From press box to dugout: Divish takes summer sabbatical to coach

Seattle Mariners beat writer Ryan Divish realized he no longer enjoyed going to the ballpark last September. For the first time in his life, the season's grind started getting to him.

“This job covering the Mariners has been my whole life,” Divish said. “I don't have a wife or kids. I had always had the job first and put it first, put my career first.”

Divish decided he needed a change, and one of his coworkers told him that a sabbatical is covered in his CBA with the Seattle Times. After covering the Mariners for 19 years, Divish is trading in his seat in the press box for a spot in the dugout. 

His sabbatical this summer is about a 12-hour drive from Seattle, where he is coaching the American Legion Baseball team he once played for in Havre, Montana.

Growing up, Divish lived a block and a half away from the baseball field. His first memories of baseball are as a bat boy for his dad’s softball team. He doesn’t remember being very good, but he does remember having his own uniform and playing a lot of catch with his dad.

In Havre, which has a population of 9,326, Divish played baseball, basketball, football, and swimming, but baseball was his favorite sport.

“I was never one of the bigger kids,” said Divish, who is 5 feet, 8 inches tall. “I felt like with baseball, you didn't have to be the biggest to have success.”

Divish said he was good in his three years with the Havre Northstars, but could have been much better.

“I look back now and wish I would have cherished it more, like the trips and the experiences, like where they talked about the journey as much as the destination,” Divish said. “Obviously, I wish I would have worked a little harder at it, but, you know, I didn't really understand it back then.”

Divish went on to play NAIA baseball at Dickinson State University, a small school in North Dakota, where he was a catcher.  He said playing college baseball gave him the structure he needed to go to class and get his bachelor’s degree.

“Getting that chance to go play, I mean, that pretty much saved my life, in the sense that if I would have just tried to stay in school and just gone to school without that structure, I don't think I would have made it,” Divish said. “I still needed a reason to go to school beyond the education and playing sports always offered that for me.”

Even after his time as a player ended, Divish stayed connected to Havre. At the coach’s request, Divish returned and helped coach his former teammates the summer after graduating from high school. He continued to coach the Northstars every summer while he was at DSU.

While pursuing his degree in journalism at the University of Montana, Divish was offered a college coach position.

“I thought that maybe I wanted to be a coach and college coach or something,” said Divish, a 2000 SJI alum. “I still liked the challenge of writing so much that I didn't take those jobs.”

In his first journalism job as the sports editor for the Havre Weekly Chronicle, Divish coached the Northstars on the side.

More recently, Divish has a connection to the Northstars through his girlfriend, Cindy Brandon. Her son, Tyson Brandon, is a junior on the team, and Divish has helped coach Tyson since 2019, when Cindy and Divish started dating.

The first time Tyson met Divish, he was in eighth grade. Divish pitched to Tyson and gave him tips on his swing. Their bond began when Divish pitched a ball that Tyson said almost hit him.

“He was like, ‘Get off my plate,’” Tyson said. “And then the next pitch, I hit a nuke off of him. And then I was like, ‘Get off my mound.’ And then just from then on, we kind of bonded.”

Tyson, a second baseman and shortstop, was not the only Northstars player who took hitting lessons from Divish. The team had gotten used to him leaving for Spring Training, though.

“It kind of sucked the last few years, when we make all this progress in the offseason, then he has to leave, and then he's not here to help,” Tyson said. “But this year, now that he's around, we can just go get him [to] work whenever, which is really cool.”

Despite their already close relationship, Divish made sure to get Tyson’s permission to coach his team.

“I think I might have even asked him before I told Cindy about it, because I wasn't going to do it if he didn't want me to, if he would have felt uncomfortable with me being the head coach,” Divish said.

After Divish reassured Tyson that he wouldn’t lose his job at the Seattle Times, Tyson was supportive.

“He told me first, and so I was trying not to tell everybody because I knew everyone was going to be stoked about it,” Tyson said. “Finally, when we were all able to tell everyone, they were all stoked, and we all went and had lunch.”

Divish’s peers in Seattle supported this change as well. He asked writers Adam Jude and Tim Booth if they would take on the extra responsibilities while he was away. 

“The good thing was these guys were my friends first,” Divish said. “I just said, ‘Hey, look, if you can't do this, then I won't even consider it.’ They said that they felt like it would be good for me and that I needed it.”

His mentor and former Seattle Times sports columnist Larry Stone said he thinks this summer will re-energize Divish.

“There's a high mental toll and a high stress level with that job,” Stone said. “I understood completely the need to just sort of step back.”

Divish helped train Stone’s son in baseball, and after watching how much his son adored Divish, Stone said he does not doubt that Divish will do well this summer.

“He had that ability to make people he's working with want to succeed, to please him, because they like him so much and respect him so much,” Stone said. “And I think he'll bring that same quality to his team.”

Divish will coach more than 50 games this summer. After nearly 20 years of covering the majors, he’s looking forward to seeing baseball from a different perspective.

“Who knows, I might not like the bus rides compared to airplanes, but [I’m looking forward to] a summer where I'm going to be thinking about baseball at its simplest level instead of professionals and all that stuff,” Divish said.

‍