Marty DeMerritt, a longtime minor league pitching coach who briefly labored as a bounty hunter after his taking part in profession ended has died. He was 71.
Marcos Grunfeld of El Emergente was the primary to report the information on Saturday. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Occasions, citing an announcement by the Tampa Bay Rays, confirmed the information Sunday via Twitter/X.
Longtime pitching coach Marty DeMerritt, who had transient big-league stints with #Giants and #Cubs and spent 23 years working with #Rays minor leaguers earlier than retiring after ‘23 season, has died at age 71. Had been coping with a collection of well being challenges, per group.
— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) January 12, 2025
DeMerritt had held varied teaching roles within the Rays’ participant improvement division since 2001, a tenure uncommon for its longevity. A local of San Francisco, DeMerritt mentioned in a 2007 interview that he spent one month out of the 12 months in his Northern California house, and the opposite 11 on task working with minor league pitchers.
Douglas P. DeFelice/Getty Photos
“The one dangerous factor about it’s you have to be away from your loved ones. When you’re single, my God, it is a great life,” DeMerritt told Gold Country Media. “However I am not one to sit down right here and watch TV, I am not one to exit and play golf. And I am a really non-public particular person. I am not one to BS and mingle with the folks down on the nook. So I select to make baseball my dwelling for 11 months out of the 12 months.”
DeMerritt pitched elements of six seasons within the St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Houston Astros organizations, reaching Double-A earlier than retiring following the 1977 season. Among the many jobs he briefly held within the ensuing years: bounty hunter.
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In a 1992 interview with the Fort Lauderdale Solar-Sentinel, DeMerritt mentioned his typical job concerned repossessing televisions, vehicles, and different stolen items.
“One night time my buddy and I went into an undesirable neighborhood to take again a van,” DeMerritt told Gordon Edes. “We received into the van OK, however inside there was a giant canine, and he barked a lot he wakened the folks inside the home. Just a few massive boys got here out of there, so we did the one factor we might — we ran.”
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Nicknamed “Mad Dog,” DeMerritt’s baseball teaching profession started in 1982 at San Francisco’s Lowell Excessive Faculty. The next 12 months, he was employed by the Giants to be the pitching coach at their Low-A affiliate in Clinton, Oregon.
DeMerritt labored his approach up the minor-league ladder and joined the Giants’ main league employees as an interim bullpen coach in 1989 when the group reached the World Collection.
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The next 12 months, DeMerritt became the first American to function a pitching coach for a Korean group when he joined the employees of the Samsung Lions. That lasted just one season.
In a 1992 interview with the Fort Lauderdale Solar-Sentinel, DeMerritt revealed he was suspended for a month by the group for an uncommon purpose: their supervisor punished a pitcher by attempting to hit him with a baseball bat, and DeMerritt tried to intervene.
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“They thought of that mutiny,” he said.
From 1991-2000, DeMerritt held varied teaching roles with the Giants, Miami Marlins, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates — together with one season (1999) because the Cubs’ main league pitching coach.
For extra MLB information, go to Newsweek Sports.
