For a few weeks, Bill Mathews’ trusted catcher instead stood alongside him, leaning out on the front step of the dugout, taking in the action from a different perch.

His mind still raced. He was as much a part of the action as ever. And Mathews, the head coach at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, looked over at this player-turned-bench coach and saw the future.

Craig Albernaz, then a junior at Eckerd, was born for this.

“I could see that I could’ve left for two weeks and lost nothing leaving him in charge as an undergraduate player,” Mathews said.

Albernaz, whose academic issue was soon resolved, returned to the field and continued a career through the minor leagues, during which he reached Triple-A. But, even during his time at Eckerd in the early 2000s, those few weeks with Albernaz as Mathews’ stand-in bench coach foretold the path ahead into the coaching ranks.

They debated hitting decisions and attack plans. Albernaz called pitches for the stand-in catcher to relay to his pitcher. And, despite being peers with his teammates, Albernaz acted as a gravitational force on his fellow players — pulling them in, revolving them around his mindset, setting them on a unified course.

“Albie has that special something, that little niche in his personality,” Mathews said, “where he can go into a party at the White House or an American Legion hall in Gulfport, Florida, and be received and treated and talked to in the same manner regardless of the two locations.”

Or, in baseball terms, a youth travel practice in suburban Pennsylvania or a Major League Baseball clubhouse in Baltimore.

He has done the former. The latter is on the horizon. The Orioles hired the 43-year-old Albernaz as their manager with the hopes his endearing Massachusetts accent and high-energy coaching style can propel the club toward the postseason and a World Series title. It seemed inevitable to those nearest Albernaz — those who managed him as a player or those who coached alongside him — that he would get here.

But, given there are only 30 of these jobs, the feat is not lost on anyone, even though Albernaz behaved like a manager long before he ever officially carried that title.

“He was a manager’s dream,” said Lance Parrish, an eight-time All-Star catcher who managed Albernaz in Double-A Erie during the last year of Albernaz’s playing career. “I wish I had a whole team full of Craig Albernazes. He was that kind of a guy.”

‘Always thinking ahead’

As he describes it now, Parrish admits this sounds like a small detail. That’s because it is. And yet, in baseball, when situations change each pitch, the small details make the mosaic of a game — they’re imperative for winning.

Albernaz, then a 31-year-old backup catcher for Erie in the Detroit Tigers’ organization, would call time. He’d step in front of home plate and signal to his infielders the pertinent information: the number of outs, where the force plays were, which bunt defense to run.

“I was like, ‘How come everybody doesn’t do this?’” Parrish said.

That’s because not everyone is like Albernaz, who was described as a workaholic by Mathews and the “Energizer Bunny” by his friend and former boss, Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt. The details matter, and they are how the undersize Albernaz even unlocked a future in the game past his time at Somerset High School in Massachusetts.

For Erie, Albernaz played for a World Series-winning catcher and three-time Gold Glover. Parrish played 19 seasons in the majors. He managed at various levels of the minors. For someone who has seen it all, he still saw Albernaz as unique.

Not for Albernaz’s ability — although Mathews and Parrish agree he had the best arm they’ve ever seen on a catcher — but for his interpersonal relationship skills and the way he could rally players to his cause.

“He was always thinking ahead,” Parrish said. “Loved having him be a part of my team and sharing his experience and leadership with the younger guys.”

Of course, Albernaz did that whether he was in the twilight of his playing career or the same age as his teammates at Eckerd College. It required Mathews taking a chance on the small catcher from the Northeast, offering him a place at the Division II program. To this day, it’s one of the best fits Mathews ever found.

He received a call from Glenn Tufts, a major league scout. “He’s way undersized, but he’s blessed with the greatest arm you’ll ever see in your life,” Tufts told Mathews.

“I said, ‘That’s worth a look,’” Mathews said, so the coach convinced Albernaz to come south.

Almost immediately, Mathews relinquished pitch-calling duties to his backstop, deferring to Albernaz’s knowledge of the pitching staff and intuition for game planning. “I never called a pitch for the next four years,” Mathews said.

His arm, too, stood out. Mathews said Albernaz threw out 81% of runners trying to steal while at Eckerd, and he caught 44.1% of base stealers in his eight-year minor league career. What will always stick with Mathews, though, is the arm display that came following a loss during Albernaz’s senior year.

A Berry College player launched a walk-off home run, yet for some reason the umpire handed a ball back to Albernaz anyway.

“He was kind of that guy who had so many intangibles that there was an intangible for everybody, and you just picked the one you wanted and you ran with it when you were with Albie.”

Bill Mathews, who coached Craig Albernaz at Eckerd College

“Albie let out this scream, primal scream, and threw the ball from home plate over the batter’s eye in center field,” Mathews said. “And that’s no urban legend. I saw it, and so did the guys from Berry, who stopped celebrating, frozen in their tracks as the ball left the ballpark, watching it.”

What was clear in that moment was how passionate Albernaz was for the game and how deeply losses impacted him. But he channeled that into more meaningful displays as a player at Eckerd.

Without outfield bleachers, center field became a prime players-only meeting location. Albernaz would call his teammates together, and “he’d just talk to the team, yell at the team, berate the team. Whatever was on his mind, he would just let it go,” Mathews said. “And that’s how he gained respect as a leader.”

