TCU Baseball Coach Lance Brown Announces Retirement
6/16/2003 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
June 16, 2003
Lance Brown, TCU's all-time winningest baseball coach, has announced his retirement effective immediately.
"I am retiring as head baseball coach at TCU," said Brown. "It has been my privilege to be part of TCU as a student-athlete, a coach and an alumnus for more than 40 years. There have been many great victories and championships, but more important than all of those are the people I have come to know. I want to say 'thank you' to all who have been a part of building a proud tradition of TCU baseball. I wish the very best for TCU and especially Horned Frog baseball."
Brown completed his 17th season as the Horned Frogs head coach in 2003, leading TCU to a 35-22 record overall and a second place finish in the Conference USA regular season standings with a 22-8 record. He reached a pair of milestones during the season, recording both his 500th win and his 200th conference victory. Brown's career record of 517-471 ranks ahead of Frank Windegger, who was Brown's head coach in his TCU playing days, as tops in TCU history. Windegger, who won four conference titles in his tenure, compiled a 298-168 overall record in 14 seasons.
"Lance Brown has been a big part of TCU baseball for many years," said TCU Athletics Director Eric Hyman. "He has a tremendous love for baseball and for TCU and we appreciate all that he has given to the program throughout the years. We wish him the best and look forward to seeing him at the ballpark for many seasons to come."
Brown has played a large role in the success of TCU baseball, first as an all-America player who pitched the Horned Frogs to the 1963 Southwest Conference championship, then later as a coach. Thirty-one years after he earned the '63 Southwest Conference Player of the Year honors by posting an 11-1 record (8-1 in the SWC), he guided the Frogs to the 1994 SWC title as the head coach, making him one of only two men to win both the SWC Player and Coach of the Year honors. Brown remains tied for the school mark for pitching victories in a season and ranks third in strikeouts in a single season with 109.
When Brown took over as TCU's head baseball coach in May 1986, he inherited a program that was making its fourth coaching change in 11 years. During that same timespan, the program had only five winning seasons and its best finish in the Southwest Conference had been sixth place.
The first thing Brown set out to accomplish was not to teach fundamentals, to improve the schedule, or to improve the facilities. The first step was to teach the Horned Frogs how to win consistently.
By 1994, Brown had the Frogs doing just that. They not only won consistently, but they did things that had not been done at TCU since his playing days in the early 1960s. En route to a school-record 38 wins, the Frog diamond men won their first Southwest Conference regular season title since 1972 and first outright crown since 1956. They received an NCAA Regional tournament berth for the first time since 1956, where they recorded the school's first NCAA Tournament win, a 11-3 triumph over current C-USA foe Memphis in Stillwater, Okla.
Well-respected by his coaching peers, Brown was selected as the 1994 Regional Coach of the Year by the American Baseball Coaches Association. He was named the 1994 SWC Coach of the Year, his second such honor in his career. He also was the 1991 SWC Coach of the Year. Preceding his arrival at TCU, Brown served as the pitching coach at Rice University from 1983-86. In Brown's first season on the Rice staff, the Owls led the nation in team earned run average with a 2.60 mark. Four pitchers from that staff were signed to professional contracts and three were named all-Southwest Conference.
During the summer of 1983 Brown coached the Kenai Peninsula Oilers in the perennially tough Alaskan League. He also served as a batting practice pitcher for the Houston Astros from 1984 through 1986, the National League All-Star team in 1986, the American League All-Star team in 1995 and the Texas Rangers during parts of the last decade.
Brown also holds an impressive list of coaching credentials at the high school level. He coached at Arlington's Sam Houston High School from 1967-69, Irving MacArthur High School from 1969-76, and Newman Smith High School in Carrollton from 1976-83.
Brown has coached six major league products in his stint as the Frogs head coach, as current TCU assistant coach Glenn Dishman (San Diego Padres and Detroit Tigers), Tim Mauser (San Diego Padres), Fred Benavides (Montreal Expos), Chris Eddy (Oakland Athletics), John Briscoe (Oakland Athletics) and Jeff Zimmerman (Texas Rangers) have all gone on to careers at the major league level. In 1999, Zimmerman was named to the American League All-Star team in his rookie season. Playing a key role on that year's American League West-champion Texas Rangers, Zimmerman eventually finished third in the Rookie of the Year voting.
In addition, 40 Horned Frogs have been drafted by Major League organizations during Brown's stint as head coach, including five in the 2003 MLB Draft. In all, Brown has coached 52 all-conference selections during his TCU career, including Royce Huffman, the 1999 WAC Most Valuable Player, and Clayton Jerome, the 2003 Conference USA Pitcher of the Year. Seven Brown-coached players - Scott Malone, Tim Grieve, Adam Robson, Darren Tawwater, Royce Huffman, Terry Trofholz and Jerome - have received second- or third-team all-America honors.
A 1960 graduate of West Plains High School in West Plains, Missouri, Brown earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Education from TCU in 1967. He spent three seasons in the Chicago Cubs organization while finishing his degree at TCU. Brown's wife, Molly, graduated from TCU with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
