Sunday Morning Chat With Chaminade-Madonna Head Coach Mike Moss

Chaminade-Madonna head coach Mike Moss has coached in Broward for more than 20 years. Along the way, his career has taken him through Boyd Anderson, Taravella, Chaminade, West Broward and back again to Chaminade. Moss recently sat down with BHSB Editor Anthony Uttariello and spoke about his current team, his intense approach to the game, his coaching tree and several other topics. Here is an inside look into coach Moss. Enjoy!

Anthony: You had a pretty unceremonious exit from West Broward last year. After helping start the baseball program for the Bobcats, tell me how that break-up went down and some of your emotions at the time.

Coach Moss: Really, it was basically based on some situations regarding primarily facilities at the school. In the past I’ve built programs and built facilities you know at Taravella, at Boyd Anderson, at Chaminade. We were in the process of just trying to put something really special together at West Broward, and we couldn’t get on the same page. And so, at that point, it was like, I needed to step aside because it wasn’t going to work. So, that’s what I did, I stepped aside. I guess some people would point at the fact that we cut some seniors you know that was really just kinda like the coup de grace, it really wasn’t the gist of what happened over there, that was the final straw. I’ve seen a lot of coaches make moves they had to do. Tom Hysell was famous for that kind of stuff, you know, making moves and it really panning out. I just figured it was time for me to move somewhere else, that’s all. I mean West Broward, I’m still teaching there. I still love the school, I love my kids, they’re in my class. I’m teach International Relations. So, I’ve got nothing bad to say about the school, it’s just that the baseball situation didn’t work out. My vision and the way that things worked out weren’t the same so I just walked away.

Anthony: After leaving West Broward, you had the opportunity to explore several different openings, some even around the state as far as Orlando. Why the ultimate decision to go back to Chaminade a place you had coached before?

Coach Moss: Well, first of all, originally I was up for the job at Lake Brantley and I was in the final three guys for the Lake Brantley job. If I had gotten that, I would have been thrilled because it’s a great talent pool and everything. When that didn’t work out, I figured, ‘Well, I’m just going to take a year off and just sit back.’ And then the Chaminade situation opened up. I spoke with the AD he was interested in me coming in and coming back, and it’s a place I felt very comfortable at. I loved Chaminade when I was there. My kids both graduated from there, and I had nothing but good things to say about Chaminade. When I left, it was just one of those situations where I felt I needed to move on at the time because of the administration that was in there at that time, we weren’t, again on the same page. I wanted to be on the same page with the people I’m working with and that wasn’t happening there. So I stepped over to West Broward. It looked like a great opportunity. It was a terrific baseball neighborhood and stuff so I made that move, but really Chaminade always was a very comfortable situation for me. I know what the school is all about. I like the traditions and so on. I felt comfortable going back there when they offered me the job. I was going to take the year off. I was going to umpire. I was actually thinking about umpiring and refereeing basketball. That’s what I was going to do. I saw that as ‘Hey, this will be fun. I’ll get in shape, I’ll have more time to work out because I love to work out.’ But, it worked out with Chaminade, and I’m happy it did.

Anthony: The pitching is deep this season, but early on your team had trouble scoring runs. The result of that has been an aggressive style of offense that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Has your style always been that aggressive or is it something specific you’re doing with this team to make up for the lack of offense?

Coach Moss: Well, I’ve always been aggressive, I don’t know if you remember me at Taravella, but we had a team once that stole 132 bases in a season there. We’ve always been aggressive on the bases. Always been hit-and-run, bunt and run, steal, double steals, squeezes, you know, things like that. I always try to tailor what I do as far as the aggressiveness to that team that I’m coaching. Right now, we’re not a very fast team. So I try and take advantage of situations when I can, because we don’t drive in runs very well. I kind of learned after being through the fall with them and then into the early spring, that there’s times when I gotta push the pedal a little bit to try and make something happen to see if we can score a couple runs and get ourselves into a position where the pitching can really be effective and do the job for us. The hardest thing right now I think that we’re going through is our kids trying to adjust to a little aggressive style. Picking up signs and understanding what we’re trying to accomplish in some of these situations. At times, we’ve not understood what we were trying to do, so therefore it ends up looking bad because one guy is doing what he’s supposed to be doing, and another guy is not because he doesn’t understand exactly what your doing. So it ends up not looking very well orchestrated.

