Loud and Clear

White Sox hitting coach Frank Menechino would be better served keeping his mouth shut about how he coaches. Menechino was quoted in today’s Tribune and comes off, well, judge for yourself. Menechino said that with former assistant Scott Coolbaugh, “I cursed [him], screamed at him, called him every name in the book.” Now, with new assistant Howie Clark, Menechino says, “Howie’s a great guy. Howie’s going to fit right in. Howie can take me yelling and screaming, so it’s perfect.” Ha-ha. Maybe now we know why Coolbaugh joined the Tigers as their hitting coach. If Menechino is yelling at his assistant coach, what is he doing with and to players? Assuming that he treats them with the utmost respect, how does he come off dumping on the guy he tells to feed the pitching machine? One of the great lessons my daughter taught me is that yelling will get you nowhere with a young player. Maybe a little smart-ass—as in, “If you’d actually managed to hit that slider, where would it have gone? No, really, where, back to the pitcher?”—but not yelling and screaming. By the way, Clare quotes this line to me on a regular basis, and it’ll be one of the last things she says to me before I go to the big ballpark in the sky. All of which makes me wonder how Menechino would handle having a woman as an assistant coach. Lucky for him my daughter is ensconced in university administration. Her daddy didn’t raise his kid to take crap from a blowhard, not that she ever did or would. Get your act together, Frank. It’s a new day.