Charley Lau

Charles Richard Lau (April 12, 1933 – March 18, 1984) was an American professional baseball player and a highly influential hitting coach. He attended Romulus Senior High School, where he was a standout in baseball, basketball and football. He was originally an outfielder in baseball, but switched to catching, with a three year .450 batting average. Lau was also a star halfback on the football team. without ever playing for Michigan. He did attend Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University) for a year.

He missed the 1953-54 seasons, because he served in the military during the Korean War. Lau was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, where he did have the opportunity to play organized baseball. He left the military as a sergeant. In 1956, he moved up to the Triple-A Charleston Senators, hitting .258 with 12 home runs. Lau was called up for his first major league audition in September 1956, playing in three games.

However, Lau could not nail down a regular job with Detroit; he got into only 35 total games over parts of three seasons (, –), and collected 13 total hits, batting .157.

In the winter of 1958-59, he played for Marianao in the Cuban Winter League.

Milwaukee Braves In October 1959, former Tiger executive John McHale, now general manager of the Milwaukee Braves, acquired Lau and pitcher Don Lee from Detroit for infielder Casey Wise, pitcher Don Kaiser and catcher Mike Roarke. In , with Crandall sidelined by a sore shoulder, Lau appeared in 28 early-season games, 24 as starting catcher, into June. On April 28, he caught the second of Warren Spahn's two career no-hitters. But again he struggled offensively, batting .207, and was sent to Triple-A Vancouver, where he hit .294;

Lau had shown flashes of power in the Tigers' farm system, reaching double figures in home runs three times between 1955 and 1959. On July 13, 1962, he hit four doubles in a game, tying a major league record.

In , Lau started slowly, and after hitting .194 in 23 games, the Orioles sold his contract to the Kansas City Athletics on July 1.

On June 15, , after an injury to starting catcher John Orsino, the pennant-contending Orioles reacquired Lau in exchange for relief pitcher Wes Stock. Splitting receiving duties with right-handed-hitting Dick Brown and Orsino (who returned to play after the trade), Lau appeared in 62 games (starting 42) as Baltimore finished three games behind the New York Yankees in the American League race. He batted .259 as an Oriole, and .264 overall.

In , Lau began the transition to full-time pinch hitter, working in 35 games as a catcher, and collecting eight hits and seven bases on balls in 36 appearances as an emergency batsman; he batted a career-best .295. Appearing in only 18 games, all in the pinch, he collected six hits and four bases on balls as Baltimore won its first pennant and World Series championship. Lau did not play in the Fall Classic; the Orioles used no pinch hitters in their four-game sweep over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He spent one more season in the majors as a pinch hitter in ; after only one hit in eight at-bats with the Orioles, he was sold back to the Braves, now in Atlanta, where he closed his MLB career with nine hits and four walks in 49 plate appearances.

Manager After releasing Lau, the Braves appointed him manager of their Double-A Shreveport affiliate in the Texas League, where the team had a 78–62 won–loss record. His roster included future hitting coach Walt Hriniak, future National League batting champion and lifetime .306 hitter Ralph Garr, and future major league player and manager Cito Gaston. then became the first-base coach of the Oakland Athletics, gradually assuming the extra duties of hitting coach during his early coaching career. He had acted as a hitting coach with the Orioles and A's, and worked extensively with A's outfielder Joe Rudi in 1970, who wound up hitting .309 that year, crediting Lau with turning his career around. In 1968-69, Rudi never hit above .189 in over 300 at bats.

In , Lau became the hitting coach (often doubling as first-base coach) for the Kansas City Royals. He held the post through , with the exception of the early part of the season, when he was the team's roving minor-league hitting instructor after his temporary ouster from the Royals' staff by then-skipper Jack McKeon.

Hall of Fame third baseman Brett is likely Lau's most famous student. Brett said of Lau "'Charlie (Lau) made me a hitter. My rookie year I was hitting around .200 when he started working with me. All of a sudden, I started to hit.'"

Lau spent three seasons (1979–1981) with the New York Yankees, reunited with Piniella. One of the players he tutored was future Hall of Fame outfielder Reggie Jackson, who had one of his best hitting years in 1980. Years earlier, when Jackson was 18-years old, he was playing for a local semi-pro team in Baltimore sponsored by the Orioles, the Orioles brought him in for a workout. Lau was one of the Orioles present watching Jackson bat, and when told Jackson was a freshman college student and not even in the Orioles farm system, Lau told team executives they had better lock the gates and sign Jackson.

Lau became the Chicago White Sox' hitting instructor in , where his pupils included Greg Luzinski, Carlton Fisk, Steve Kemp, Harold Baines and Ron Kittle. who considered Lau a genius, Lau's six-year contract with the White Sox was the longest ever given to a non-manager coach. — has worn his number 6 jersey, In 1984, the baseball field at his alma mater, Romulus Senior High School, was renamed Charlie Lau Memorial Field.

Death While still serving as the White Sox' hitting coach, Lau died in 1984 in Key Colony Beach, Florida at the age of 50 after a year-long bout with cancer. and the posthumously released "The Winning Hitter".

Lau also appeared in the film Max Dugan Returns as himself. The title character (played by Jason Robards) pays Lau to teach his grandson (Matthew Broderick's character) how to hit.