How Donovan spent a career learning from Hill -- before ever meeting him
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This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
PEORIA, Ariz. -- In a roundabout way, Brendan Donovan has been learning from Perry Hill for the past decade.
Yet, the Mariners’ new infielder hadn’t even met Seattle’s longtime and renowned infield coach until reporting to Spring Training last week.
“It really does feel full-circle,” said Hill, 73, who’s entering his 39th season in pro baseball and eighth with the Mariners.
This story actually goes back to 2003, when Donovan was just 6 years old -- and as such, it doesn’t begin with him involved.
Back then, Hill was in his first stint with the Marlins, overseeing the likes of Miguel Cabrera, Derrek Lee and Mike Lowell en route to the World Series title. He became close with Dan Jennings, Miami’s vice president of player personnel, who wound up serving a 13-year tenure in its front office.
One weekend that season, Jennings invited his childhood friend, Alan Luckie, for a visit. And as an aficionado of infield defense, Luckie was dying to meet Hill.
At the time, Luckie was just a fan. He owned a successful mortgage company that he founded at age-29 and wound up selling at age-42, for a significant enough profit that he could live off of and instead chase his true passion of coaching baseball.
But not as a full-timer -- as a volunteer. His gateway gig was at the University of South Alabama, spanning 16 years and beginning in 2005 before retirement. Through it all, he harkened back to the lessons that he gleaned from regular check-ins with Hill, who remains a close friend.
A decade into coaching, in 2016, a scrappy infielder with a stern work ethic arrived at South Alabama and became one of Luckie’s biggest success stories.
That, of course, was Donovan.
“When he came to us with the freshman, if I did a scale of one to 10 as an infielder, he was probably a four or five,” Luckie said. “I’m not kidding. But the work ethic -- before practice, after practice -- next thing you know, he was a six, then an eight and a nine.”
Luckie remembers a candid conversation with Donovan that probably played a big part in what got him here today, as one of MLB’s most versatile defenders -- which is explicitly why the Mariners acquired him from the Cardinals on Feb. 2.
Donovan told Luckie, “I’m a shortstop,” to which Luckie retorted, “Great, then we’re going to have you play third base instead, then second, then first.”
“One thing that I always preached to our guys at South Alabama was, it's not like a big league club,” Luckie said. “You can't trade for somebody. You can't pull somebody up from the Minor Leagues. So my theory was, take all your infielders and make them learn all the positions. That gave us depth, no matter who got hurt.”
When Donovan made his MLB debut in 2022, he did so as a pinch-runner. The next day, in his first career start, he was St. Louis’ first baseman.
The day after, right field.
Two days later, third base.
The day after that, second base.
He wound up winning the Gold Glove Award in the first year that the utility position was recognized.
“I was fond of Brendan for a long, long time,” Hill said, “just the way he played and how he carried himself.”
Of course he was -- because he’d heard so much about him from a longtime friend.
“It's pretty cool, just kind of the lineage of what's been passed down from his knowledge,” Donovan said. “And like, I touched on him before, but it's so simple that it just makes so much sense.”
Donovan was already the Mariners’ top offseason target, along with re-signing Josh Naylor, yet Hill wasn’t shy about reinforcing his interest to the front office. On the night that the trade finally came together, Donovan’s phone buzzed endlessly, but he made sure that of the few calls had time to return, one was Hill’s.
It was the first time they’d ever spoken, even though each had heard so much about the other.
“It’s almost mind-blowing how it played out,” Luckie said.
Donovan and Hill have since been attached at the hip in Arizona, with Donovan re-learning the ropes of third base as he transitions back to that position more full-time. And guiding him through it all is Hill, the coach whose messaging has, in that roundabout way, been ingrained in him all along.