Chad Cordero is no longer the 23-year-old all-star closer from all those summers ago. He is, beginning last month, a 42-year-old full-time coach at the academy, the centerpiece of the Nationals’ charitable arm.
“D.C. was where I was able to make a name for myself,” he said Wednesday. “I used to go to schools and speak when I was here, and it made me kind of fall in love with the community here. I always wanted to come back.”
He’s here, and it’s kind of stunning. This year represents the 10th anniversary of the academy, and it now has its own story to tell. Among Cordero’s coaching brethren this summer will be kids — many of them from the District’s poorest neighborhoods in Wards 7 and 8 — who began as players in the academy’s after-school and summer programs and blossomed into high school graduates, some of whom played college ball. That their new colleague is one of the faces of the original Nats couldn’t possibly be a better fit.
“First and foremost, we feel really lucky to have Chad here as a coach and a developer of young people,” said Tal Alter, CEO of Washington Nationals Philanthropies. “On top of them getting better and better at baseball and softball, we’re also really excited about the opportunity to tell a full-circle story about a Nationals hero, frankly, who is now part of the academy family.”
How in the world did they get here? Go back 19 summers, to when Washington had baseball again after 33 years in the desert. Back then, there weren’t D.C. kids who knew what it was like to have a major league team in town. Now, Cordero won’t coach a single kid who knows what it’s like not to have baseball here.
In so many ways, that summer of 2005 was the best of Cordero’s life. He is from California. He has coached professional baseball and high school softball. He did all that out west. The pull, weirdly, was to come back east.
“A goal of mine was always to get back here and work for the Nats,” he said. “Somehow.”
Sound romantic? It is, because the memories are real. Cordero was a first-round pick of the Montreal Expos in 2003, and he reached the majors that year. By the time the Nats arrived to play at RFK Stadium, he was entrenched as Manager Frank Robinson’s closer. The memories are still palpable — getting the save for Liván Hernández in the home opener, the night President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch. Closing out his 15th save of June — his 15th save of June — against the Pittsburgh Pirates, tying a record for saves in a month that still stands. Having Robinson tell him in the visiting clubhouse at Wrigley Field that he was named an all-star — and then having his catcher, Brian Schneider, tell him he better believe it, and he needed to call his parents.
“The fact that he’s a down-to-earth baseball coach who cares about young people, that’s what matters,” Alter said. “But the cool factor is real.”
That June, the Nats went 20-6, and when Cordero locked down the Pirates — completing a month in which he appeared 16 times and didn’t allow an earned run, in which opposing hitters managed a .180 average against him — Washington led the National League East by 4½ games.
On Tuesday, he drove by RFK for the first time since he returned. That rollicking month — and summer — roared back.
“It brought back so many good memories,” he said. “That’s the first stadium where I saw the seats bounce up and down. I got a little scared the first time because it reminded me of an earthquake. As old as it is, I’m still happy to get to see it. To this day, I loved my time there. It was very intimate.”
Whether the kids who cracked pitches in the academy’s batting cages Wednesday realize, in full, that the coach with the clipboard — making out the lineups for a scrimmage — had such a history with their team isn’t relevant to the guidance Cordero can provide. But it matters at this point in the development of the Nationals and the academy.
The club was an upstart in Cordero’s tenure here (2005 to 2008), and the academy was an upstart a decade ago. Now, each has a foothold. Just as the Nats have legends to bring back from the past, the academy has alumni who know what the kids there are going through. More than 30 of the summer coaches came up through the academy’s programs, some starting in third grade. Kids have earned scholarships. More than a dozen alumni are playing college baseball. The academy is ingrained in the Southeast community that surrounds it.
“There’s always work to be done, right?” Alter said. “But taking a moment to stop and look back and kind of assess where we are, it’s exceptional. Remembering 10 years ago, having a bunch of 8- and 9-year-olds show up for the first time, and now seeing those kids being 18, 19 years old — I think it’s safe to say that many of them wouldn’t have picked up a baseball, certainly would not have pursued baseball, were it not for the academy.”
Cordero’s involvement could be the next level. He has dabbled in almost all levels of coaching. He spent two years as the bullpen coach at Cal State Fullerton, his alma mater. He coached two years in Class A ball for the Cincinnati Reds, where one of his charges was a young Josiah Gray, the Nats’ all-star last summer who is invested in spending time at the academy. Cordero coached high school baseball and softball, and his 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son play. He has coached travel ball.
It all led to a realization: He preferred coaching, and mentoring, kids.
“Because if you can make them a better player on the field, it’s going to help them off the field,” Cordero said. “You can kind of teach them responsibility.”
He was wearing a Nationals Youth Baseball Academy ball cap, brim flattened out. He wore a Nationals “Fight Finished” sweatshirt and black shorts affixed with the curly W.
Chad Cordero went away. Welcome him back home.
“I just want to be able to help this organization in any way I can,” he said. “Even though I’m not over at Nats Park, I’m still working for the Nationals, right? You can’t beat that.”