Baseball Coach Brett Butler: This Cancer Survivor Bans Tobacco from his Life
Brett Butler has done it all. In a sense, he was a major league baseball player and later coached Reno Aces. He is the guy who beat cancer.
Brett Butler got diagnosed with cancer when he was 38 during his playing career, just a year after hitting 300 and leading the Dodgers to a division championship in the strike-shortened 1995 season.
"Thirty-two rounds of radiation. They cut me from my earlobes down to my clavicle, took out two of my lymph nodes, I went from 162 pounds to 142 pounds, and the doctor said I wouldn’t play again,” Butler said after he was diagnosed with Cancer. He further added, “You think you’re going to die. When you get cancer, automatically you think you’re going to die.”
But to every expectation, he came back to the field and played one more season with the Dodgers, and then retired to spend more time with his family.
Since he’d been a heavy tobacco chewer in his early career, Brett Butler was diagnosed with oral cancer in 1996.
“I probably went through a can every 2 or 3 days, itI was getting it straight from the factory when I got to the majors.” he said defining his tobacco source.
He has been speaking about the possible harms of chewing tobacco, but he has no sympathy for a ban.
“I’ve used it as a platform to promote not using chewing tobacco,But at the major league level, I think we should be free to do what we want.”
Successful Coaching Career:
Butler began his coaching career in the spring of 1998 as the assistant coach of the Duluth Youth Baseball and Softball Association's Minor League Dodgers; it was the same team where his son was playing. Later, Butler coached the Dodgers team to a second-place finish in the Minor League championship game that season.
Caption: Third base coach Brett Butler #2 of the Miami Marlins stands on the field during the game against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field on April 13, 2015, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Butler was then the coach of Arizona Diamondbacks for the 2005 season. But next season, He was hired to manage the Lancaster Jet Hawks of the Class-A advanced club for the 2006 season. He changed team again as he was then hired to manage the Mobile Bay Bears, a newly acquired Double-AA team Arizona Diamondbacks, for the 2007 season. He changed four teams in four years as, In October of 2008, it was announced that Butler was hired to manage the Reno Aces of the Class-AAA club for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Later in 2012, Butler led the Reno Aces to their first ever Pacific Coast League Championship and also led them to the Triple-AAA National Championship in the very same year as they defeated the Pawtucket Red Sox 10-3. Butler was also named as a coach for the 2011 All-Star Futures Game.
Butler was on the move again as, On October 11, 2013, Butler was appointed as the new third-base and outfield coach for the Miami Marlins
Former Reno Aces manager Butler to have jersey retired!
Brett Butler, the former manager as well as of the Reno Aces, will have his jersey retired at the 2017 home opener on April 11, 2017.
Butler has the blistering record as he guided the Aces to a 366-352 (.510) record in five seasons (2009-2013) with the club. Moreover, after leading Reno to its first Pacific Coast League playoff appearance back in 2011, he also led the team to 2012 PCL champion as well as Triple-A national champion Aces squad.
Butler who is a veteran of altogether 17 Major League seasons also helped to lead the San Francisco Giants to the 1989 National League pennant. He was also a National League All-Star in 1991 as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Currently, he is a coach for the Miami Marlins.
Brett Morgan Butler's Short Bio:
Born on June 15, 1957, Brett Morgan Butler is a former center fielder in Major League Baseball and also a current baserunning/outfield coach for the Miami Marlins. He played for five different teams during an interval of 1981 to 1997. Butler's best season of his playing career came in 1991 when he made the National League All-Star team. He was diagnosed with cancer in May of 1996, received his treatment and also returned to the playing field four months later. He then retired in 1997 and began a baseball coaching career. His net worth is yet unknown.