A day off for Phillies manager Don Mattingly allows Dusty and John Wathan to join a select club
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Dusty Wathan arrived at PNC Park on Saturday thinking about how to help the Philadelphia Phillies get back to . 500 for the first time in over a month and not much else, not even the exclusive club he joined simply by showing up for work. The longtime Phillies coach filled in as manager for the middle game of Philadelphia's weekend visit to Pittsburgh while Don Mattingly attended his son Trevor's graduation from Purdue University.
When Wathan headed out to home plate to exchange lineup cards before the first pitch, he and his father, John, joined a select group of fathers and sons who have both managed in the majors. “It’s a pretty neat thing,” Wathan said in his typically understated manner before the game. “I mean, obviously not what I expected to be doing here.
... But it’s about the players. ” That's something he learned while growing up watching his dad win a World Series ring during a decade-long career catching for the Kansas City Royals.
John Wathan went into coaching after retiring after the 1985 season, posting a 326-320 record while managing the Royals and the California (now Anaheim) Angels between 1987 and 1992. Dusty's baseball journey has been decidedly lower-profile. He played over 900 games in the minors — as a catcher, naturally — and made a handful of appearances in the majors for Kansas City late in the 2002 season.
He retired in 2007 and immediately went into coaching, managing at every level of Philadelphia's farm system before joining the Phillies as a third base coach in late 2017. All things being equal, Wathan was just fine at third base, only shifting to the dugout when the Phillies fired Rob Thomson and Mattingly asked Wathan to join him on the bench. “I tell everybody (coaching third) is the closest thing to playing when you’re done playing,” he said.