Braves catching coach Sal Fasano is the son of Italian immigrants, a Fu Manchu-mustache wearing object of adoration for a “Sal’s Pals” fan club in Philadelphia, a well-traveled and famously revered teammate who inspired a mustache revolution during a Yankees winning surge after he was traded there in 2006. He’s a man who walks gingerly on knees battered from catching, looks older than his 46 years and acts much younger.
He looks like he could be in a motorcycle gang -- or the brother of the late rock god Lemmy -- but Fasano has an immediately disarming, pleasant voice and demeanor, an engaging personality without pretense. He defies stereotypes and is proudly multi-faceted – “You try to be a Renaissance man. I’m not just a baseball coach, I want to be able to do a lot of things,” he said – and on a late-March morning he sat in the Braves’ dugout at spring training, describing a passion for calligraphy and how he rocks out to metal when engaged in his hobby.
Yes, calligraphy. Or, what many of us might call fancy writing we could never imagine being able to do. He taught himself. Examples of his work aren’t hard to find, and more will appear on ornate Braves lineup cards this season, as they did on lineups Fasano carefully crafted for minor league teams he managed, including last season’s Mobile BayBears, who, by the way, play in Hank Aaron Stadium.
But anyway, how in the world did ...
“Jerry Narron was the bench coach with the Rangers, and I saw one of his (elaborate lineup cards),” explained Fasano, a longtime backup catcher who played for nine teams in an 11-year major league career (and in the minors for three other organizations, including the Braves, briefly). “You give the lineup card to the opposing manager usually by hand, and I saw it one day and I was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ I looked at it and it kind of intrigued me a little.”
But how did a player go from intrigued to …
“English is my second language and I had to practice the alphabet a lot when I was going through school,” Fasano said. “And eventually you start tinkering and then you think, oh, that looks good. So then I got a couple of books on it, and I was like, ‘oh, how do you do calligraphy and the different types of fonts?’ And then once you understand the chisel tip (for writing) you can actually start to do pretty cool things.
“Then I started thinking when I became a manager: You know what, it’s professional baseball, their names should look like pros. And it’s an elegant way to write and people like seeing their name like that on the lineup card. … I tinkered with it as a player, but when I got into managing and I had my own lineup card, I thought, let me try this. Then when you lose a couple of games – I’ve tried everything to break a streak. I even put stuff in Crayon. I don’t really care, whatever makes guys laugh and happy to see their name in the lineup, that’s what I do.”
So that’s how it came to be that the dude with the big ’stache – there’s some gray now, but it’s as thick and spectacular as ever – and long hair came to write so, well, elegantly, as he put it. And here’s the thing: He does elegance while listening to some decidedly heavy music. He’s writing classical while the likes of the aforementioned Lemmy (of Motorhead) are assaulting his senses aurally.
“Yeah, when I do calligraphy I listen to heavy metal,” he says, smiling mischievously. “So it’s kind of funny. I don’t do it with Snit (manager Brian Snitker) in the office; I put my headphones on there. But, like, I was listening to Slipknot this morning. Most people don’t know who Slipknot is, but I listened to them today. Because that’s my quiet time. It’s funny, it’s heavy metal and banging my head, but I’m all writing in an old style. It’s funny.”
Asked for more of his favorite bands, he said, “Oh, anything that has a good beat. Lately it’s been Five Finger Death Punch, Slipknot, there’s a few others that I like. Korn, Tool. ... I’m a heavy guy. I’m a rock guy, period. So any type of rock, I listen to. Classic, new – as long as it’s got the good rhythm, and it’s got some soul and some heart. That’s what I care about. Anger.”
At this point it might be a good time to remind you, this is a widely respected 11-year former major league player, a former minor league manager and current big-league coach – his first season coaching at the major league level – for a Braves organization that has, at times, comes across as a bit too button-downed in the view of some.
Salvatore Frank Fasano is about as un-button-downed as a massive tattoo that former Brave Eric Hinske had covering his entire back.
Fasano is the father of three, ages “16, 12 and 10. They’re all different, that’s for sure,” he said. “I get to see them when we get home, so I’m pretty excited.”
All three are boys. “We make nothing but boys; even my dog and my cat are boys,” he said, laughing. “My poor wife, she’s a saint.”
When asked if his 16-year-old is a headbanger, too, Fasano said, “You know what, he is. My middle one used to be, and then he got into rap. He’s in a rap phase right now, so hopefully he grows out of it. But (once) when we were in the car, I remember we were listening to Drowning Pool, “Let the bodies hit the floor.” (line from Drowning Pool’s song “Bodies.”) And it would be like, “Nothing’s wrong with me ...’ (Here Fasano sings a line from the song, punctuated with the lead singer’s distinctive roar, though at a low level since we’re in the Braves dugout with people nearby).
“So we were rocking out at an early age,” he said, smiling.
And how, you may be asking, does all this fit with Fasano’s duties as a coach? Well, his personality, experience and creative thinking have all melded into something that veteran Braves catchers Tyler Flowers and Kurt Suzuki said is a highly effective coach and enjoyable person to be around.
