If you’ve been keeping up with this profile series, hopefully you’ve had your chance to familiarize yourself with a couple of our assistant coaches. But with our highly anticipated meet the coaches event happening Thursday, now is the perfect time to shine the spotlight of our Commodore coaches series on the man of the hour, field manager Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Now, I don’t want to bore you with what you already know. Yes, he’s a world champion. Yes, he spent more than a decade on baseball’s greatest stage. But he’s also a girl dad of four, an avid hunter and has now fully dedicated himself to bringing our very own town of Falmouth its first title since 1980.
Growing up in the community of West Palm Beach baseball, Saltalamacchia, or ‘Salty,’ was no stranger to elite baseball talent, referring to the area as “a hotbed for first-round picks.” However, it wasn’t always a guarantee that the future World Series catcher would go pro straight out of high school, as he had already committed to play for his dream school, Florida State University. But he and his head coach had decided that if first-round money was at stake, it was to be a no-brainer. Luckily enough, it was just that, as he was selected by the Atlanta Braves in the first round of the 2003 MLB Draft.
For Salty, being drafted by the Braves was a dream come true, as it would be for any ballplayer picked by their favorite childhood squad. But it wasn’t just that, the Braves took extra steps to make sure their first-round choice felt right at home, even drafting his older brother to give him a familiar face within the organization.
Being a first-round pick comes with lots of added pressure, and for some added arrogance, Salty, however, made it clear the Braves helped keep him humble. They made sure he knew that there was no special first-round treatment, and that he had to work just as hard, if not harder than the guy with a thousand-dollar signing bonus, compared to his almost million-dollar check. After a couple years of working his way up through the farm system, injuries led to Salty getting called up to The Show in 2007, where he batted .284 in just north of 150 plate appearances. After the season, catcher depth led to him being the highlight of a trade with the Texas Rangers, where Salty would become the starting catcher for a brief stint before being dealt again, this time to the famed Boston Red Sox.
It took a while for Falmouth’s skipper to find his footing in Beantown, struggling with injuries and on-field performance as the backup catcher behind Red Sox legend Jason Varitek. Varitek however, took Salty under his wing and became not only a mentor, but someone that he “can still pick up the phone and call today.” Under the tutelage of Varitek, Salty’s potential as an everyday catcher was realized, and when Varitek left town in 2012, he became just that. Following his stint in Boston that included a World Series ring and a show of leadership unheard of to most following the infamous Boston Marathon bombing, Salty bounced around the league for a couple more years with stops in Miami, Arizona and Toronto, before ultimately retiring while with the Detroit Tigers.
However, if you know Salty, you know he isn’t going to sit around for long. Immediately following his 2018 retirement, he started to look for ways to stay in the game. Although there were some professional and college offers, he promised to stay away from those levels after spending 17 years with baseball at the forefront. So, he found a perfect balance: high school baseball. Salty took a position as an assistant at The Kings Academy in West Palm Beach, where his children went to school, and where he later earned the head coaching job the following season. Although he felt the situation was near perfect at TKA, he felt he had more to offer to the game of baseball, and after landing a coaching job with the Bourne Braves, he described it as finding “his love.”
Coaching was never a difficulty for Salty, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows the nature of the catcher position, often referred to as the quarterback of a defense. So, when the Falmouth head coaching job came available, the former big leaguer was more than ready.
While Salty certainly has future ambitions for his coaching career, Falmouth looks like it could be his coaching home for the foreseeable future. He says he wants to wait until all of his kids have made it to college before he seriously considers any big-time college or professional jobs, and in the meantime enjoys spending as much time with his family as possible, along with getting out to his several-hundred-acre hunting ranch in Georgia.
As is tradition, I ask our coaches one piece of advice to give to not only their players or aspiring coaches, but anyone looking to climb their own personal ranks. Salty was generous enough to give a two-part answer to the question: 1. Never think you know everything, because you don’t. 2. Understand that wherever you are, you’re there for a reason. You’re good at what you do, and you’re up to the challenge at hand.
I have come to the realization that while this staff consists of guys that are better suited to coach baseball than 99% of the human population, they’re better men than they are coaches, and that’s really saying something.
