How Carl Willis continued his life in baseball as a coach in Cleveland

CLEVELAND — Guardians pitching coach Carl Willis still occasionally drives by the house in North Carolina that serves as a reminder of a post-playing career life that was almost very different for him, and would have been outside of the game of baseball.

Willis, now 65, is a true baseball lifer. But that almost wasn’t the case, and it wouldn’t have been if not for a fated phone call that altered his path.

When Willis was in his playing days, he spent several years stuck in the minor leagues. It was then he started planning ahead for what might be next, and whether he might be a quality coach one day. He was able to put all that on hold for a while, as he eventually did break through to the majors as a pitcher and enjoying a nine-year career (with a few lost to injury) before retiring after the 1995 season.

Then the question hit his doorstep he knew would come eventually: What now?

He was 34 years old, living in North Carolina and raising a family with his wife, Rachel.

“I always wanted to stay in the game,” Willis said recently. “I also felt it was unfair [to my family]. It wasn’t an easy industry to crack and get into. I live in North Carolina. I don’t want to get a job as a pitching coach and — no offense to anyone in Eugene, Oregon — be somewhere far away when I’m trying to raise a family and support my wife.”

Willis instead started a construction business with a friend of his building homes in the area and had done that for a year or so.

He came home from work one day, and his wife was waiting with some interesting news.

“I came home one day and my wife said, ‘You got a call from Mark Shapiro. He wants you to call him,'” Willis said. “She goes, ‘He’s the farm director with Cleveland. … What do you think he wants?’ And I said, ‘Well, he doesn’t want me to pitch. I know that.'”

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Shapiro, who eventually became the team’s general manager, was at the time working as Cleveland’s director of minor league operations. The two met along with Mike Brown, the team’s pitching coordinator.

It just so happened that Cleveland had two minor league clubs within 90 minutes of where Willis lived. They wanted him to help along a young left-handed pitcher named CC Sabathia on his journey to the major leagues.

That “perfect storm” of circumstances, as Willis called it, opened the door to a decision. But Rachel already knew the path he needed to choose.

“I have to say, the most important factor of that equation when Mark told me he wanted me talk to me about a coaching job, I said, ‘Listen, I got to talk to my wife,'” Willis said. “And my wife said, ‘If they offer you a job in baseball, you need to take it, because you’re miserable.’ And she was very supportive.

“She’s been the rock of the whole thing.”

Willis has been coaching for nearly three decades and become one of the most-revered pitching coaches in the game. He’s overseen five Cy Young winners — Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Felix Hernandez, Rick Porcello and Shane Bieber.

But when he first accepted the job and rejoined baseball, there was still one matter with which to deal. The housing business with his friend couldn’t simply be abandoned out of the blue. They had two houses under contract and were still building the last one. Instead of foreclosing on the friend, the property was signed over to Willis, and they finished it and sold it before he officially took the Cleveland minor league job.

“I drive past it every once in a while,” he said.

It’s a reminder of what almost was, along with acting as a monument forever reminding Willis of the support he’s received from his family.

Ryan Lewis covers the Guardians for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached at rlewis1@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: How Carl Willis continued his life in baseball as a coach in Cleveland