pretty short.

8 Vorwald, 284.

9 Chicago White Sox 2006 Media Guide, 26-27. The same profile was repeated many times in White Sox media guides.

10 Vorwald, 285.

11 Vorwald, 284.

12 Chicago White Sox 2006 Media Guide, 26-27.

13 2008 Chicago White Sox Division Series Special Postseason Edition, 40.

14 Vorwald, 286.

15 Phil Rogers, “Chicago White Six Are Counting On Bond Between Lucas Giolito and New Coach Ethan Katz,” Forbes, November 12, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/philrogers/2020/11/12/chicago-white-sox-count-on-bond-between-ethan-katz-lucas-giolito/.

16 Sox Pride: The Story of the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox, Comcast SportsNet DVD. Cooper speaks directly on camera. He speaks on 10 different occasions, far more often than any other coach.

17 Baseball-Reference.com lists El Duque’s age as 39 that year, though some other sources give it as 36.

18 Believe It! The Story of Chicago’s World Champions: A Chicago Tribune keepsake book (2005), 64. The chapter on the Division Series was written by Dan McGrath.

19 World 05 Series, Major League Baseball Productions Presents DVD. Cooper speaks directly on camera. Like in Sox Pride, Cooper is the coach most frequently seen and speaking.

20 Sox Pride: The Story of the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox.

21 Phil Rogers, Say It’s So: The Chicago White Sox’s Magical Season (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2006), 55.

22 Sox Pride: The Story of the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox

23 Phil Rogers, Say It’s So: The Chicago White Sox’s Magical Season, 61.

24 World 05 Series.

25 Sox Pride: The Story of the 2005 World Champion Chicago White Sox.

26 Vorwald, 286-7.

27 What It Means To Be a White Sox, 287.

28 “Monsignor McClancy Athletic Hall of Fame citation,” https://msgrmcclancy.org/athletic/hall-of-fame. Additional information from White Sox media guides.

29 “2020 MLB Preview,” Athlon Sports: 86. This was Cooper’s final year.

30 Phil Rogers, “Chicago White Sox Are Counting On Bond Between Lucas Giolito And New Coach Ethan Katz,” Forbes November 12, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/philrogers/2020/11/12/chicago-white-sox-count-on-bond-between-ethan-katz-lucas-giolito/

31 “Talking Pitching: Bill Ripken & Don Cooper,” MLB Network, YouTube, February 27, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhkUZ1d_764

32 Steve Greenberg and Daryl van Schouwen, “Ex-White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper on firing: ‘The bottom line is it hurt’,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 11, 2021. https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2021/3/11/22326416/don-cooper-white-sox-fired-pitching-coach-am-670