Walt Weiss returns to Colorado, this time as Braves manager
DENVER — Walt Weiss has been a manager at Coors Field before. Only he was doing it from the home team’s dugout.
Weiss was back in the familiar ballpark Friday ahead of the Braves’ three-game series against the Rockies. The first-year manager for the Braves has returned to Coors Field many times while serving as the bench coach for the Braves over the past eight seasons.
Friday’s matchup, however, was his first as an opposing manager.
“Always a little different coming back here, for sure,” Weiss said Friday while seated in the visitors’ dugout. “Spent 15 years in variety of roles here — player, coach, manager. And this is still home. It’s always something I look for when the schedule comes out every year, see when we’re coming back here.
“There’s a lot of people still around. I’m sure over the next three days I’ll catch up with a lot of ‘em. A lot of familiar faces still.”
Weiss also played four seasons for the Rockies from 1994-97 before joining the Braves ahead of the 1998 season. He became an All-Star shortstop that year, and the ‘98 All-Star Game just so happened to be in Denver.
After retiring as a player, Weiss returned to the Rockies organization in 2002 as a special assistant and instructor for six years. He, his wife and four sons made Colorado home, and Weiss was coaching youth sports when the Rockies tabbed him to be their next manager starting in the 2013 season.
Weiss went 283-365 in four seasons and his best team — his last one — won 75 games. He stepped down after the 2016 campaign, took a year off, then joined Brian Snitker’s staff in 2018.
Eight years later, he brought his first-place Braves into town.
“The circumstances are worlds apart, right? First time I did this back here, I’d been out of the game for four years, which is an eternity in this league,” Weiss said about him as a manager then and now. “I was coaching high school football when I interviewed for that job. I came in, had a lot to learn. Had to learn on the fly. Had a good staff around me that helped me through those early years. There was a lot to learn. I saw the game probably more through a player’s eyes back then, because that was what I leaned on, which in some ways is good, some ways probably not so good, but certainly a lot of lessons learned.
“Even though we didn’t win a lot here, I felt good about some things and some changes that happened over those four years. Ten years later, I’ve been a bench coach for this team for eight years, so very different circumstances. Know the team very well. The core of this group has been together for a long time. The relationships and the trust was well established. The team that is, more or less, built to win right now. So certainly I would say (I’m) more comfortable in my own skin now in this role at this point in my career for sure.”
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