Some things won’t change much for Tim Esmay.
He’ll still be responsible for taking out the trash and feeding the horses at his family's home in Casa Grande. It's how is wife, Joell, keeps him humble.
“She's the one that after a game [when I was playing] that would come up and say, 'Why are you swinging at those sliders in the dirt?'” Esmay recalled. “It wasn't one of those typical, 'Good game!' It was, 'What are you doing?' She understands the game and she understands Arizona State.”
It's that understanding that trigged Joell to call on her husband to reflect on what he’d accomplished.
At a team banquet on Tuesday night, ASU Athletic Director Lisa Love announced that the school was removing the “interim” label in front of Esmay's name, making him the next head coach of the storied ASU baseball program. Contract details are pending approval from the Arizona Board of Regents.
Esmay will now officially take over a program to which he has dedicated much his career, first as a player in the ‘80s and nine years as a coaching assistant before taking over this season, initially on an interim basis, for departed coach Pat Murphy.
Esmay's brother attended ASU, as did his wife and parents.
“It's been really tough the last couple days to keep this in,” said Esmay, who found out he was being offered the job after ASU returned from its series with Stanford on Saturday. “Obviously this is the place I've always wanted to be at, and I'm happy I'm going to have that opportunity.”
Love said it was around the middle of the Pac-10 season that she began to believe the man for the job was already sitting in the dugout.
“When it's right in front of you and going extremely well, why would you interfere?” Love said.
While Love was impressed with the record compiled by Esmay in the regular season (47-8), a campaign that earned ASU a Pac-10 record fourth consecutive conference title, it was his management of players and an ability to eliminate distractions that swooned the administrator the most.
Love made Esmay the interim coach in December, two weeks after longtime coach Murphy resigned in the midst of an ongoing NCAA investigation of the baseball program
“It was a circumstance where the atmosphere might have been ripe for distraction,” said Love. “That did not become the headline. And I think what didn't become the headline is as telling in the quality of the leadership and the ability to keep 20-year-olds focused on what they're all about.”
Players say distractions were left at the door immediately once Esmay took over. Team members said their goals, chief among them winning the school's sixth national championship, never wavered. Ambitions, they said, were cultivated by Esmay's approach.
“I don't think there could have been a better choice for a head coach,” sophomore infielder Riccio Torrez said. “He brings an energy to the locker room and dugout and just keeps the players loose. It's just been a heck of a ride so far, and that's been because of not only him, but the entire coaching staff.”
True to form, Esmay said his full focus is now centered on ASU's opening game of the Tempe Regional against Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
That and taking out the trash, of course.
