SE: Buck Taylor Embraces Unexpected Path to Coaching, K-State Baseball

By Corbin McGuire

Just about everything that led to Cord "Buck" Taylor becoming K-State baseball's pitching game coordinator was unexpected. Even the K-State encounters he's already experienced since starting have been random and well outside of Manhattan.

The first "EMAW" Taylor received was from a couple he and his wife, Natasha, met and exchanged numbers with at a Kenny Chesney concert a while ago. Recruiting last week in Atlanta, Georgia, he heard from multiple Wildcat fans who spotted him in purple.

"Random people were coming up to me and saying, 'Go Cats!'" Taylor said. "They're just fired up. That's pretty cool."

Taylor is equally excited for the opportunity. It's one his younger self would have never saw coming, be it 25 years ago or 25 days. When he got a phone call from Pete Hughes, named K-State's new head coach on June 8, he became open to the idea of leaving California, the place he's lived the vast majority of his life.

"I loved the location. I loved living in San Diego, but I think the timing was right. Pete's just an amazing individual," Taylor said. "I got a phone call, thought about it and made it happen."

Taylor met Hughes, raised in Boston, Massachusetts, randomly at a Stanford camp about 15 years ago. The two baseball junkies from opposite sides of the country immediately hit it off, as did their families. They have been close ever since.

"We just started hanging out, kind of random, East Coast, West Coast. We just became buds," said Taylor, who has two daughters, Finley and Avery. "My kids love (Hughes) and my wife loves him."

It was this relationship that made Taylor even consider leaving his role at the time as the head coach at Palomar College, a thriving community-college program in San Marcos, California.

Taylor had been at Palomar since 2001, serving as head coach for the last 14 seasons. He also was a professor at the college, teaching courses on baseball, emergency medical response for firefighters and, in true California style, a course on surfing. He left with a record of 434-181 (.706) that included helping send 21 pitchers to professional baseball.

"I've always said he's the one guy I'd always leave my position for at (Palomar) to go somewhere else," Taylor said of Hughes. "Coach Hughes is an amazing leader, motivator, and he's so much fun to be around."

Like meeting Hughes, Taylor's entrance into the coaching world was unanticipated.

In his last collegiate game at San Francisco State, his coach pulled him out after a first-inning single to let another senior finish his career on the field.

"I go in the dugout and the coach goes, 'Hey, I just wanted you to finish on a good note and I want you to stay and coach.' He asked me to coach right there," Taylor said. "I hadn't thought about it and didn't know what I was going to do, so I did that."

Taylor also spent some time playing and coaching in Austria, where he "truly learned" he wanted to make the latter into a career.

"That's where you learned to coach. You had to learn to say the same thing three different ways. They might not understand the first two," he said. "Talent-wise, our imports were pretty good. The Austrians got a lot better. The games were 18-19 when I got there and when you left a couple of years later it was like 5-4. We stopped throwing snowballs all over the infield. It definitely got better. It was just fun, a great experience."

Along the lines of hindsight, Taylor said he looks back at his playing career, which he spent mostly as a catcher, as the foundation to his pitching knowledge.

The worst part of being a catcher, he said, was working bullpen sessions. Specifically, when the pitching coach stopped to talk to the pitcher. Taylor, however, said he learned these bullpen outings could be extremely valuable. He witnessed catchers embrace them as such while coaching with Steve Franceschi for one season at San Francisco State.

"When he would stop and talk to guys you had a notepad as a catcher and you wrote down everything he said," he said. "I believe catchers are in-game pitching coaches. I think catchers have to know, mechanically, when (pitchers) get in trouble, what that coach is studying and how to make adjustments.

"As a catcher, that was my big deal. You learned so much about pitching whether you wanted to or didn't want to. It was osmosis; it worked itself into you."

Taylor said he has not looked at the statistics for K-State's returning pitchers. He doesn't plan to ever look at them.

"If you had a bad year last year, I don't want to know about it," he said. "I just want to see what you can do right now, where you are right now."

While continuing to embrace the unknown, Taylor said he would hammer home a few key points early for all of K-State's pitchers. The first of will be fastball command. It's why when Hughes asked him what he would want in terms of training tools and practice equipment, Taylor said he only needed one thing to start: string.

"I want to put a string at the knee and I want every ball below that string. We're going to hammer fastball command — inside of the plate, outer half of the plate, two seam, four seam — and once you can master that then we'll start working changeups," he said. "Again, I don't know anything about anyone. I don't want to. I could sit here and go over everyone's stats but it's not going to give me a true picture of how he competes and how he goes about his business and how serious he is in the bullpen. I think a bullpen needs to be approached just like you're pitching in a game. You can't just go relax and throw a 'pen and then expect to go in a game and be successful."

Before any of the actual coaching begins, Taylor wants to get to know his players on a personal level and start building a strong trust with each of them. Until then, he'll recruit all across the country, fueled by his enthusiasm for this opportunity.

"I'm excited about everything," he said. "Being around Coach Hughes, being around outstanding athletes, being at a great institution, being around other great coaches and great humans. I'm just excited."

Kansas State University Athletics

SE: Buck Taylor Embraces Unexpected Path to Coaching, K-State Baseball

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