A few days after Rich Alday retired from coaching, he agreed to meet an old friend at KG’s Westside Cafe and reminisce about his extraordinary career.
But that conversation never had a chance.
As soon as Alday walked into KG’s, friends and acquaintances from several tables forgot about their pancakes, trading hugs and congratulations with the man they called Coach. For the next 90 minutes, Alday did his best to accommodate the happy faces who approached his table, people who seemed to have known him forever.
As much as you’d try, this was not a man who talked about championships or awards.
You’d ask him about quarterbacking the 12-0 Tucson High football team to the 1965 state championship and he’d turn the conversation to Badgers stars Lewis Cook and Bill Dawson. “I hardly got my uniform dirty,” he said.
You’d ask him about coaching Pima College’s baseball team to the 1981, 1983 and 1985 NJCAA finals and all you’d get was “when you’ve got Gil Heredia going 14-0, you’ve got a chance.”
You’d talk about his 517 baseball victories at PCC and he’d remove himself from the picture. “My assistant coaches were Scott Stanley and Jim Fleming. They’ve both been in Major League Baseball for more than 25 years. How do you mess that up?”
And you’d wonder how he successfully delivered a “Second Act” — coaching Ironwood Ridge High School’s softball team to 2014 and 2016 state championships — and he’d steer the conversation to Izzy Pacho. “Do you realize she hit .653 one year?”
Rich Alday was the kind of man you’d want your son to grow up to be. He was the kind of man you’d want to marry your daughter.
When he died this week at 71, unable to fight off an unforgiving infection following cancer surgery, his old high school rival from Palo Verde, Dave Bingham, needed just five words to find the right perspective.
“He was my best friend,” said Bingham, whose voice broke as he stopped to gather himself.
“I love the man so much.”
In the mid-1960s, Alday, at THS, and Bingham, at PVHS, were high-profile figures in Tucson’s rich tradition of high school baseball. Both enrolled at Arizona, playing for Frank Sancet on one of the nation’s leading baseball programs.
Long story short: Alday and Bingham ultimately wound up playing for Emporia State’s burgeoning NAIA baseball powerhouse in Kansas. After they played together in the National Baseball Congress World Series, Bingham met with a scout from the Washington Senators and signed a contract to play for the Class A Geneva Senators of the New York-Penn League.
“There’s another guy you should sign,” said Bingham. The scout soon signed Alday, too.
And so in the summer of 1971, Bingham and Alday played for the Senators, roomies, barely making enough money to buy a beer. Both were smart enough to know their careers lie not in playing baseball but coaching it.
Bingham went on to be the head coach at Emporia State, later head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks and an assistant at Nebraska. In April 1973, Alday was hired to be the first baseball coach at Pima College. The Aztecs didn’t even have a field; they played at Mission Manor Park and Santa Rita Park.
So what? He made it work.
Rich Alday, left, and Pima College athletic director Larry Toledo on May 8, 1973.
From 1980-89, a decade of baseball that can match any in Tucson history, at any level, Alday coached the Aztecs to 368 victories, three NJCAA finals and five ACCAC championships. And remember this: the ACCAC has been the nation’s top JC baseball league forever.
Alday didn’t have abundant resources; he simply built teams.
In the bridge between the 1982 and 1983 seasons, a young third baseman from Palo Verde High School walked into the coach’s office at PCC and asked if he could try out for the team.
“What’s your name?” Alday asked.
“Jack Howell.”
“That little guy from Palo Verde?”
Howell had spent a year in the weight room, gained strength and grew a few inches after an unsuccessful season at Eastern Arizona College.
“Rich invited me to try out,” Howell remembers. “To him, size and shape didn’t matter. He could’ve blown me off and said, ‘We’re pretty much loaded.’ Pima was a national powerhouse then. It was incredible that he gave me a shot.”
Howell went on to play 11 MLB seasons for the Angels, Padres and Astros. He has been part of big-league coaching staffs for 25 years, a hitting instructor at the top level.
“Rich cared about relationships,” Howell says now. “He cared about the individual and his family more than a ballgame. Every time I’d talk to him he’d say, ‘Did you hear about so and so?’ He had all these connections. I learned so much from him.”
Alday was part of coaching staffs for the 1986 USA World Championships and the 1988 Olympics. In 1990, he left PCC to be the head coach at New Mexico. How’d he do? The Lobos won 515 games. In 1996, he was one of two finalists to replace Jerry Kindall as the head coach at Arizona.
Rich Alday turned Pima into a baseball powerhouse before taking over at New Mexico. He returned to PCC in 2017.
The UA chose Jerry Stitt, but it didn’t do anything to damage their friendship. It was Stitt who helped to engineer Alday’s return as PCC’s baseball coach in 2017. If you attended a Pima baseball game in those years, Stitt was ever-present, eager to see his friend surpass 1,000 career victories.
“When I left Kansas in 2004, Rich hired me to be the pitching coach at New Mexico,” Bingham recalls. “I saw up close what a good evaluator he is. He had sent me so many of his Pima kids to Emporia State, kids we won (the 1978) national championship with. He was so good at relationships.
“He had a gift.”
Alday and his wife, Norma, celebrated their 50th anniversary last July. She was his rock. When an old friend at KG’s asked Rich about his just-completed career, he talked about Norma.
“I wasn’t even the best baseball guy in the family,” he said. “Norma’s dad is Joe Valenzuela. If you want a success story, look up his records.”
Indeed, from 1941-43, Joe Valenzuela was the leading pitcher at Tucson High School, twice the state’s pitcher of the year during a period in which the Badgers won eight consecutive state championships.
“Joe signed with the Yankees and was a teammate with Whitey Ford,” Alday said, proudly. “Once I married Norma, I had a lot to live up to.”
And, oh, did he.
