Ryan Theriot has never donned a Nicholls State University baseball uniform, but he owes his professional baseball career to someone who once did.
The two-time World Series Champion spoke to the current crop of Colonels baseball players and supporters Saturday night as part of Nicholls baseball’s annual First Pitch Banquet held at the Wellness Center of Thibodaux Regional and discussed his relationship with former Colonel great and Nicholls Hall of Famer Bobby Dickerson.
Dickerson, who is the current third base coach for the Baltimore Orioles, was in the Chicago Cubs organization when Theriot was drafted by the organization in 2001 after a successful collegiate career at LSU that ended with a College World Series championship in 2000.
“I owe Bobby a lot,” Theriot said. “He taught me about the game of baseball and also about life. He is one of the best coaches I ever had and really is the reason I stuck with it.”
Theriot explained a time in 2004-05 when he was all but done with baseball. After struggling though the farm system, Theriot had other responsibilities in life, including the birth of his children and taking on new business ventures in Baton Rouge.
Baseball took a back seat and Theriot was ready to call it quits before Dickerson helped changed his mind.
“I was going to retire,” he told the audience. “I had just opened my first business in Baton Rouge, now called Traction Sports, and I was in a ton of debt and the only way I could get out of that debt was to stay home and work. When it looked like I was going to be on (Dickerson’s) team, I decided to give it one last shot because I liked him and I felt like he could help me.”
It was during his time playing for Dickerson with the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx, the Double-A affiliate of the Cubs, that Theriot adamantly stated began his career revival.
“The way that man challenged me on a daily basis to be the best that I can possibly be truly got me to where I was and allowed me to continue to play as long as I wanted to,” Theriot admitted. “And for that I will forever be grateful.”
From that point on, Theriot went on to make his big league debut for the Chicago Cubs on September 13, 2005, as a pinch hitter against the Cincinnati Reds and the rest is history.
Theriot went on the play seven full seasons in the majors, finishing as a career .281 hitter, which included finishing sixth in the National League in hitting in 2008 with a .307 average, while playing for four different teams in the process.
After four full seasons in Chicago under managers Dusty Baker and Lou Pinella, Theriot was then traded to the Joe Torre-led Los Angeles Dodgers midway through the 2010 season.
He then signed with the St. Louis Cardinals, where he won a World Series in 2011 under Tony La Russa before signing with the San Francisco Giants in 2012 and winning another ring under Bruce Bochy.
It was during that 2012 World Series that Theriot had one of the greatest moments of his professional career.
In Game Four of the World Series, Theriot was used as a designated hitter for the first time in his major league career. In the tenth inning, he hit a leadoff single and eventually scored the go-ahead and winning run (coincidentally being driven in by Marco Scutaro, the same man who had taken his spot in the lineup two months before), which gave the Giants the clinching victory in a 4-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers.
None of it however, topped his experiences playing college baseball.
“Those two World Series’ were really cool, but the one that meant the most to me was the College World Series we won at LSU,” Theriot said. “You are with those guys every day; there are no agendas and no families to worry about. We all hung out together, we were brothers. We worked hard for that one and it made it extra special.”
Theriot said he was fortunate to play under some of baseball’s best managers and took characteristics from each one of them to make himself better.
“I had been so fortunate to have those guys to learn from that I tried to soak up all the good stuff they had to offer,” he said. “Tony was into stats. Joe was Hollywood Joe. Bochy was the ultimate motivator. Dusty was a player’s coach. Lou Pinella was the funniest and all around best guy to be around and Skip (Bertman) was arguably the best college baseball coach in history. They all had their attributes that I tried to learn from.”
Since his career officially ended with his retirement in 2014, Theriot said he still uses the life lessons baseball taught him today.
“The only three things in baseball that we can control are attitude, effort and appearance,” the former big leaguer said. “The way I played the game and approached each day, I was super afraid of baseball defining me later in life but I learned to love it and realized I was here for that reason. The game is going to forget about you, the numbers fade away but the memories and the way you played the game stick with you forever.”