Bobby Moegle/pagetext
From SABR Encyclopedia
Southwestern University Athletics Hall of Famer Bobby Moegle was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame on February 18, 2013 as the first high school baseball coach to be selected for the honor. Moegle was a standout athlete in basketball and baseball in high school, earning letters in both sports in 1953 and 1954. Following graduation and two years in the Army, Moegle signed with the Houston Buffs in 1956 and played three years in the minor leagues after his contract was bought out by the St. Louis Cardinals. There, Moegle learned from general manager Al Unser. In 1959, Moegle quit playing and took to the coaching box as a teacher and baseball coach at Monterey High School in Lubbock. He guided the Plainsmen to four State Baseball Championships, 33 District Championships and earned state and national High School Coach-of-the-Year Awards in 1972 and 1974. He accrued an impressive coaching record of 1115 wins and just 267 losses for a .807 win percentage for his career. Southwestern University Athletics Hall of Fame isn't the only recognition Moegle has received since his retirement in 1999 as the winningest high school baseball coach in the nation. He is also a member of the Texas High School Coaches Hall of Fame, Baseball Coaches Hall of Honor and was the recipient of the Southwestern University Citation of Merit Award in 1979.
Bobby Moegle, outstanding athlete in basketball and baseball at Taylor High School, Blinn Junior College and Southwestern University. A spectacular career as a teacher and baseball coach at Monterey High School, Lubbock: three State Baseball Championships (1972, 1974, 1981), 30 District Championships, State and National High School Coach of the Year Awards (1972 & 1974), Texas High School Coaches Hall of Fame, Baseball Coaches Hall of Honor, and Southwestern University Distinguished Alumni Award (1979).
Sports Illustrated:
May 03, 1999 Next To Him, Patton Was A Wuss Bobby Moegle is the nation's winningest—and maybe toughest—coach Tim Crothers
The relentless winds of West Texas blow away anything that isn't deeply rooted. This is a land of crusty mesas shaped by Biblical storms. It's the land of the lonely oil derrick extracting energy from earth so barren that it seems hopeless. It's the land of Bobby Moegle. Moegle (pronounced MAY-gle), the 65-year-old baseball coach at Monterey High in Lubbock, has won more ball games than any other high school coach in history, and he's retiring this month after 40 seasons. But this story is not one of those mushy greeting-card poems. In fact, at times it's as harsh as the West Texas landscape. This is the tale of a man who arrived in Lubbock four decades ago never suspecting that he'd stay for the rest of the millennium and become the most renowned and sometimes most reviled man in town. What was Moegle thinking all those years ago as he headed up Route 84 to Lubbock in his yellow '57 Plymouth? He looked down at the map in his lap and saw towns named New Deal and Circle Back. He also saw a place called Progress, but that was miles and miles away. In the summer of 1959 Monterey High was a baseball wasteland. The school had never won a district title, and now it had a young coach who had never coached a game in his life. Luckily, Monterey's opponents during most of the '60s were managed by assistant football coaches moonlighting on the diamond, so Moegle figured he could gain an edge in preparation. Fresh from three seasons as a St. Louis Cardinals farmhand and for two years before that as an Army infantryman, he ran his club like a Double A boot camp. He was so meticulous that he gave all his players a test consisting of 263 questions about the fundamentals of baseball. His discipline was so draconian that the players' war stories have become myth. After one galling loss at rival Amarillo High in '66, Moegle stopped his players before they boarded the team bus and made them run the mile and a halfback to the motel with their gear slung over their shoulders as he barked at them from the bus window. Then there was the time in '73 that jayvee pitcher Robert Stewart was 15 seconds late for practice, and Moegle sent him off to run. When practice ended three hours later, Stewart was still jogging. Moegle did not tell him to stop. Instead, the coach set up a lawn chair in the twilight and read a few chapters of Gone with the Wind. Two years earlier Monterey had split a doubleheader on a scorching afternoon, and as punishment for losing once, Moegle ordered the Plainsmen to run sprints immediately after the second game. Catcher