Opinion by Greg Hansen : Zinter in new phase of career, as a coach

He smashed 26 home runs for the Red Sox — of Pawtucket, R.I.

He hit .366 for the Mets — of Pittsfield, Mass.

He drove in 81 runs for the Cubs — of Des Moines, Iowa.

The final game of Zinter's long career was played not at Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park, but in Newark, N.J. His team, the independent league Somerset (N.J.) Patriots, gave up eight runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to blow the 2007 Atlantic League playoffs.

"I had a blast all summer," Zinter says now, a month before his 40th birthday. "It was like playing American Legion ball again."

Part of the reason the Arizona Diamondbacks hired Zinter and have assigned him to coach their rookie league team in Missoula, Mont., is because he did not let 17 full seasons of minor-league baseball — yes, he played for the Toledo Mud Hens — destroy his spirit.

"There's not a direct correlation between spending 20 years in the minor leagues and being a qualified coach," said Jack Howell, the Diamondbacks' director of minor-league field operations. "But it worked for Alan. He had fun and he was a sponge, making the best out of some long, hot summers.

"His perseverance, his work habits — the way he respected the game and those who play it — shows that he made the most of those years in a maximum way."

Zinter begins his second career, as a coach, the way he began his first, as a player.

In 1989, an All-America catcher who hit 18 home runs for the Arizona Wildcats, Zinter was a first-round draft pick of the New York Mets; a switch-hitting catcher with a star-to-be reputation.

In 2008, he begins a coaching career with similar promise.

"Alan has always wanted to be a manager," said Jerry Stitt, a former UA baseball coach who, coincidentally, retired as a full-time D-backs coach, creating an opening for Zinter. "He's good with younger players. It's a great move by the Diamondbacks to get someone of his quality."

Rather than sit and stew as his big-league career was limited to 78 at-bats in parts of two seasons with Houston and Arizona, Zinter made himself useful. He learned to play the outfield, first base and third base. He dedicated himself to being a designated hitter and a pinch hitter.

Along the way, various farm directors and big-league coaches would pull Zinter aside and say, "someday, when your playing career is over, I want you on my staff."

The payoff came not when he made a career-high $400,000 with the Japanese Seibu Lions in 1999, but when his phone began to ring after he retired from the Somerset Patriots.

"For the last six or seven years, teams would tell me, 'Let us know when you're done playing,'" Zinter says. "I got all the playing out of my system last year in the Atlantic League, and I made it known I was ready to go into coaching."

You might imagine how it felt to switch roles.

For the last 10 years of his playing career, Zinter had, he says, "to beg for some jobs." Now they were calling him.

"The tables turned," he says with a chuckle. "It is so refreshing to be wanted again."

The D-backs long ago did their research on Zinter; he played at the UA with former Sidewinders manager Chip Hale and got to know Howell, a former UA third baseman, via relationships with Hale and Stitt.

A lot of people got mileage out of Zinter's ready comparison to the Kevin Costner character, Crash Davis, in the 1988 baseball movie "Bull Durham." It made a good story.

Zinter hit 276 minor-league home runs. That's gotta be, what, top 10 ever? It's movie material, yes.

But the suggested happy ending to "Bull Durham" was that Crash Davis was apparently en route to California to investigate a minor-league managing job. For Zinter, there is no make-believe.

"I struggled mightily in the minors, but I'm very proud of what I accomplished," he says. "I can identify with these young guys. Everything I've gone through has prepared me to be a coach."

At Missoula, coaching the Osprey, Zinter will return to the bus-riding circuit, some of them 14-hour, overnight journeys through Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. He knows how it goes.

"It's part of the game," he says. "I've chosen to stay positive. All the struggling to get to this stage has been worth it. Holy cow, I've made a living in baseball for 19 years. It's the only job I've ever had. How many people can say that?"

BY THE NUMBERS

Ex-Wildcat Alan Zinter was hired by the Diamondbacks to coach their rookie league team in Missoula, Mont., after a long career spent mostly in the minor leagues.

17

Full seasons of minor-league baseball played by Zinter

78

Major-league at-bats for Zinter in two seasons with Houston and Arizona

276

Career minor-league home runs hit by Zinter