The St. Louis Cardinals had their Wizard of Oz in Ozzie Smith, but the Arizona Diamondbacks may have their very own Mr. Wizard in Josh Collmenter. Collmenter brought his teaching supplies with him to Diamondbacks’ Spring Training and has started serving up physics lessons to his teammates.
Collmenter was getting into gravitational pulls and the space-time continuum pic.twitter.com/7FPr4wPaO8
— Nick Piecoro (@nickpiecoro) February 23, 2016
Collmenter told the Arizona Republic that the idea to start teaching topics like physics came to him out of the blue while talking to teammates. The urge to teach came as he realized there could be some good to come out of it.
“We just pick random topics and if anyone has a suggestion we’ll talk about that. It’s not always going to be as in-depth as this, but it sort of expounded upon what we did the first day. I think tomorrow’s lesson will be a little more, not so practical, but a little more lighthearted I think.”
Baseball is a great sport to learn about physics, and perhaps that is the greater goal being pursued here by Collmenter. Collmenter has noticed his fellow pitchers seem to be the most intrigued by his lesson plans.
“From what I’ve gathered,” Collmenter said, “pitchers are the more intelligent species anyway, so it’s a lot easier to talk to them than it would be some of the position players.”
#Dbacks Josh Collmenter teaching teammates about Newton's theories. No, really he is. pic.twitter.com/oAaP9djKu6
— Steve Gilbert (@SteveGilbertMLB) February 23, 2016
The 30-year old Collmenter was a 15th round draft pick by the Diamondbacks in 2007 out of Central Michigan University. In five years with Arizona, he has a 3.49 ERA in 637 innings, making 75 starts and 110 relief appearances. Before coming to prominence as a clubhouse teacher, he was best-known for his bizarre delivery to the plate.
He’ll make $1.85 million in 2016 after the Diamondbacks exercised a club option in November. Collmenter is expected to have a role in Arizona’s bullpen as opposed to the rotation during the 2016 season.