Anthony: Is that the thing that makes it tough for game spectators that don’t really know the ins and outs of the everyday interaction you have with your players as a coach, and those fans are seeing results and maybe judging things a lot different than you are as a coach?

Coach Moss: Exactly. When your watching from the stands, unless you know all the signs that are going on, unless you know exactly what’s transpiring in the terms of communication on the field, then sometimes it’s hard to really be able to judge each situation. It’s interesting, I notice that a lot of times people in the stands, parents or casual observers, whoever it may be, kind of think that the coach orchestrates everything that’s going on, and that’s not always true. Occasionally, a runner will just take off and do something, and as a coach you would be like ‘Whoa, what are you doing?’ and I’m as surprised as anybody else in those situations. Unfortunately, and usually automatically, people go “Oh, well the coach must have had him go.” It is really easy to not be able to evaluate it correctly from the stands because you don’t know the whole story for each situation in a game.

Anthony: Having coached against you for many years when I was at Coral Springs and Piper, I always saw an intimidating figure on the other side of the field. Several times, I even saw you have some words with friends of yours like Ricky Wolfer, among others, in the heat of battle. Where did you develop your intense on-field persona, and was this something you created consciously?

Coach Moss: Absolutely not, that’s just me. I played the game that way [he laughs]. Actually, you see I’m a lot more mellow now than I ever was when I was young. I was a very intense player. Both as a basketball player and as a baseball player. I played college basketball and baseball and that was just the way I played. I played basket or base baseball like football. It was like I was an attack kind of guy. That’s why I’m aggressive. On the field as a player, I was fortunate as a player I not only in college pitched I also played outfield, hit, stole a lot of bases, I could really run when I was young so that way that I played the game was very, go out and go after people. And so that’s the same way I coach. I want players to have that same mentality. I try to teach them to be fearless, because we’re all gonna make mistakes, but don’t be afraid to make a play. I hate to see when guys tighten up and don’t let it fly. I would rather see a guy let it fly and fail. Alright, it was an aggressive play, he made it on his own, he was out. But I can live with that, ‘cause I know he’s bustin’ his butt trying to make something happen. It’s not like I try to consciously be intimidating. In fact, I don’t think of myself as intimidating at all. I think of myself as just doing my thing, I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky guy most of the time. I like to laugh and I enjoy baseball! I love to be around the game. So I guess it’s a false impression at times that I get. You know what I mean? You can even see over the years the way that I handle umpires now is much different than I used to. I used to be very confrontational and very aggressive with umpires and now I handle things a little differently. I guess that comes with either age or maturity, or whatever.

Anthony: Following that up. When I coached, I had a problem with expecting my players to play the game the way I played the game. I did certain things very successfully such as stealing bases and playing with intensity, and sometimes I coached to the way I played the game instead of my players capabilities. How hard is to know that you had done some things in your playing career, that maybe your kids aren’t capable of doing?

Coach Moss: That is hard to kind of corral that because even at 53 years old, I’m pretty athletic in some way. You know, I can run and hit and do different things. And I still at times can look at guys and say I can still do that better than them [laughing]. I hate to say that, but, you know it’s frustrating a little bit. Because you look and you expect more from guys. You expect them to care more. You expect them to give more. Because you know what you did as a kid and what you went through as a player. And times have changed, they’re not the same. Kids don’t go at it the same way they used to. There’s no denying that. I know a lot of parents hate to hear that and kids hate to hear that, but the truth is the truth. Not that there aren’t great players today. There are absolutely kids that are outstanding athletes and do some really super things. But the toughness, or the mental toughness, the ability to withstand the negative things and bounce back is not the same as it was when we were playing.

