Kotch
The Gate Keeper of the Los Angeles Angels Rookie farm team, Tom Kotchman is skipper and surrogate parent to the boys of summer who aspire to be men in MLB.

Jason FRANCHUK
for

Tom Kotchman‘s No. 1 rule?

"Complacency sucks."

Complacent is the one thing you can never call the Orem Owls skipper. Going on 30 years, he is the most successful minor-league manager and scout still going.

Kotchman, who turned 55 in August, insists that he learns something new every year while babysitting ballplayers, taking tedious trips on the bus through some of the western hinterlands of the Pioneer League, and the often repetitive rookie-league chores. He still enjoys working for the Los Angeles Angels as both a manager and their Florida scout.

"I've always taken it one year at a time," Kotchman said. "But I’m still really enjoying both jobs ‚ the scouting and signing the players, and the coaching. It's the kind of job that works best for me and my family.”

At a preseason meeting with Andrew Romine a couple of summers ago that he started to feel old.

"I coached his father, for heaven's sake," Kotchman said. "It was 1982, I was in my third year of managing. I wasn't very good.”

Andrew had inadvertently detoured onto Kotch’s memory lane.

“I told him he was depressing me. I'm sure he'll never forget that... The first thing his new coach tells him is that. But I told him, 'if I ever call you Kevin, I'll pay you $100.'

“I only had to do it once."

 

Continued...

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