Where Are They Now?: Scott Bradley

Image credit: Scott Bradley (Focus On Sport/Getty Images)

Scott Bradley is in his 22nd season as head baseball coach at Princeton University. He owes much of his success to the late North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith.

“I’m a big believer in coaching translating across different sports,” Bradley said.

His playing days nearing an end following the 1995 season, Bradley returned to UNC, where he was the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year in 1980, to complete the final semester toward a degree in business administration.

Before returning, Bradley penned a letter to Smith asking permission to occasionally attend basketball practices. Every afternoon, Bradley watched and took notes, eventually shaping his philosophy for coaching around Smith’s standards.

“From the janitors to the maintenance people to the student-managers to the best player on the team, Dean Smith had this amazing way of making everybody feel good about themselves and that their role was important,” Bradley said. “That’s the culture you try to create in coaching.”

Bradley’s Princeton culture has led to more than 400 wins, seven Ivy League championships and the same number of NCAA Tournament appearances as well as 11 seasons of 20 or more wins.

Bradley was raised a Yankees fan in Essex Fells, N.J., by a father who took his son on frequent outings to Yankee Stadium. Following Bradley’s college career, the Yankees drafted him as a lefthanded-hitting catcher in the third round of the 1981 draft.

Bradley reached Triple-A Columbus in 1984, when he hit .335/.371/.433 and was named International League player of the year. He earned a September callup to New York.

The next spring, he found a spot on the Yankees’ roster.

“Opening Day, being introduced as a Yankee . . . That’s where I really felt like, ‘All right, I’ve accomplished something,’” Bradley said. “I made the team. I’m on an Opening Day roster of the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.”

Though the bulk of his big league career over parts of nine seasons was with the Mariners, he also played briefly with the Reds and White Sox. His career .257/.302/.343 batting line included two seasons in which he was the starting catcher for the Mariners, and two more when he was the regular catcher for budding lefthander Randy Johnson.

On June 2, 1990, Bradley was behind the plate when Johnson blew a high fastball past the Tigers’ Mike Heath to complete the first no-hitter in Mariners franchise history—and the first of Johnson’s two big league no-nos.

From his playing days, Bradley has never forgotten the no-hitter or another lesson he has carried over to his coaching career.

“I had to scratch and fight and claw for everything that I ever got,” Bradley said. “As a coach, as soon as you forget that this is a very difficult game, I think you lose something very important. I told myself I would never forget how difficult the game is to play.”