Arizona Baseball: Wildcats have a lifer in Chip Hale

Arizona Baseball star Alumni Chip Hale tracks Wildcats in the MLB, pointing them out to his fellow coaches across the league, now he gets to coach them to prepare for the MLB!

Much like Jedd Fisch for Arizona Football, new Arizona Baseball Coach Chip Hale has prepared his whole life to come back to his alma mater to head up the program. But he had to wait because he was turned down for the job the last time it was open.

In his first press conference as the next Arizona skipper, Hale had his family and a lot of his former teammates in attendance. “I got more texts when I got the job at Arizona than when I won the world series — A lot of guys that want to help, they just know that this was my life and is my life, Arizona Baseball, and Arizona University.”

Arizona Wildcats

Arizona Athletic Director Dave Heeke took what he learned from hiring Arizona Women’s Basketball head coach Adia Barnes (an accomplished alumni) and Arizona Football Head Coach Jedd Fisch (A pro coach who had dreamed about being a D1 college coach) in hiring Chip.

Hale had a hard time telling his current team he was leaving, his coworkers knew they were going to lose him because he had made bets with them that Arizona would beat Stanford in the College World Series. “I have never seen them so happy for somebody.”

“Everything we do at Arizona will be above board — they [his Arizona Baseball coaches] made me a major leaguer,” said the new grandfather. Coach Hale spoke about his sleepless nights leading up to the acceptance of this new job. “In my heart, I’m 20 years old, I look in the mirror sometimes, ‘Who is that guy?’ — we’ll get some sleep now.”

As far as recruiting, Hale admits he doesn’t know everything about the landscape of recruiting. He’s been on the phone with a lot of young men so far, and he knows it’s about mentoring young men into men as his former coaches and Arizona’s former coaches have raised the bar, “We plan on staying above that bar and we are going higher,” said Hale. He knows it’s not easy, “It’s not easy at all.”

Arizona players should expect to play pro ball, that’s a huge goal for Coach Hale, they will get better with the staff he is putting together.

Coach Hale is so happy, he was very emotional throughout the press conference, “I’m blessed to be at the University of Arizona — but to put this uniform on, it makes my heart feel good.” I, for one, am very excited about this hire, I just wish I knew his Twitter account.