Back around 1994, Wake Forest Demon Deacons head baseball coach Tom Walter was working as an account executive and serving as assistant general manager for the Greensboro Bats…
The Bats were owned by Bill Collins, and Tom Walter knew Collins from when Walter was working as a Grad Assistant Coach, at American University…
The Greensboro Bats team president was John Horshok, and Horshok was also part of the crew that was from up in Northern Virginia…The Bats had John Horshok at the top, John Frey was the team’s GM, John Tudor was in charge of special events and promotions, and John Parasi was the boss of the Grand Stand Bar…
John Horshok, John Frey, John Tudor, John Parasi…And then there was the top Account Executive and the acting assistant General Manager, now the man(Tom Walter) leading the Wake Forest Demon Deacons in the NCAA College Baseball World Series…
Tom Walter stepped away from baseball coaching for that one year, while he was working with the Greensboro Bats, but he went back and he became the head baseball coach at American University, and after that stint, he was hired as the head baseball coach at Wake Forest University…
And now, the rest is history…
To drive this point about Tom Walter’s time in Greensboro, here is part of an interview he did with the American Baseball Coaches Association’s Inside Pitch newsletter, back in 2017:
Inside Pitch: You started out in baseball as an Assistant GM for the Greensboro Bats (now called the Grasshoppers), is that correct?
Tom Walter: First off, that title sounds a lot more glamorous than is really is! For example if the snow cone lady doesn’t show up that night, that’s what you’re doing, you’re pulling tarp, you’re doing a lot of those things.
On the positive side, you get to deal with the media and with the big league team. It was a great thing for me because I got to learn a different side of the game. Like anything else, you have to learn what works and what doesn’t work, it’s a lot of trial and error.
IP: Was there an ‘aha’ moment when you realized you wanted to coach?
TW: I was interviewing for some finance jobs and I didn’t really find anything that I liked. I’d be sitting across someone in a job interview and think, ‘that’s not what I want to be in 15-20 years.’
The opportunity to be a GA at George Washington University came up and I took it. They paid for my classes and I had to piece the rest together – I worked in the equipment room, I tutored volleyball players, I worked a couple days a week at a restaurant, I’d take construction jobs, I was doing whatever it took to make it.
The guy that hired me for the Greensboro job was a GWU alum that I’d gotten to know. The idea was that he was eventually going to get an MLB team, but it fell through at the last minute. When that didn’t work out, I made the decision to get back into coaching, and the GWU head job came open. The timing was very fortuitous, it was right before school and they wanted to hire somebody with some familiarity with the program and its uniqueness – we had an off-campus facility and we weren’t fully-funded. So they were willing to take a chance on a 27-year old, I think in large part because I knew how to get to the field!
Some neat notes about the Wake Forest Baseball coach, Tom Walter, back in the day…..