Former Brewers pitcher Dave Bush took unusual path to Red Sox pitching coach

Of course, Dave Bush still thinks about 2008.

The Boston Red Sox pitching coach is back in Milwaukee for the first time since 2010, the last time he threw a pitch for the Milwaukee Brewers. He's been just about everywhere else, though, coaching overseas while traveling an unusual route back to the big leagues.

"I've been looking forward to this trip for a while," Bush said Friday. "Just a chance to come back to the city and come back to the stadium. A lot of memories that I really cherish."

Those include his role on the 2008 team, the Brewers team that snapped a 26-year playoff drought in thrilling fashion. It was arguably the best year of his career, with a 4.18 ERA and 1.141 WHIP in 185 innings.

Bush pitched in Game 3 of the National League Division Series against the Phillies, guiding the Brewers to a 4-1 win and giving him the only Brewers playoff pitching victory in the stretch from 1983-2010.

"I grew up around Philadelphia, so I'd been a Phillies fan growing up," Bush said. "I had a lot of family that was around. The last out of the first inning was a comebacker from (Chase) Utley and I fielded it and threw it to first. It was so loud that I could kind of feel the noise in a way that I had never really experienced as a player."

When his playing career ended in 2013, Bush's first move was to take time away from the game, but a friend coaching baseball at a prep school in Maine asked Bush to join the team's coaching staff.

"I really had no expectations of getting into coaching at all; I just wanted to do something else," Bush said. "I found out pretty quickly that I missed the game and once the pressure of having to perform was removed, I enjoyed parts of the game that I'd kind of forgotten about. So I coached at a prep school for a couple years and then got hooked up with MLB International and traveled all over the world for about three years, coaching everywhere."

It included all levels of baseball — "the WBC (World Baseball Classic) and everything in between" — and reintroduced him to coaching. In 2016, an opportunity opened with the Red Sox to work with minor leaguers, emphasizing pitching analytics.

"The way the game has evolved has worked really well for me as a coach," Bush said. "The information and the way we use it made sense to me. It suits my mind and suits the way I see the game. As that became a requirement for coaches, that kind of fell into place for me in a way that I hadn't really anticipated."

He was hired in the fall of 2019 as pitching coach, one month before the team parted ways with manager Alex Cora as part of the fallout of the Houston Astros cheating scandal and five months before a global pandemic swallowed up the baseball season. Red Sox coach Ron Roenicke, who managed the Brewers the year after Bush last pitched in Milwaukee, kept Bush in the fold, and he stayed when Cora returned as manager in 2021.

This is his fourth season as the Red Sox pitching coach.

"All the parts of my baseball experience have helped shape me as a coach," he added. "I went to college as a catcher and didn't pitch at all until I got to college and pitched only in relief in college and mostly as a starter only in pro ball. My coaching career has taken me all over the place. I played overseas as a player for a year and coached overseas, and I've learned a little bit from everything, being around different people and being around different cultures and seeing the game from a lot of different ways.

"That's probably what's helped me most as a coach, the ability to see different angles, see different things, to connect and interact with people from all different backgrounds, different cultures and different backgrounds. I try to take something from everywhere I've been."

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Former Brewers pitcher Dave Bush returns as Red Sox pitching coach