Andy Cannizaro wants MSU to be an extension of himself

STARKVILLE – It is 7:35 a.m. Monday and Andy Cannizaro wants to know when the workout will start.

“Monday,” he says while a wide smile appears on his face. “Isn’t that international chest day? I’m ready to roll.”

He looks it.

Cannizaro is wearing a maroon Mississippi State T-shirt, one with the word STATE in white lettering inside a banner over the bolded letter M across his barrel chest. The sleeves of the shirt made it beyond Cannizaro’s broad shoulders, but his bulging biceps prevent them from getting much further.

Cannizaro has the build and boyish smile of a gym rat in his 20s, but he’s 38 years old. His playing days in Major League Baseball ended seven years ago. Gone are the days where it is necessary to maintain a certain physique to keep his job. Still, he is inside the weight room at Mississippi State’s Shira Complex ready to take part in a personal morning lift with myself and Bulldogs strength coach Brian Neal.

What distinguishes this workout from any other he has performed at the complex since being named MSU’s new baseball coach on Nov. 5 is the timing of it.

For Cannizaro, it’s the week of opening day. Cannizaro will manage his first game as a skipper at 4 p.m. Friday at Dudy Noble Field when the Bulldogs host Texas Tech.

MSU opens the season with question marks around the diamond. Who will claim the final outfield spot? Who is the closer? What will the rotation look like?

The most significant question mark for the reigning SEC champions may be inside the dugout. What can be expected from Cannizaro as a head coach?

To learn that answer, getting to know Cannizaro is essential. Cannizaro wants the Mississippi State baseball program to evolve into an extension of himself in several ways. This is a story on who that person is.

Cannizaro says he isn’t nervous about the weekend. Anxious, probably. But definitely not nervous.

“The way I look at it is, it’s baseball,” Cannizaro said. “And I have an extreme confidence in my ability to know the game, to help players, to teach guys how to become better baseball players. I’ve never been nervous on the field.”

Knowing what it takes

Well, there was that one time.

The workout starts with Cannizaro warming up on the bench press. He presses 225 pounds for a few reps, locks the bar back on the rack and gets off the bench. Within a moment of him standing upright, Cannizaro starts sharing a story.

Cannizaro was first called up to the big leagues on Sept. 5, 2006. He made his debut that night for the New York Yankees at Kansas City against the Royals. Before the game, Cannizaro knocked on the door of manager Joe Torre’s office.

Torre, on a recumbent bicycle with headphones on, waved him in.

“I was scared to death,” Cannizaro said.

Torre, as Cannizaro recalls, relayed to the then-27-year-old that while making it up to the Yankees is quite an accomplishment, at-bats and playing time would be at premium. After all, all-stars like third baseman Alex Rodriguez, shortstop Derek Jeter and second baseman Robinson Cano occupied Cannizaro’s three positions.

“I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, dude, I got it,’” Cannizaro said.

Despite Torre telling him he would do anything he could to get him in a game as a pinch-runner or defensive replacement, Cannizaro took batting practice that night expecting to watch the entire game from the dugout. Still, his nerves were hard to contain.

“My heart is going a million miles an hour,” Cannizaro said. “I was hitting balls further than I’ve ever hit them in my life.”

Then the game starts.

“I am watching the Yankees play, dude, and I have the best seat in the house,” Cannizaro said. “I am not anticipating playing and actually, I’m all right with that. It’s totally cool.”

Jeter grounded out to shortstop in the seventh inning. Upon returning to the dugout, Jeter placed his helmet on the rack as he spoke with Torre. Cannizaro watched from the other end of the dugout. After the conversation, Torre pointed at Cannizaro and mouthed, “You, go to short. Jeter is done.”

“I swear to God, I looked at him and I was like, 'Me?'” Cannizaro said. “Then, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, where’s my glove?’”

Cannizaro played shortstop for the remaining two innings. No balls were hit to him.

“Thank God,” he said. “I would have thrown it into the second deck.”

Cannizaro ends the story by mentioning it wasn’t until three days later when he actually he took his first plate appearance. He singled in an 11-pitch at-bat.

Cannizaro then pauses before grabbing a 25-pound weight to add to the bench.

“I guess I’m talking about that because you never ever forget those moments when you’re coaching young guys,” he says.

In his first team meeting at MSU, Cannizaro asked his players how many of them want to reach the major leagues. Each player raised a hand.

“Those guys want to get there and I want to do everything I can to help get them there,” Cannizaro said. “I just know what that looks like. And the work that it takes to get there.”

Outworking everyone

Cannizaro spent nearly six years toiling in the minor leagues before getting promoted to the Yankees. At 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds, scouts didn’t exactly drool over his upside when he was selected in the seventh round in the 2001 draft out of Tulane.

“I’m not 6-2 and 215 pounds,” Cannizaro said. “I wasn’t the fastest and there were a lot of other ‘I wasn’ts.’”

But what set Cannizaro apart was his determination to get squeeze everything he possibly could out of his potential. And he worked. Always, he worked.

Cannizaro’s work ethic first intensified in the summer before his senior year at Tulane. Instead of playing in the Cape Cod Baseball League, Cannizaro opted to stay in Louisiana and devoted the summer toward getting in better shape. He lifted weights. He ran. Every day.

“He didn’t always look the way he does now and, gosh, he was probably about 160 pounds because that was the summer of 2000,” said Karr Shannon, Tulane’s strength coach at the time who has remained close friends with Cannizaro. “I truly believe Andy was the heart and soul of that team, and I really think the foundation for that world series team started back in that summer, with Andy leading the pack.”

