Many more road trips in store for Stu Pederson

Mar. 30—As luck would have it, Stu Pederson was in the Flathead Valley when news broke that professional baseball was coming to Kalispell.

It was the second straight year Pederson had been to Montana; he'd never seen the Whitefish Range before a 2020 RV trip that carried him and his wife all over the Western U.S.

Now it was August of 2021, he was back in Kalispell, the mountains were showing off and a local Pioneer League team was officially a thing.

"That's when I started thinking: 'You know what? This might be fun,'" Pederson said.

As the Major League season gets underway today, the 10 Pioneer League managers wait for an April tryout camp in Arizona and hope the weather will clear by May.

Pederson is one of those managers.

"I'm just excited about our season," he said Wednesday from Arizona. "Can't wait. I think we put together a really good staff, and I think we have some good kids, some good players, coming."

Pederson was an assistant to manager Nick Hogan for the Glacier Range Riders' inaugural season, and was elevated to manager last October. Hogan was unceremoniously moved to the club's front office — his official title is Director of Facility Operations at Flathead Field — and Pederson, now 63, is in charge of the onfield product.

He counts 17 players back from last year's season-ending roster. It was a difficult year: The Range Riders went 39-56.

"Nick is a very good baseball person," Pederson said. "It was just unfortunate — I wonder if things would have changed if our roles had been reversed.

"The first year of anything, any kind of business or any sort of new thing, there's a learning curve. For the coaching staff, for the front office."

The Range Riders began 2022 by playing its first 16 games on the road. They started 5-1 against the less-talented Rocky Mountain Vibes, and then the wheels came off.

"We came back from our first road trip and had to release nearly half the team because they weren't good enough," Pederson said.

There were encouraging developments. Pitcher Logan VanWey was snapped up by the Houston Astros and the team went 17-12 at spanking new Flathead Field in the second half of the season.

On Oct. 25 erstwhile Billings Mustang Crews Taylor signed with the Range Riders; his Mustang teammate Jackson Raper followed suit on Jan. 27.

"They both contacted me, saw what we were building and wanted to be a part of it," Pederson said. "I told Marty and Chris (Kelly, the team's owners), 'You build it and they will come.'

"You know the stadium is beautiful. We have pretty high standards. Now we know what kind of player we need to compete in this league."

He's excited about pitching coach Zach Stewart, catching/hitting instructor Gregg Zaun and assistant Mike McDonald. Both Stewart and Zaun spent time in the majors; Zaun played 16 seasons and won a World Series ring with the 1997 Florida Marlins. McDonald played as high as AAA and recently coached at that level with the St. Louis Cardinals.

As for Pederson, he spent eight games with the NL West-winning, 1985 Los Angeles Dodgers. It is a bit of a Crash Davis resume: He hit a bunch of minor league triples — "I ran pretty good," he said — and at the end of his fifth and final season with Toronto's AAA club in Syracuse, was feted with a "Stu Pederson Day."

It was 1992. His youngest of four kids, Joc, had been born that April. He retired.

Now Joc Pederson is a San Francisco Giants outfielder and his dad is a professional baseball manager for the first time. He'll bring 40-plus players to the Range Riders' camp on May 1. The team opens its season in Great Falls May 23, and plays Billings for its home opener May 30.

Pederson has run summer league teams; he sees this job as similar.

"It's basically going out and recruiting a bunch of guys, and putting them together," he said. "Good men that want to work hard, and want to get better. Nobody that feels entitled.

"One of the keys is just being straightforward with your players. Tell them what your expectations are, on and off the field, and we'll be good."

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com.