As a backup catcher in Erie a decade later, Albernaz carried that approach while mixing in his comedic sensibilities. Parrish said Albernaz’s sayings were always a hit, and although he could remember only one of them specifically from that 2014 season, Parrish noted that “I don’t know if you want to print it, so I’ll just leave it at that.”

“He was an emotional guy,” Parrish said. “He got everybody fired up. He was always yelling on the bench and cutting up with his crazy sayings.”

Those characteristics, combining astute attention to detail with a high energy level and relationship-based focus, led Mathews and Parrish to believe a managerial position was in his future. They were right.

“He was kind of that guy who had so many intangibles that there was an intangible for everybody,” Mathews said, “and you just picked the one you wanted and you ran with it when you were with Albie.”

Genuine energy

There comes a point in Joe Pesci’s instruction that he realizes he’s out of his depth.

That’s not a critique of Pesci’s abilities; it’s an honest self-analysis based on years coaching beside Albernaz in suburban Pennsylvania.

The connection “fell in my lap,” Pesci said, but it was fortuitous. Albernaz, then coaching in the minor leagues, lived near Pennsbury High School. Through a mutual connection, Pesci reached out. And Albernaz, who had time on his hands in the winter, gladly moved from coaching professionals to kids as young as 8.

Pesci is the baseball coach at Pennsbury High School. He leads a youth travel team (Albernaz’s nephew plays with Pesci’s son), and he runs Nation9 Sports Academy in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Albernaz has helped each facet of Pesci’s coaching career. And he has helped many kids in that area.

“I say I’m just a high school coach because there’s a point where I just don’t know enough anymore,” said Pesci, who played Division II baseball at Bloomsburg University. In the middle of instruction with a middle schooler, for instance, Pesci can decide if the player has reached a point for a higher level of instruction.

“And the value was, I’d be there listening to Craig teach, and I’m doing a lesson and he’s doing a lesson, and a lot of the stuff that we were teaching was really similar,” Pesci said. “So there was a lot of value in feeling, OK, I’m doing some things right. But now I can steal some of the things he’s saying.”

What struck Pesci most, however, was how the things Albernaz said to 8-year-olds mirrored what he said to professionals. There’s a video of Albernaz working with catcher Joey Bart in 2022 with the San Francisco Giants. They are in the pressure cooker of Major League Baseball, and yet Albernaz pulls out the same personality that can keep instruction loose and fun for all ages.

“It’s the energy. He’s dynamic, he’s genuine, so you’re going to believe him immediately,” Pesci said. “There’s energy there, but there’s a genuineness and kind of down-to-earth [nature], to where you know what you’re getting from him, he really believes in.”

It’s one thing to convince an elementary schooler to alter his swing. It’s another to inspire peers while a player or professionals as a coach. Throughout his path, Albernaz has done it.

Only now, though, will he do it as the skipper of a major league organization, with all the lights (and the blame) laid at his feet.

“Some people have no idea who he is and, of course, because he’s never been a manager before,” Pesci said. “But I want to say, they’re going to find out really quick, because he’s really good at what he does, and he has some really good, young talent that he’s going to be able to manage and develop in Baltimore.”

‘He made it happen’

This all might not have happened without the timely phone call Mathews received shortly before Albernaz left town. The catcher, having graduated from Eckerd, was preparing for a tryout with an independent team ahead of the 2006 season.

Instead, the Tampa Bay Rays lost two catchers and needed to fill their organizational depth. They remembered the scrappy player at nearby Eckerd. Mitch Lukevics, in the player development system, called Mathews to inquire about Albernaz’s whereabouts.

“Bring him down here,” Lukevics told Mathews. “Let’s talk. I’ll give him a thousand bucks.”

So Mathews drove Albernaz to Tropicana Field.

“I felt like Scott Boras,” Mathews said, referencing the super-agent. “He signed a $1,000 bonus, which isn’t Boras-type numbers, and that launched his career.”

For his troubles, Mathews was rewarded with an iced tea from 7-Eleven — again, not the sort of bonus Boras usually receives from his deals. But that iced tea may have been the sweetest thing Mathews ever drank.

In the days since Mathews discovered Albernaz will be leading the Orioles as their new manager, he has felt waves of emotion. Albernaz babysat Mathews’ youngest son, Zach. During Albernaz’s college days, he’d sometimes spend the night with Mathews’ family, just to get away. He was a coach on the field — and, for a few weeks, an undergraduate coach in the dugout — and grew close to Mathews.

“There were a lot of tears,” Mathews said, “the pride that I felt.”

Those early days, Mathews felt Albernaz would make a great college coach, because he was so relationship-focused. But, as Albernaz’s career progressed on minor league staffs, Mathews realized he could shoot even higher while maintaining that same people-first focus.

In 2018, when Parrish managed the West Michigan Whitecaps, he went head to head with Albernaz. He blew Parrish away as manager of the Bowling Green Hot Rods, with whom he won the Midwest League Manager of the Year award.

Then Pesci saw his friend make the leap to a major league staff after the 2019 season. It was only a matter of time, in Pesci’s mind, before Albernaz would assemble his own staff, given the way he can deal with kids and pros alike.

All of that has funneled into this — becoming the manager of the Orioles.

“He’s the luckiest man alive,” Mathews said, voice hitching as he considered the journey. “He stuck with his dream, and he made it happen.”