Head baseball coach Greg Frady has travelled across the globe to coach the German national baseball team in the 2014 European Championship, which gets underway Friday in Regensburg, Germany, and Ostrava, Czech Republic.
This will be Frady's 11th year working with the German team, in addition to his duties at Georgia State, where he enters his ninth season. Germany looks to win its first championship under the leadership of Frady, while they have never finished lower than fourth.
Frady and the German national team prepared for the event with a three-game exhibition series with Sweden in three different cities in Germany. The first round of the European Championship includes five games of group pool play.
Germany's Group A consists of Italy, Sweden, France, Belgium and Great Britain. Group B is comprised of the Netherlands, Spain, Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia and Russia. The top three teams from each group will move on to play in the championship series in the Czech Republic.
“Every year that I go there I go as the mindset of this may be my last. So I want this to be the best tournament we have ever had,” Frady says of his German team.
Spain, Italy and Holland look to be the Germans' toughest competition.
Doing well in the European Championship can help Germany get into the World Baseball Classic and the Olympics, if baseball is reinstated.
The German national team coaching staff also includes assistant coach Troy Williams, pitching coach Don Freeman, and hitting coach Shawn Roof, while Ulli Wermuth is Germany's assistant head coach and bench coach. Ulli is the brother of Peter Wermuth, who coached for Georgia State baseball in 2009.
Most players on the German national team are between the ages of 18 to 38. The team is dependent on players from the European leagues as well as some players that are currently on minor league rosters in the U.S.
There is and has been a great Georgia State flavor in the European leagues and specifically the German national team. Max Schmitz, a former Georgia State pitcher, is on the German national team roster. There are coaches and other players that are involved in the European leagues that have ties to Georgia State as well.
“It's been a tremendous professional experience for me,” Frady said. “When you're coaching on the world stage, you're dealing with different cultures, different interpretations of rules by umpires, language barriers, different types of food. I've literally traveled the world doing this. It is a privilege and an honor.”
While Frady is in Europe, assistant head coach Willie Stewart to covers the head coaching duties.
The team is working on their four-on-one practice periods in which players work with their positional coaches exclusively. Frady says that it is a good opportunity for the Panther pitchers to be introduced to their new pitching coach, Adam Scott.
“It's a good time for me to be gone because these positional players need to bond with their positional coaches.”
After Frady returns to the states and to Georgia State baseball, there will be just one more week of the individual practice period before the start of fall team practice.
