May 11, 2016 8 min read

The Wild Things are hoping Gregg Langbehn jams his foot in the team’s revolving door of managers.

Langbehn, who is the Wild Things’ seventh manager in nine years, will make his debut Friday, when Washington opens its 15th Frontier League season in Sauget, Ill., against the Gateway Grizzlies at GCS Ballpark.

Though new to the Wild Things, Langbehn has 25 years of professional baseball experience, including five as a manager in the Frontier League. He is a former pitcher who made it to the doorstep of the major leagues and played at one minor-league stop for current Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle. Langbehn was a manager for five years in the Houston Astros system and spent the last two years as the ultimate couch potato – he was paid to watch baseball on television and instantly second-guess umpires.

Langbehn comes to Washington after spending the last two years as the Cleveland Indians’ replay coordinator. That meant when Indians manager Terry Francona challenged a call made by an umpire, it was Langbehn who saw video evidence supporting Francona’s case and suggested the Indians try to overturn the call.

It was Langbehn’s job to watch every pitch of every Indians game on two 32-inch monitors. On one screen were 15 different camera angles that Langbehn could choose from to watch a replay. He also could hear the play-by-play call of the radio broadcasters.

“It was a great experience, an awesome job,” Langbehn said. “It was two years of watching every single pitch because if something happened, then you better have an answer. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.”

Langbehn’s location for watching the video feeds varied from ballpark to ballpark. In some, he was sequestered in a video room only a few feet from the dugout steps. In other parks, such as Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, he was in the middle of the clubhouse, away from the roar of the crowd. If the Indians’ coaching staff had a question about an umpire’s call, bench coach Brad Mills would call Langbehn, who already would be looking at the replays. If Langbehn thought the call was incorrect, then he’d tell Mills, who would inform Francona.

Prior to games, Langbehn had on-field duties. He would help infield coach Mike Sarbaugh and Mills, who worked with the outfielders. If Indians hitters were facing a left-handed pitcher that night, they might ask Langbehn, a lefty, to throw extra batting practice in the indoor cages. However, once the game started, Langbehn was back in street clothes and watching the video feed.

“The Indians were kind enough to let me do all the things I had always done. That was part of the agreement. They wanted me on the field because of my coaching background, but there was no coaching,” Langbehn said. “That wasn’t my role.”

While working with major-league coaches and players was rewarding, and the travel accommodations that go along with the job were nice perks, there were a few things missing for Langbehn. He missed the long days. He missed the grind. He missed making the in-game decisions. He missed doing what he loves to do, which is teach and coach baseball.

“Did I miss it? Yes,” Langbehn said. “The replay job, for me, was more stressful than managing or coaching.”

So the 46-year-old Langbehn made a phone call to Frontier League commissioner Bill Lee and said he’d be interested in managing again. Lee told Langbehn there was a possibility that a managerial job in the league would be opening.

A few days later, Langbehn received a phone call from Wild Things general manager Steve Zavacky. Bob Bozzuto resigned as the Wild Things’ manager after last year’s 42-54 season, so Washington needed a manager.

“We talked. It took about two weeks to get to the point where this job was offered to me,” said Langbehn, whose hiring was announced in December.

Langbehn was the manager of the Frontier League’s Traverse City Beach Bums for five years (2009-13), finishing with a winning record in all but his first season in the northern Michigan resort city. In three of those years, the Beach Bums made the playoffs. The 2012 team set a Frontier League record by winning 64 regular-season games.

One person who was glad to see Langbehn hired is Wild Things outfielder Andrew Heck. Though he has played parts of four seasons with Washington, Heck spent the final two months of the 2013 season with Traverse City when Langbehn was concluding his successful run with the Beach Bums.

“He’s a player’s manager,” Heck said. “I enjoyed playing for him. When I was there, 100 percent of the guys loved playing for him.

“He gets the most out of his players by playing to their strengths. Those are the managers who succeed. Sometimes when you micromanage everything, then you handcuff players.”

Langbehn knows the Frontier League is a long way from the majors leagues, but at least in Washington he’s coaching again.

“There are a lot of benefits to what we do,” Langbehn said. “You put together your own team, make the in-game decisions. The Frontier League has a good reputation. The players in the league are more experienced than when I began at Traverse City. From that standpoint, it’s like night and day different.”

Langbehn will take the same approach with Washington as he did in Traverse City. He wants to build teams around veteran hitters and solid pitching. He prefers pitchers who work fast and throw strikes, saying location and command is more important than velocity. Langbehn said he talked with Wild Things director of team operations Tony Buccilli almost daily during the offseason and the two have similar ideas of what kind of players will succeed in Washington.

“We’re headed in the right direction,” Langbehn said.

Langbehn was selected by the New York Mets in the 11th round of the 1998 draft out of high school in Schofield, Wis. He steadily made his way through the minor-league system as a starting pitcher and had three consecutive seasons of double-digit wins before changing roles in 1992.

“I loved starting,” Langbehn said. “I knew how to pitch. Did I have the best stuff? Probably not, but I was consistent.

“One day in spring training in 1992, I was pulled aside by the farm director and some coaches. They told me that I was projected as a late-innings, leverage-situation relief guy. I didn’t see that coming. I was preparing to be a starter in Double-A and they just threw that one at me. By the end of the year, I liked pitching in relief. We won the Eastern League championship that year.”

The next year, after playing in the prestigious Arizona Fall League, Langbehn threw in 49 games for the Class AAA Norfolk Tides, who were managed by Hurdle. In 1994, Langbehn had biceps tendonitis during spring training and a late start to the season. After returning to Norfolk, he pitched in 19 games for the Tides with a 2.84 ERA and thought he might finally get that call to The Show.

“We were in Columbus, and I had just pitched three scoreless innings when I was called into the manager’s office,” he recalled. “At that time, the Mets weren’t very good at the major-league level and had little left-handed pitching. For a brief moment, I thought this is it. But they said, ‘We’re sending you back to Double-A.’

“I went back to Binghamton, N.Y., and for whatever reason, I didn’t pitch well. It wasn’t from lack of effort. I just couldn’t figure it out. I just didn’t have my command anymore and wasn’t competing the way I used to.”

That was Langbehn’s last season with the Mets. He pitched the 1995 season in the minors for Boston and Milwaukee, but he never regained the form of years past. At age 25, he retired as a player.

Three years later, he sent résumés to three major league organizations, hoping they might lead to a coaching job. One went to Gerry Hunsicker, general manager of the Houston Astros, who knew Langbehn from when Hunsicker worked with the Mets.

Hunsicker hired Langbehn as a minor-league pitching coach in 1999. By 2004, he had his first managerial job with the short-season New York-Penn League’s Tri-City Valleycats, a position he held for three years, winning two division titles. He also managed the Class A South Atlantic League’s Lexington Legends in 2007 and ’08.

“It’s been a rollercoaster of a career,” Langbehn said. “It has been interesting.”