“Big Sal,” Flowers said, smiling. “Tremendous.”
Flowers is 32 and entering his 10th season, coming off a career-best offensive year and rated the best pitch-framer in the majors. He was a little surprised in the fall when he heard the Braves hired a catching coach, a newly created position on the staff. But he’s glad they hired Fasano.
“It’s been fun,” Flowers said. “I guess you don’t expect to learn that much, but I’ve probably learned more this spring, catching-wise, than I’ve learned my whole career. It’s been a lot of – some of it’s different ways to think about things, but a lot of it’s just technique-wise being a little bit different. All of it it extremely logical. A few things we’ve done, like just talking about transfers to throws and stuff, it’s like, man, how did I not think of this before?
“When he first introduced a couple of things it was like, how the heck are we going to do this? But then it was four things that eventually become one thing, so it’s kind of a step-by-step process. So at the beginning it’s like, how’s this going to work? But then when we kind of got all the pieces to put it all together, you kind of see the whole picture. It’s like, man, this is going to be a whole lot better if I figure out how to do this.”
Fasano tailors his coaching to individuals, and in Flowers’ case, he’s worked with the big catcher on developing a quicker release and techniques to lessen the stress on a chronic sore shoulder.
Suzuki, 34, is a former All-Star entering his 12th season and coming off his best offensive season -- .283 with a career-high 18 homers and .887 OPS – while splitting duties with Flowers. Suzuki said he learned things from former Braves first-base coach Eddie Perez, a longtime catcher known for defense, and that having Fasano as a full-time catching coach has made coming to work enjoyable and productive.
“It’s been great. Sal’s been in the big leagues for a long, long time,” Suzuki said. “Now he’s been coaching and doing this stuff for a long time, too. So he’s got a lot of information. He’s got a lot of techniques, a lot of things he can teach us. Making me feel young again, you know?
He said Fasano has a way of connecting and explaining things that makes so much sense.
“Guys like me and Flow (Flowers), we have a foundation, we have things that we’ve done for years,” Suzuki said. “Now it’s just adding to that repertoire and trying to fix things or incorporate things to help you improve. That’s all you can do is try to get better and better. … I mean, it’s just trying to evolve.”
More specifically, Suzuki said in his case, “It’s quickness, with the footwork, with a little anticipation, with the blocking. I always felt like blocking was one of my strengths, now it’s just refining it and improving it and trying to get better with it. Receiving, I’ve always felt that wasn’t necessarily my strongest thing, which is an understatement. But I’m trying to get better -- last year working with Flow, who’s the best framer in the game by double what the next guy was. In talking to him, I improved a lot last year. And having Sal come in and having Flow next to me trying to learn, in that aspect I’m pretty excited to see what this year will bring.”
Flowers and Suzuki are two of the older guys in the clubhouse, but working with Fasano has boosted their energy levels during nearly seven weeks of early mornings at spring training.
“We just kind of mesh,” Suzuki said. “He’s not a guy who thinks everyone needs to catch one way. He finds out what your strengths and weaknesses are and he tries to adapt to you, makes some adjustments and things to try to help you evolve. It’s all about evolving, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got one year or you’ve got 10 years in the big leagues, you’re always trying to get better. And if you get to that point where you’re not, it’s going to be tough. So I think trying to evolve is awesome.”
Flowers said, “It’s been a lot of fun. I mean, it is a coach-type atmosphere, but it’s a coach and a teammate kind of atmosphere and dialogue that we all have with him. I think that makes it even more fun to work hard and try to do things. That’s the other good thing, he’s not set in stone any one way; he adapts to each individual. Some of the stuff he talks to Zuke (Suzuki) about, he doesn’t talk to me about. Some of the stuff that him and I are working on, he’s not really doing with Zuke. So he’s applying different things to different body types, different strengths and weaknesses. It’s not a cookie-cutter approach.”
Of all the descriptions that might apply to Fasano, cookie-cutter is not one of them. Nothing about him has a boring sameness.
“These are grown men with families, you know? And being away from your family can be terrible,” Fasano said. “And I’m away from mine. So basically they’re like my brothers or they’re like my kids. They’re not kids, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like, how can I make a family atmosphere where they’ll enjoy their time. And that’s really how I treat them. I treat them with respect and they treat me with respect. They understand that I’m the coach, and I understand they’re players. Nobody’s here to see me anymore.”
He said it was important to have that family atmosphere with all the catchers who’ve been in camp, including minor leaguers, veteran newcomers Chris Stewart and Rob Brantly and prospects such as power hitter Alex Jackson before he he was sent down.
“Even when the young kids were here, one of the first comments I said was, ‘this is a family,’” Fasano said. “There’s room for all of us in the big leagues because there’s not a lot of great catchers anymore. So if you’re good at your trade, you can play in the big leagues. If it’s not with us, it’ll be with someone else.”
But it might not be as fun elsewhere as it would be with Fasano as your coach.
