Author Thomas Wolfe may have articulated the idea that “You Can’t Go Home Again” for a novel of the same title, but baseball coach Donegal Fergus has a different read on the subject.
The UC Santa Barbara hitting guru, who came back to town this season after a two-year hiatus, also returned to the playing field on Thursday nearly a quarter-century after his career had ended at Oregon’s Linfield University.
“I’m a little stiff,” he said after pitching a simulated game against the Gauchos. “I’ve got to work through some body issues.”
Fergus pitched in a scrimmage to prepare the Gauchos for Blaine Traxel, a junk-ball pitcher who started for CSU Northridge in Friday’s opener of a three-game series at Matador Field.
“We were trying to simulate how hard it is to stay back when it’s like, ‘Soft again … soft again,’” he explained. “I mean, even his fastball seems sort of soft. It’s just such a change from what we normally see.
“It was fun to do because the kids get a kick out of it.”
Traxel didn’t have as much fun the following day. UCSB, ranked 19th in Monday’s Collegiate Baseball national poll, roughed him up for five runs in five innings in a game the Gauchos would eventually win 13-10.
The Gauchos, 21-8 overall, won all three games of the series to ascend to first place in the Big West Conference with a 10-2 record. They scored 26 runs on 35 hits for the weekend, which included eight doubles and seven home runs.
They didn’t have as much success against their coach on Thursday.
“I gave up one knock — I missed my spot — and no runs,” Fergus said with a laugh. “I got a little assist from (catcher) Jessada Brown … He threw out a runner. I did hit a couple of guys.
“I got up to 77 (mph) with the heater, and I’m going to hit 80 next time. My slider was pretty good. There were two squirrely ones that I hit the lefthanders with, but they were front-door sliders, so that’s going to happen sometimes when you’re not afraid to pitch in.”
The Fergus Philosophy
Fergus preaches fearlessness as a hitting philosophy. It’s an approach that he shares with head coach Andrew Checketts.
“We want to see how those guys handle the good and the bad … To walk around knowing that you’re great no matter what,” he said. “And we have the capability of being great. We want to walk around with that vibe so we can execute accordingly.”
Positivity is a passion with Fergus, whose résumé includes a season as head coach of the Irish National Team.
“As human beings, hitters are always sort of teetering on that edge of, ‘If this goes bad, is everybody just going to bail on me?’” he said. “That’s the scariest thing, right? I think most players are far less worried about getting yelled at, or being in trouble, than just being abandoned.
“The root of it all is that I want my players to know that, ‘I’ve got you … I’m going to be there with you … It may not always work, but we’re going to do this together and fight as long as you’re here and I’m here.’ That’s what positivity is.”
Fergus had a positive impact at the University of Washington, helping the Huskies advance to the NCAA tournament three times during his five seasons as an assistant coach. He helped take them to the College World Series in 2018 and then joined Checketts’ staff for UCSB’s 2019 season.
The Minnesota Twins snatched him up just a year later to serve as their Minor League hitting coordinator. He realized after two seasons in the pros, however, that he missed the personal relationships you develop in college baseball.
A Gaucho Again
After his return to UCSB last fall, he told Kevin Cannon in a Gaucho9 podcast that “It was an easy decision to come back and do Round Two.”
“This is a special place and a special group of people to work with,” he said. “It’s not often that you get a chance to do something that was so good the first time and get a chance to run it back again.
“I’m real thankful for Checks to have me back.”
Fergus, whose father named him after a county in Ireland, is far more eclectic than your normal hitting coach. His “vibe” of positivity has grown on the Gauchos as completely as the full beard he now wears with a peppering of gray.
“I think vibe is a good word because that’s what you get with me,” he said. “There are a lot of coaches out there who don’t like the vibe that I give off. But that’s OK.
“I think I learned a few years into my coaching career that I was not going to be able to do it by adhering to the cookie-cutter approach. It just wasn’t me, and I wasn’t going to be the best version of that if I stuck too closely to the script.”
Fergus said it “would be ridiculous” for him to try to emulate the scowling, growling style of a Nick Saban, no matter how many national football championships that’s produced at Alabama.
“I want to be me, and I want players to be themselves,” he said. “I think that’s what’s been borne out more than anything. People look at me sometimes and go, ‘What is your schtick? … You’re just doing a thing, or a bit.’
“But that’s not it. People who know me go, ‘Oh, he’s just himself.’ I think the players respond to that more than anything. We talk about it to them all the time … We want them to be the best version of themselves.”
UCSB improved its team batting average from .265 to .296 during Fergus’ first season as hitting coach in 2019. The Gauchos, 45-11 that season, also won their first Big West title since 1986.
They’re batting .271 this season with a Big West-best 38 home runs. Their slugging percentage of .456 also leads the league. The power surge is a direct result of Fergus’ philosophy of taking full, elevated swings.
“We’re always trying to hit the ball in the air,” he said. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what that really means. We’re trying to get the ball up and we’re trying to hit the ball into the air, but that just means not hitting too many ground balls.
“You’ve got to play to your strengths, and we can drive the ball.”
Where there’s a Willits
Bryce Willits hit two home runs and a double while going 4-for-5 on Friday in his first start since getting sidelined by a hamstring injury four weeks ago. He also had seven RBIs — the most by a Gaucho since Austin Bush drove in seven in a game during UCSB’s College World Series season of 2016.
Willits, who batted .234 last year with just two home runs in 48 games, has improved to .368 under Fergus’ tutelage this season. He’s also belted five homers in just 18 games.
“He’s such a hard-working kid and he’s got a really good brain for this,” Fergus said. “He worked so hard coming into this season on getting to the bottom of the ball and being able to elevate correctly.
“He hit a lot of ground balls before in his career and he makes a lot of contact. It’s fun when those guys work on something so specific and get to see it pay off.”
Fergus’ philosophy that baseball is a family affair has also resonated with the junior third baseman.
“I kind of have a new perspective on things,” Willits said. “Last year, it felt like I was playing selfishly, trying to make it to the next level. That was kind of on the brain.
“And now, I’m out here just enjoying baseball again, trying to win games with this team instead of selfishly worrying about what I’m doing at the plate.”
It is one of the biggest differences, Fergus said, between college and professional baseball.
“It’s clearly at the root of what I love about this job,” he said. “You do develop a relationship on a deeper level with the players and the coaches. Checks and I talk about this a lot.
“He is an amazing leader in so many ways, but especially in that specific concept of keeping that at the forefront of all of the stuff we do.”
Fergus, the father of three, lives barely a block away from Checketts, and barely a mile from UCSB’s Caesar Uyesaka Stadium.
“Our kids run around with each other all the time, and that goes for the whole neighborhood of kids and people,” he said. “We even went to Yosemite (National Park) with a bunch of families from Storke Ranch.”
He considers it just one more elevated swing for a Gaucho family that’s driving for the top.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.