Chris Morris’ career in baseball literally began on the ground — as a youngster helping his uncle, Dave, with field maintenance after practices at Hermon High School nearly two decades ago.
“From the time I was in fourth grade going over to his Hermon practices and being there for 10 hours and raking the field with him afterward to where I am now — a lot of my success in coaching and where I’m at as a person really stems from him,” Chris said of Dave Morris, who today is a well-known assistant coach at Bangor High School and head coach of the two-time defending American Legion state champion Bangor Coffee News Comrades.
“I owe him a lot.”
Now 28, Chris Morris has never strayed far from the game. These days his baseball home is the dugout at historic Goodall Park in Sanford, where he is the first-year head coach of the Sanford Mainers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, a 13-team wooden-bat grouping that features top college talent from around the country.
“These kids are some of the best players in the country,” Morris said of a roster sprinkled with talent from Vanderbilt, Texas Christian, Michigan and several other major-college programs.
“But most of all, they love baseball; they love being around the game. They all have a passion for the game and for being successful, and they have that extra drive to get to the next level.”
Morris, a Hampden native, shares a similar passion for the sport, particularly the teaching and game-management elements at the heart of a head coach’s job description.
“To me, it’s kind of like coaching football,” he said. “You’ve got Xs and Os and a lot of things going back and forth during a game, but it’s such a fun time because there are so many different aspects of the game that you don’t even realize until you become a head coach and have to start thinking about all those things.”
Morris first became a head coach while still an undergraduate at Husson University in Bangor. He replaced his uncle as head coach of the Brewer American Legion baseball team in 2009 and led the Falcons to back-to-back Zone 1 championships in 2010 and 2011.
Morris also was a four-year baseball player and a team captain at Husson as well as a two-year letterwinner in football for the Eagles. After graduation he joined the university’s staff as an assistant football and baseball coach under head coaches Gabby Price and Jason Harvey.
Most recently he has been an assistant baseball coach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he helped coach Andy Barlow’s Engineers win the 2016 ECAC Division III championship.
Morris also been active in the flourishing summer college baseball ranks, winning the 2013 Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League Championship as pitching coach for the North Fork Osprey and then taking the same job with the Mainers last year before being promoted to head coach after former coach Aaron Izaryk was named Sanford’s general manager this spring.
“One of the big adjustments from being an assistant coach to being a head coach is that you’re not thinking just about pitching any more,” he said. “You’re thinking about hitting, pitching, all kinds of situations, you’re thinking about five days down the road, you’re thinking about tomorrow.
“You’re managing every part of the game.”
Morris continues to share and absorb information about his chosen sport whenever he can, including from his current players with major-college backgrounds.
“Their skill set is already set — you know what you’re going to get from them. But they may pick up a few things from me that their coach at school doesn’t preach, and that may make them a better hitter,” he said. “So I talk to them a lot about what they do at school and the approaches they take. There’s a lot of give and take.”
Such communication is at the heart of Morris’ coaching philosophy.
“For me, it’s about relationships,” he said. “When I was younger and took over for my uncle coaching the Brewer Falcons at 20 years old, I was thinking I wanted to do this. I wanted to be a coach.
“Then working for [Price] and [Harvey] and [Husson assistant football coach Nat Clark] makes you realize the relationships you build and the people you work for and with are the most important things. It’s about who you’re going to work for and who you’re going to learn from that will make you a better coach.
“That’s something I really take into account now, more than just what’s going to be my next job.”
Morris, who plans to marry high school sweetheart Kathleen Macone in December, aspires to be a college head coach.
But his immediate goals involve the Mainers.
“What we want to accomplish this summer is to win a championship for Sanford, to help the players improve, so when they go back to their school they’re in better position to help their college teams, and we want to get them pro exposure,” he said.
Eleven prospects who have played for Sanford were selected in the most recent amateur baseball draft, including Windham High School graduate Cody Dube and Sam Dexter of Messalonskee High School in Oakland and the University of Southern Maine, a Mainer in 2014 and 2015.
This year’s club is 9-10 and ranked sixth in the NECBL’s seven-team Northern Division heading into Sunday’s game at North Adams, Massachusetts, but the Mainers are just 1½ games out of second place.
“We’ve had five one-run losses,” Morris said, “but I told the guys the other night after a tough loss that if we’re playing in 20 of these games this year that we are going to get better. I’m going to become a better coach, you’re going to become better baseball players.
“When you put yourself in pressure situations great things will happen.”
