Russ Lane’s MLB Dreams

HOT SPRINGS, Arkansas – As much as he loves his job as a tournament pro, Major League Fishing Select angler Russ Lane can picture himself wearing a different kind of jersey for a living: that of a Major League Baseball pitching coach.

And Lane has the chops to do it.

The Alabama native pitched for four years at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, and lived the “Bull Durham” lifestyle in the mid-1990s for the Will County Claws in Romeoville, Illinois, and the Richmond Roosters in Richmond, Indiana.

“I was an average athlete just like I’m an average fisherman, but I worked harder than everybody else,” Lane jokes. “I was what you’d call a ‘student of the game’. I wasn’t one of those super-talented guys and I knew that I probably had no chance to be a Major League player. But I knew what it took to be a pitcher, and I worked hard at it.”

Lane’s two-year stint in the independent North Central League (for Will Country) and Frontier League (for Richmond) followed a winding path of day-long bus rides throughout the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and southern Saskatchewan, Canada.

“Minor league baseball is a lot like they show on TV,” Lane says. “It’s a lot of small towns and old ball parks, living out of suitcases. I got to play in the stadium where they shot ‘A League of Their Own’ in Evansville, Indiana. We played the Kalamazoo Bears, and I remember riding a bus through Kalamazoo thinking to myself ‘Man, this is where Kevin VanDam lives’. It was quite an experience.”

Lane appeared in 16 games in 1995 and 1996, seven as a starter. And he studied and labored to improve the whole time.

“There are a ton of guys who are super-gifted athletes who don’t have to work as hard because it just comes natural to them,” Lane says. “A guy like me who wasn’t quite as gifted really has to stay in tune with what his body is doing. I studied kinesiology so I could learn more about pitching mechanics. I knew that if you’re 6-foot-2, you ought to be able to create enough momentum to throw a baseball 92 miles per hour, so I taught myself to do that.

“Some of the best coaches and scouts are guys who played the game, but had to be conscious of little things like their hands separating at the right second, their foot landing at the right time, and every part of their mechanics being where they’re supposed to be. I think it would be a lot of fun to teach that.”