Rich Donnelly
Richard Francis Donnelly
- Bats Left, Throws Right
- Height 6', Weight 185 lb.
- School Xavier University
- High School Catholic Central High School (Steubenville)
- Born August 3, 1946 in Steubenville, OH USA
Biographical Information[edit]
Catcher Rich Donnelly played four seasons in the minor leagues from 1968 to 1971. His first two seasons were in the Minnesota Twins organization and his last two in that of the Washington Senators. He played 85 games in AAA for the Denver Bears of the American Association in his final season, 1971. He hit .230 as a pro, but with almost no power: he had only two career home runs, both of them coming in 1968 with the St. Cloud Rox of the Northern League. Even playing a full season in the thin air at Denver was not enough to hit another dinger.
After his playing days ended, he spent ten years as a minor league manager in the Texas Rangers organization, following the relocation of the Senators. He was a member of the Rangers big league coaching staff in 1980 (bench coach) and again from 1983 to 1985 (first base coach). He then moved on to the Pittsburgh Pirates coaching staff for ten years. Donnelly was the bullpen coach from 1986 to 1991, third base coach from 1992 to 1995, and bench coach in 1996.
He spent the next 11 seasons as a third base coach with various major league teams. Donnelly coached for the Florida Marlins in 1997 and 1998 and helped the Marlins win the 1997 World Series. He moved to the Colorado Rockies in 1999 and remained there until April 29, 2002. Donnelly resigned after manager Buddy Bell was fired and replaced by Clint Hurdle. From 2003 to 2005, he was a member of the Milwaukee Brewers staff, and in 2006-2007, he was a coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In 2008, Donnelly returned to Pittsburgh as a special assistant for player development and remained in that position in 2009. In 2011 he became a manager for the first time in almost 30 years with the Brooklyn Cyclones. In 2014, he returned to the coaching ranks as third base coach of the Seattle Mariners for two seasons. Donnelly took a detour into independent league baseball in 2016 when he served as a bench coach for the Birmingham Bloomfield Beavers of the United Shore Professional Baseball League. In 2017, Donnelly served as the bullpen coach for Team USA in the 2017 World Baseball Classic under manager Jim Leyland, with whom he had worked with both the Pirates and the Marlins.[1]
Donnelly completed his coaching career in the New York Mets organization. He was bench coach of the Brooklyn Cyclones in 2018 and manager of the Kingsport Mets in 2019. Donnelly was scheduled to be bench coach of the Syracuse Mets in 2020 before the season was cancelled due to COVID-19.
His son, Tim Donnelly, was a batboy for Donnelly's teams from 1992 to 2002. Tim was an assistant coach at Malone College (2005), Kent State University (2006), Marshall University (2007-2016), Middle Tennessee State University (2017-2018), Southeastern Louisiana University (2019-2021), and Western Kentucky University (2022-).
In 2018 Rich Donnelly's life and story was turned into a book, The Chicken Runs at Midnight. The book is based on his life and the passing of his daughter, Amy.[2]
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