Cannizaro saw the benefits of his early-morning wake-up calls, calloused hands and sore body as he helped lead Tulane to an appearance in the 2001 College World Series. He hit .391 the following season with a .452 on-base percentage, three home runs and 52 stolen bases. He had hit .298 with three homers and 20 steals the previous year.

“Our goal here is to get to Omaha and win a national championship,” Cannizaro said. “That is the ultimate goal. And it’s almost like if you can get to Omaha and accomplish that, then it is the gratification of every bit of effort that you put into and it’s immediately worth it. It’s almost like a runner’s high.”

He would know.

Experts at their own game

Cannizaro won’t settle for not trying. Want to get under his skin and see a typically positive person with an upbeat attitude get pissed off? Tell him no, that you won’t try and do something you’re likely capable of because, well, you just don’t feel like it.

That’s what happened inside the Shira Complex, after Cannizaro bench pressed 295 pounds.

“You’re up,” he said to me.

I had lifted 275 pounds three times in the previous round of reps, which indicated I could handle more, but I was interested in stopping right there.

“Nah," I said. "I’m good.”

Cannizaro then raised his voice.

“Let’s go,” he said. “No, uh-uh, let’s go, dude.”

With mixed feelings of fear and inspiration after Cannizaro’s orders, I gave it a try. With Cannizaro as a spotter, I was able to muscle one rep. Cannizaro appeared delighted.

“You’d rather get help pushing 295 than just doing 275, right?” he said. “Rather fail at 295 than push 275, right? Why not, man. That’s good. That’s great stuff. Strongest writer in Mississippi right here.”

Cannizaro doesn’t put his faith behind someone blindly. He once made a living based on his belief in the abilities of others whom he watched carefully. Two weeks after his playing career ended in September 2009, the Yankees hired Cannizaro as an amateur scout. He worked under Yankees Vice President and Director of Amateur Scouting Damon Oppenheimer for five years.

“That was a time when scouting was still all about the tools and I don’t know if I should say Andy was ahead of that, but he always instead thought things through,” Oppenheimer said. “He was going to see a college outfielder once, who was really a high-profile guy and was ranked real high in Baseball America and all that stuff. He comes out of it after watching the guy play a couple of times and he says, ‘I see the tools, but this guy has never done it; he has never performed. At some point, if this guy is going to be a high pick, doesn’t he have to perform for us?’”

That player in 2009 never panned out, Oppenheimer added. Seven of the players Cannizaro drafted for the Yankees from 2010-14 reached the big leagues, including former MSU players Jacob Lindgren and Jonathan Holder.

Cannizaro has applied his scouting background to his job at MSU. He knows what he is looking for, too. Cannizaro has supplied each of his players with a blueprint of sorts, an individual plan for success.

That’s why, on the fourth day on the job, Cannizaro briefly stopped second baseman Hunter Stovall’s batting practice session.

Stovall was dropping his back elbow with an up-angle swing. He was popping out. Once Cannizaro saw that, he told Stovall to imagine he was chopping wood.

“I started doing it, got a feeling for it and then hit an absolute nook,” Stovall said. “Ever since then, his focus with me has been pulling the handle down and getting line drives and driving the ball through the infield. The guy knows what he is talking about.”

Stovall is 5-foot-7 and 158 pounds. He likely isn’t go to lead the SEC in homers.

“Hunter Stovall can still have a lot of success in the SEC,” Cannizaro said. “How? He has to be the hardest working, he has to put the ball in play and not in the air and he should never put his uniform in the laundry bin looking the same way it did before the game. Don’t do what Brent Rooker is doing. Be an expert at your game.”

“He didn’t want to change who you were,” said Andrew Stevenson, who was drafted by the Nationals in 2015 after playing at LSU, where Cannizaro was hitting coach and recruiting coordinator from 2014-16. “He just wanted to make you better at the type of player you are.”

Competition wanted

More than three months into the job, Cannizaro has made it clear that what he wants competition.

With only three obvious starters — Rooker, shortstop Ryan Gridley and Jake Mangum — from last year’s team returning to the lineup and only one starting pitcher in Konnor Pilkington known as a safe bet for the rotation, Cannizaro wanted to foster an environment of competition for the remaining jobs and roles.

As a kid playing against his brother Lee in Mandeville, La., Cannizaro probably went through 50 ping-pong paddles, throwing them into a brick wall after a loss. Now, Cannizaro is looking to top his previous one-rep max. After convincing himself he can do it — “Why not, right?” he says to himself — Cannizaro clears 335 pounds.

“I think I’m good. That’s 335 today?” he says. “That’s a good way to start a Monday.”

Role models

Before Monday’s workout — which consisted of bench press, incline press, decline press, chest flies and pushups — ended, I asked Cannizaro why he continues to make the weight room a part of his life despite a new demanding job and family of four.

He paused.

“That’s a great question,” Cannizaro said. “Because my body hurts a lot of days.”

Then he raised his forearm to show a pink wristband around his right wrist.

On the day Cannizaro’s 6-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, was born, he put the wristband on. He has never taken it off. When Cannizaro found out that he and his wife, Allison, were expecting a girl, he told Allison that he “was always going to keep lifting and stay strong to protect her and be stronger than any kid she brings to the house.”

Cannizaro is reminded of the impact he has on youth when he comes home and wrestles with his 3-year-old son Pierce. He wants to be a great coach, of course, but he first wants to be a great husband and a great dad.

“And I think you can truly do all three,” he said. “But you have to want to be great at all three. And that’s what I want to do … what I am going to do.”

 ContactWill Sammon at 601-961-7116 orwsammon@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter .