Special assistant Davis visits Lynchburg, offers batting tips

Hillcats infielder Cody Puckett finished his turn in the cage during batting practice Tuesday at City Stadium and stepped away to let a teammate get in his hacks.

Just outside the cage, Eric Davis — fully dressed in Cincinnati red — pulled Puckett aside. Davis pulled his hands back and showed Puckett the proper positioning for optimum contact. Next, he critiqued Puckett’s high leg kick.

“The teaching,” the two-time National League All-Star said. “That’s what I like to do. That’s the fun part of my job. I don’t have to sit up in the stands. I prefer to put on the uniform and come down here and mix it up with some of these kids, just to share the wisdom and knowledge I’ve been given after spending 30 years in the game.”

Davis, a special assistant to Reds general manager Walt Jocketty, is in town this week to spend time with the Hillcats as part of a tour of Cincinnati’s minor-league teams.

Davis came up in the Reds organization and won a World Series championship in Cincinnati in 1990, hitting a two-run home run in Game 1 of that series to give the Reds their first runs.

Davis was twice named baseball’s comeback player of the year. He retired in 1994 because of a herniated disc in his neck but returned in 1996 to play for Cincinnati. In 1997, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, but he rallied to beat the disease and returned in 1998 to bat a career-best .327 for Baltimore.

Though nine of his 16 major-league seasons were spent in Cincinnati, it was no guarantee that he was going to come back to work for the organization after he retired for good in 2001.

Davis said he wasn’t happy with the organization’s direction, and added that he wanted to spend some time away from the game after he retired. His two daughters played high-school basketball, and he wanted to be a father, not a baseball man, immediately after his retirement.

Davis had entrepreneurial pursuits as well. He owns five businesses, including a PR firm, a limousine service and a Nike store. He also produces an inspirational DVD called “Hitting From The Heart.”

When the Castellini family bought the Reds in 2005, Davis began to warm to the idea of joining the Reds in some capacity. That desire grew in 2008, when Jocketty took over as general manager. Davis played for Reds manager Dusty Baker in San Francisco in 2001, and Jocketty signed Davis in St. Louis in 1999.

“Watching him put together Oakland, and then seeing what he did in St. Louis, and then having him come here, I saw his philosophies, and I believed the things he believed in,” Davis said of Jocketty. “I felt like I could be an asset to him.”

Davis plays several roles. He helps in player development and scouting and offers one-on-one instruction to players in the organization. The fact that Davis accomplished so much over a long career makes his advice easy to listen to, Hillcats infielder Alex Buchholz said.

“I’ve tried to pick his brain a little bit, because he’s obviously been through it all,” said Buchholz, who hit his second home run of the season in the Hillcats’ 4-0 victory over the Salem Red Sox on Tuesday. “We’re all learning from him. We ask him a lot of questions. I’ve worked on my leg kick, and just different things to get the timing right, so you can see the pitch and react to it.”

Aside from the technical aspects of batting, Davis tries to emphasize the importance of hunger, especially in the lower levels of the minor leagues.

“They’ve got way more amenities than we had,” said Davis, who began his career as an 18-year-old in Eugene, Ore., and reached the bigs by age 22. “Sometimes that’s bad for these kids. The object of the minor leagues is to get the hell out of here. It’s not to stay here and look at plasma TVs and all those sorts of things. I’ve been around the country, and there are some beautiful facilities.

“Then you catch these kids being satisfied. In the minor leagues, you should never, ever be satisfied. … There’s a certain mentality you have to have in the minor leagues, to not want to be here. I don’t care if we get 40,000 a night in Lynchburg, I wouldn’t want to be here. That means I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do if I’m still here.”

Said Buchholz: “There’s incentive to get out of here. It’s not where you want to end up. It’s just another bump in the road for all of us. We’re all working hard to move on.”

Davis’ career track will likely keep him in a front-office job. He said he has no interest in managing, but he does like hands-on work with younger players.

“I want to build my own team,” Davis said. “But with on-the-field capabilities.”

Or in other words, the best of both worlds. And Davis the instructor is just getting started.