If you’re ever on a highway somewhere between Joliet and Milwaukee after a Northwestern baseball game, look around for coach Paul Stevens.
Depending on what kind of game NU had, Stevens could be driving more than 120 miles and 2 1/2 hours solely to collect his thoughts and think ahead to the next opponent. If he’s done after one trip, he stops. If not, he makes the trip again. Just to think.
He doesn’t view it as excessive or strange, and this year no one can blame him for making the trip more than usual. The Wildcats are 12-21 overall and just 1-7 in the Big Ten going into this weekend’s home series against Indiana.
“When you’re going through some of the things we’re going through right now … my mind’s always racing,” Stevens said. “I probably get two hours of sleep a night, and I’ll be by myself a lot thinking. (Driving to Milwaukee) is my way of just relaxing and going over things so you don’t blow up at people. A lot of times during games I have to hold my breath.”
Stevens could only watch from his usual spot next to the dugout as his Cats misplayed grounders, dropped fly balls and struggled at the plate in two dismal conference weekends. Against Valparaiso a week ago, catcher Joe Hietpas and third baseman Wes Robinson – both seniors – ran into each other going after a foul ball.
All told, the Cats have committed 73 errors, by far the most in the Big Ten this season, and just four fewer than NU committed all of last season.
But Stevens doesn’t yell or turn his hat around and get in his players’ faces. He might bow his head, but he keeps his emotions in check during games.
“When I was younger, I probably would have done some other things,” he said. “But right now you sit there and take a deep breath. The thing you don’t want to do is create a (bad) situation by jumping in somebody’s shorts. I try not to rain fire and brimstone on them.”
By his own admission, Stevens, a South Side native, has become a calmer coach and person as each year passes. The man that played college ball at Lewis University and minor league ball in the Kansas City Royals and Oakland A’s organizations now owns a minivan with the license plate “Bat Boys” on the back for his two sons: Trevor, 12, and Cody, 10.
“My kids are a big part of that calming effect,” Stevens said. “Before I had them, I wanted people to be exactly the way I was. But when you have kids you look at things a little bit differently.”
Now in his 14th season as NU head coach, Stevens became the winningest coach in school history two years ago and has been named Big Ten Coach of the Year twice, most recently in 1995. Earlier this year, he was selected as assistant coach of the USA Baseball team, a squad of 30 collegiate all-stars that will play teams from around the world this summer.
But Stevens is the first to say that none of that matters right now. He still believes his Cats have a chance of finishing in the top six in the Big Ten and making it to the postseason conference tournament. Even at 1-7, he’s not totally off base. If the Cats win three of four games against the Hoosiers this weekend, they would be 4-8 – the same record as last season’s squad at this point in the season, which made the conference tournament as the sixth seed.
“There’s a sense of urgency here, and I have to be a little bit psycho about how I approach this next game,” Stevens said.
When senior Wes Robinson came to NU from Florida four years ago, he said he was an outfielder with little work ethic, something that quickly changed under Stevens. Now Robinson is one of the Cats’ leaders, switching between third and first base.
“(If I were coach) I would have lost my head after the Oklahoma series and [last weekend’s] Purdue game,” Robinson said. “But he told me that the moment he stopped yelling at you was the moment he stopped caring, and I never wanted that to happen.”
Stevens has always believed that baseball is a lifestyle, not a job. Baseball consumes his entire year, and he is on the road recruiting at camps nearly every Thursday through Sunday during the summer before the early signing period starts in the fall.
“The major down-time I have to get away from baseball is from [Thanksgiving] until Christmas,” Stevens said. “That’s when I get to spend a lot of time with my kids, going to watch them play hockey. That’s kind of my release from all this stuff more than anything in life.”
Sometimes Stevens will sit down after games, cross his legs and go over every aspect of the contest in his head. With so many variables floating around, Stevens rarely keeps the same lineup from game to game, and his starting pitching can hardly be called a regular rotation. But he believes variation will be the recipe for success as the season progresses.
“I’m not one of these people to meditate,” he said. “But my mind is always going someplace – there are so many different phases of this game that need to be approached. But I try to be as positive as I can.”