Jimmy Shankle, who had caught both games, was not exempt. After several laps Shankle developed the dry heaves and yelled, "Coach, I'm going to die!" Moegle responded, "Naw, you'll pass out before you die. Keep running." The coach's infliction of physical hardship complemented his psychological manipulation. In a '62 game, rightfielder Darnce Ritchey misjudged a fly ball, which plunked him on the head. Moegle made Ritchey wear a bright-red batting helmet in the field during every practice and game for the rest of the season. Such ploys have led Moegle's current players secretly to call him the Phaser because he can dissolve a kid to dust. The coach claims he has simply tried to accelerate his players' maturation. Paraphrasing former Texas Longhorns football coach Darrell Royal, Moegle says, "No use playing a kid unless he's got hair on his belly." Moegle hasn't always employed tough love. There was that moment in the '72 state championship game when the Plainsmen led 2-1 in the final inning, with two outs, a 3-2 count and an enemy runner on third. Moegle's ace, Donnie Moore, beckoned him to the mound. Moore whispered, "Coach, I'm nervous." Moegle replied, "Hell, I'm nervous too. You just get back on that rubber and cut it loose, and I like our chances." Moore unleashed a blistering fastball for a strikeout to win the state title. Moore went on to play 13 major league seasons, ending up with the California Angels. In 1986, in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, he allowed a game-tying home run to the Boston Red Sox' Dave Henderson. Boston went on to win the game and the series, and that incident would contribute to Moore's suicide in '89. That Moore is the only one of Moegle's 111 college scholarship players to have reached the big leagues shows how much the ornery coach has willed his players to overachieve. "Your lowest of lows came at the end of Moegle's nose, but that's what separated the fighters from the quitters," says Gary Ashby, a Plainsman from '71 to '73. "The guys who survived the s.o.b. bought into his mystique. We believed that Coach Moegle gave us a 4-0 lead before batting practice." Many of the former Plainsmen admit that they didn't like the man, but they respected the coach. Under Moegle, Monterey has won 33 district titles and four state championships ('72, '74, '81 and '96). Three times Moegle has been voted Texas high school coach of the year and once, in '72, national coach of the year. Through Sunday his career record was 1,112-266. There were times when Moegle had a chance to leave Monterey for greener pastures, but his wife and two daughters liked Lubbock, and he never put much stock in fame. His trophies are covered with dust on his office shelves, and he has no idea exactly when he became the nation's winningest coach. "I'm just a company man who did my job for 40 years, and then one day they start calling you a legend, and you don't even know how you got there," he says. "Life starts running out, and you get all these awards, and you start thinking, Gosh dang it, I guess I did something special." Moegle admits that his most gratifying moment came on the day in '97 that Monterey's baseball stadium was renamed Moegle Field and more than 50 former players showed up for the ceremony, many of them dressed in business suits and still calling him Coach. "When we were 16-or 17-year-old kids, we all hated his guts," says former Plainsman Jimmy Webster. "But by the time you turn 30, you're mailing him Christmas cards and thanking him for all he's meant to you, and you can't really figure out why." Indeed, Moegle's legacy in Lubbock is far more sweeping than his record. His current second baseman, Jared Darnell, is the son of Jim Darnell, who played for Moegle in the mid-'60s. So did Jim's brother. And Jim's brother-in-law. Eight sons of former players have played for Moegle, and several grandsons have participated in his summer baseball camps. Jim Darnell, a judge in town, says that four lawyers he works with are also Moegle alums. Three of the four other high school coaches in Monterey's district are Moegle disciples, one of whom might just have had enough guts instilled in him by Moegle to succeed him. "I wouldn't want to be the fellow who comes in behind him, because around here it's like taking over for John Wooden," says Ashby, now the vice president of a brokerage house. "He's one of the rare preachers who could use the same sermon for 40 years and never need to go looking for a new church. When Coach is gone, there'll never be another like him." Soon Bobby Moegle will be gone. Gone with the wind.
