Fourteen years ago – a lifetime ago, really – Xavier Nady began his climb to the majors at The Diamond. As he drove south on Interstate 15 toward his Scripps Ranch home last month, the 36-year-old Cal product fielded a call that would bring his career full circle.

The timing was impeccable. Maybe even a bit fateful.

“I was literally,” Nady said, grinning as he stood in the Storm’s clubhouse last weekend, “10 minutes from here.”

The voices on the other end of that call were Padres farm director Sam Geaney and pitching coordinator Mark Prior. The offer differed greatly from the deal he worked out not 18 months earlier to continue his playing career on a minor league deal with the team that drafted him in 2000:


High Single-A hitting coach.

Already in transition after the Padres released him last May, Nady needed some time to consider the finality of the proposition.

“To be honest, I had met with Buddy (Black) in January and his whole thing was take some time – and I wanted to,” Nady said. “I stepped away from the game last year, and that’s a tough decision. I wanted to hang out with the family. I was home for the summer and the holidays, just hanging out and relaxing. I wanted to get back into the game, but I didn’t know to what capacity.

“I told Buddy that if something popped up that was ideal that I’d consider it.”


This fits. This is an hour away from the home, the place he wanted to be most as he grinded through one last push to extend his playing career last summer with the Mariners’ Triple-A affiliate. This is where it all began for Nady the spring after the Padres selected him in the second round of the 2000 draft.

Nady delivered his answer to the Padres – in transition themselves as the minor league system shuffled coaches around to accommodate Pat Murphy’s ascension to the majors as Black’s interim replacement – an hour after their call: Yes.

“I’m going to miss the game and competing and playing and still thinking you have something in you, but at some point you have to make a decision,” Nady said. “Last year, I was up in Tacoma just grinding away and I hadn’t seen my family in a couple weeks. It gets tough. I didn’t know if I was making the right decision and obviously it affects your play.

“You get to a place where you say, ‘What am I doing?’”


That directive is clear now: Teach.

For that, Nady can lean on a 12-year career in which he amassed a .268/.323/.432 career batting line, 104 homers and 410 RBIs while winning World Series rings with two different teams. As far as his particular coaching style, he can draw from the near dozen hitting coaches he had while playing for eight different teams in the majors.

He even called one of his favorites – former Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long – for some advice as he drove to Lancaster last month to begin this next chapter.

“He and I are close, and he said to just make sure you’re always around,” Nady said. “Make sure you’re supportive. It’s a tough game. It’s based on failure … so just keep guys believing. Every day is a new day.”


June 27 was a new day for Donavan Tate.

Still in A-ball after rebooting his career this year, Tate had been working on loading with his leg kick when Nady, just a week on the job, pulled out his own highlight video for suggestion. The 24-year-old Tate took the tutelage into that night’s game (“That’s a guy who knows what he’s talking about,” Tate said) and walked away with his first homer in more than three years.

The student had become a teacher.

“You get to know some of these guys and they become like your kids,” Nady said. “When he hit it ... boom ... I was absolutely thrilled.”