Anthony: Now knowing you away from the field, I know you to be just like you said a happy-go-lucky guy.. How do you separate your personality on the field with your personality away from the diamond with your family and friends?

Coach Moss: I find no problem with that. To me, that part’s easy. When I’m away from the field, I’m still Coach Moss to a lot of people, but you know, I just love people. My kids in my class they call me Coach Moss, they don’t call me Mr. Moss. But they’re like my kids. I teach International Relations, I love politics. I have a very good rapport with my students. I don’t think they see me as a tough hard nose kind of guy, they see me more as a big teddy bear or whatever. You know I always got some corny humor going on [chuckling] in the classroom. And so to me it’s two different things. I put the uniform on and I go on the field, this is business, this is what I do. This is how I go about my business. I have a lot of pride in the way I handle myself, the way that my team is, and that’s why I get upset sometimes because I expect my guys to have that same pride. So it’s like two separate identities.

Anthony: One of the reasons I wanted to do these weekly interviews was to show fans another side from what they see from coaches on the field. What do you think is the biggest misconception from an outsiders point of view about Mike Moss? And to follow that up, what would people be surprised to know about you?

Coach Moss: I would definitely say that the biggest misconception is that people think that I’m like my on-field persona. I’ve heard so many times “He’s so tough and angry.” And always, it’s like “Really?” I want to do everything I can to give my kids the best experience that I can in terms of the whole program. I’m talking competition level. If you look at my schedule were always, my schedule’s always top-notch competition level. I’ve always believed in that. I’ve always believed in doing special things. Like today, we had a team meal before we came up here. I believe in family, and high school is the last place where baseball is still kind of a family thing. Once you get to college level and pro level, it changed dramatically. So that’s really the biggest misconception. I really care about my kids. I’ve never had kids really that I can think of that I really didn’t love. I had great relations. I went back to Taravella. Taravella called me to coach the alumni game, and I went back in January and coached. I still have a great relationship with those guys. They all call me from time to time, and those are my boys, that’s how I look at it. And of course, there are going to be some people that you deal with from time to time that you don’t hit it off with, but I’ve always tried to.

To go along with the other part of that question, I think people would be surprised with my family situation. I have four kids that I love to death, that are all like my own kids but none of them are my own kids. I have two step-children and two adopted children. I’m a teacher, I’m a coach. I just, kids are just something I love to deal with. I love to help them to figure things out, to help establish good standards for themselves and that kind of thing. My style of discipline is considered a hard type of discipline. It’s really not. I would rather teach kids to have their own set of standards so that when they go about their business, they hold themselves to that standard. So that’s really what my emphasis is. Even though I don’t think that that’s necessarily my image from a lot of people.

Anthony: You started your coaching career at Boyd Anderson where it was hard just finding nine players to field a team. You built that program, and then coached a state contender at Taravella before moving to Chaminade and West Broward. Tell me some of the different challenges you have faced in all those years and which coaching job you’re most proud of?

Coach Moss: You see, and that’s what goes back into what I was just getting done saying. The fact that I’ve never been a guy that looked and said “Oh I got to coach at this place. Oh I can’t coach at this place, ‘cause it might hurt my record.” You know, I was not afraid to step in at Boyd Anderson and go 3-23, because I had so many great kids there. My last year, I think we won about nine games. I don’t think Boyd Anderson has won nine game since then, but we won nine game the third year and really that was the high-water mark. The challenge at Boyd Anderson, it was primarily a football school, but we still played, we still found a way to be competitive.

When I went to Taravella, I was dealing with upper-middle class kinda folks and I did very well there. I really fell in love with and had a great rapport with that community over at Taravella.

The I went to Chaminade, a Catholic school, and there were a whole different set of traditions and things. And I found a way to not only fit in and adjust, but to learn a lot. At West Broward, I learned a lot about the Hispanic culture. I had whole different experiences at each place.

