An Interview With Knights Manager Sam Martin

West Palm Beach Knights manager Sam Martin is going into his third season with the organization. In his tenure so far, Martin has led the Knights to a playoff appearance and is looking to have long sustained success as the team’s skipper. After a team practice on Thursday, Martin took the time out to discuss his journey on how he landed the job with the Knights, his coaching, while also reflecting on his proudest achievement and closed by looking forward to the season ahead.

Question: Where were you coaching before landing the manager position for the Knights and how did you land this job?

Answer: My first coaching gig was here as a graduate assistant at Keiser University. Then I went off that Summer in 2019, and coached in the Northwoods league as a hitting coach for the Bismarck Larks. And then the former GM of the Knights, Jesse Katz, was a coach here at Keiser, and asked me to take over the Manager position, so I’ve been here ever since and was upgraded as GM this past year.

Question: In a couple of sentences, How would you describe your coaching style?

Answer: Laid back. I’ve been very blessed to have started my career working under Brook Fordyce, and the most important thing he preaches is letting players be themselves. Anything you do in life you got to make mistakes, you got to mess up and you got to learn from it. If I’m telling kids who to be and what to be I don’t think they’ll reciprocate to that very well. So to me, it’s important to make mistakes being themselves and learning from it.

Question: When adversity hits, such as tough losses and losing streaks, how do you keep your team motivated to keep pushing and bounce back?

Answer: I think what’s really important, it’s that cliché “there’s always tomorrow,” and baseball is a beautiful sport for that. And unlike football and even basketball, we don’t get days in between games it’s usually we play today and we got to play tomorrow an you’ll even have situations where games done at 11:30 or 12 midnight and you turn around and play at 8 am the next day. This sport’s beautiful for that this sport is a very good analogy for life and there are a lot of life lessons to be learned on the baseball field and kind of why I fell in love with it.

Question: Throughout all your years being around the game of baseball, do you have an achievement you value the most?

Answer: To be honest with you, it’s being able to come back to Keiser University. Because of COVID, I wasn’t able to stick around, as they couldn’t offer me a paid position, so I spent the year with coach Forbes at Palm Beach State and after a year was over, coach Fordyce thought highly of me to bring me back and bring me on as one of his assistants. Every day I get to be here and I get to go to work here it’s a blessing and I never have a bad day at work, I love it here.

Question: Looking at the roster, what do you believe is this team’s biggest strength?

Answer: I think our infield depth is really important for this team. We have Dominik Ramil returning, who last year put up great numbers and led the team In home runs, had a really good year and is becoming more of a leader. We’re bringing in a high school graduate in Franklin Carney, who’s actually going to be missing time with us to go play in the Perfect Game in San Diego, but he is really strong there [infield]. We’ll also have Sam Holtz, who is from Lehigh University who is another strong midfielder along with some other guys that are going to be able to be not only just starters, but good depth pieces as well. Playing game every day and sometimes multiple games every day, you have to have a deep team. Guys are going to get tired, it is going to get hot out there, so it will be important that each position is not even just two guys deep but sometimes even three.

Question: Which newcomer on the team should people keep their eye out for the most?

Answer: The newcomer on the team I would keep an eye out for is Brandon McCabe. Brandon pitcher here at Keiser, he is a guy that will sit 94 to 96, he is a team USA alum, area code alum and was a signee with LSU out of high school. He has very talented arms and got some looks from scouts, it’s just a matter of how many innings he will be able to throw with us this Summer because he definitely put up some very good numbers this year and we are definitely crossing our fingers hoping his name is under the All-American column.

Question: What are your expectations for this upcoming season?

Answer: My biggest expectation is to see these guys get better, to see them progress. That is what summer baseball is about, it’s about sending these players back to their programs better than when they came to us. Being able to put in work with them is my expectations and my priorities. I push my guys to win, but at the end of the day, priority number one here at the West Palm Beach Knights is to make our players better and send them back to their programs better baseball players.

Question: What is your message to the fans on what they will see each game?

Answer: You’re going to have a group that comes with the intensity every single day. You kind of get gist’s from every team you meet within the first couple of days and these first two practices our guys came ready and came to work. They also are bought in, as it can be hard when there are four guys at your position, I kind of explained to them that “this is how the season plays out, there’s going to be playing time, you’re going to need days off,” and a lot of the guys are buying into that, they’re ready to compete and go out there and give everything they have.