Anthony: Give me some of your peers that you respect in the coaching profession here Broward and tell me why those coaches stick out to you.

Coach Moss: (Pause). I have respect for guys like Fitz (Todd Fitz-Gerald) for example. Fitz has had some really good teams and he’s a good guy really. I like dealing with Fitz. Dean (Florio) is like a little brother to me, you know what I mean? When I was at Taravella and he was at Douglas, we were competitors but we always had a good relationship. He and I always had a way of playing in the rivalry without disliking each other or without having a nasty rivalry.

Coach Evans, with my short time at West Broward I learned to have a lot of respect for Flanagan, and I think that it was likewise on the other side. We really went at it with each other, but it was a good, healthy rivalry.

I have respect for Pat McQuaid and what he’s done. I mean anybody who stays in this racket for 40 years, you have to have a great deal of respect for that, because it’s not an easy deal what he’s done. What he’s built there at Nova, the facility and the program, you can’t argue with that.

Coach Hofman, Rich, I have respect for. We’re in the same district. I don’t always like Rich [laughing], but I respect him. He’s an interesting guy. Away from the field, we get along really well. So those are the guys.

Anthony: So there are coaches you respect, and there are also those you have groomed. Your coaching tree has grown extensively in the over two decades you have coached in Broward. You have Ricky Wolfer, you have Joe Giummule, Sergio Ambros, Dominic Campeau were all guys who were assistants of yours and all four have gone on to be head coaches. Tell me about those relationships and others who’s careers started along side of you.

Coach Moss: There’s also several others like Brian Clark at McArthur, Jeff Rose at Boca High. Paul Liotti was a player of mine. The first day I taught in Broward County, he walked in my class room as a 14-year-old freshman, and then he became a player for me and later a coach for me, so he’s obviously another guy that’s in that group. Over the years, there have been a bunch of guys that you mentioned. Dom (Campeau) is still very close to me. We work together on the Bangers program. He’s a great guy, a Canadian guy, I love to mess with him about his French Canadian heritage and stuff, but he’s a tremendous guy and good coach. Coach Ambros was with me for a long time at Chaminade and West Broward. Serg was my right-hand man for years and he has always been a guy I always had a great deal of respect for. The other guys, Ricky, I still stay in touch with Ricky. Joey Giummule, well I played in his tournament at South Broward last week. I just talked to him yesterday. So, those guys all did a great job for me as assistants, and I always have taken a great deal of pride in seeing my assistants be successful later on. One guy that I didn’t mention is Demarlo Hale. He was my assistant for two years at Boyd Anderson and now he’s the third-base coach for the Baltimore Orioles. He was with the Red Sox for a bunch of years. He was the bench coach there, and a couple years ago, when the Red Sox played the Marlins, I was in the dugout with the Red Sox. I sat next to the batboy in the dugout during the game. It was kinda cool.

You like to see your people who work hard for you, you like to see them do well. And obviously along the way, hopefully I’ve given them some of the tools that they use in their coaching careers.

Anthony: Alright, getting back to this year’s team. Let’s finish with this. You have two legitimate aces in Brandon (Burgess) and Chris (Flores) and one of the best defensive shortstops in the country with Luis (Guillorme). What has to happen for the Lions to be hoisting a state championship trophy in Port St. Lucie this May?

Coach Moss: A lot. I mean, we have the ability on the field as far as physical ability. Really, right now, it’s all about what’s between our ears. If you saw some of our practices, you’d say “Man, that’s a pretty good team. They really look really solid.” Somehow, when we get on the field on game day, at times, we just seem to have negative thoughts going on, lets put it that way. You can see it in our body language. You can see that we are not tough, we’re not confident. And that’s really what has to change. We have to be able to play like we practice. It’s about our ability to take it from our practice field and bring it to the game field and just perform. That’s really what it is.

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