The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Catching up with Jose Tolentino
02.14.2013 | Longhorn Foundation
Feb. 14, 2013
First baseman Jose Tolentino was a vital part of Texas Baseball's 1983 National Championship team. He hit .339, had 12 home runs, and drove in 73 runs that season. The 1983 Longhorns became the 10th team in history to go undefeated in the NCAA Men's College World Series.
Though Tolentino is retired, he hasn't gone too far from the game.
Why did you decide to get into sports broadcasting? One day I'm playing winter baseball and somebody stops me and asks for an autograph in a travel agency. The owner of the travel agency owned a newspaper, and he asked me to write about the Caribbean Series. Before the Caribbean Series I did an introduction, I got a national prize for writing and ESPN saw this and all of a sudden I'm a broadcaster for ESPN for the Caribbean Series. It was just coincidence. It was all because I stopped and signed an autograph for this woman.
Life goes on, and my life has been kind of ridiculous. First the University of Texas gives me a scholarship to play baseball. Then I sign pro and I thought it was the funniest thing in the world to pay me to play. Now they pay me just to watch and talk about it. It's kind of a dream.
How does your experience playing baseball help you in sports broadcasting? It helps me 100 percent. First, I am a guy from Mexico City. My mom is from Kansas City. My dad is Italian and French. Having all of these different cultures inside of me, I think I was open to be able to take on the cultures. To me it was a culture shock when I first started playing sports in the United States. The black basketball players from New Orleans spoke a completely different kind of English. All you know as a foreigner is New Yorkers and Californians. In Mexico City, that's all the Americas you think of. I think I got to know all kinds of people, all kinds of cities; I played for 16 years professionally. It opened my mind. I played in Japan, and I played in Cuba.
But I can see how a guy is feeling on the field. I know these players' mentalities. When somebody comes into pitch, chances are that I've faced somebody like him. I can tell you what the hitter is feeling. I can tell you what he is feeling if he hits into a double play to finish the game and he wants to go bang his head against the wall. I think the experience of being a professional athlete helps me. I was almost a professional boxer. I come from a family of sports. Two of my brothers played professional soccer. I know a lot about a lot of sports. If you play a sport for a long time, you know the sacrifices a professional athlete has to have. You know what it is to go out there every day and have to perform.
Do you miss playing? Every day. Nothing will ever compare to playing. In the first couple of years it was really hard. A lot of big leaguers wear shirts that say, "The older I get, the better I was." We started that in my generation. You see players in the game and it looks really easy from the stands. The farther away you get from the playing field in years and distance, the easier it gets. All of those things are formulated in your head and you have to wake up and say, "Be happy that you played for a long time. Quit missing it and enjoy your life." That's what happens. You have a full life with a beautiful wife and beautiful kids. You are able to do that but I think I was lucky because I got into broadcasting. I was still getting my fix of baseball and, at the same time, often I threw batting practice to the Angels the first three or four years I was there. I was getting my fix, but you do miss it. It's the love of your life.
How has your experience at UT impacted your life? I consider myself a very lucky person. Coach Gustafson told me that I was the most popular player at the University of Texas while he was the coach. He told me that it was the strangest thing he'd ever seen, the exchange I had with the fans. When I got the MVP of the tournament before going to Omaha, everybody started hollering when the presenter was giving his speech before I even got the award. "Bato" was my nickname and everybody would chant it. It was so nice. It was beautiful. I think I learned that by just being a Longhorn, you put the uniform on, you're up one to nothing already. So I was around people like Roger Clemens who was a winner all the way through. The hardest worker I've ever met in my life was Roger Clemens. The most talented, free spirit pitcher I've ever met in my life was Calvin Schiraldi. I was fortunate to be with Coach Gus. He was a thinker. He was a guy that didn't want you to waste your time. I think the University of Texas was a perfect preamble to me to go to professional baseball. I almost signed out of junior college, but I'm so glad that I didn't. The University of Texas is the big time in baseball.
Texas had to come back in four of its five College World Series games. What was it like being in those high-pressure situations? We had the best pitching in the nation, by far. It's crazy how good we were. But during the year, we would lose to schools that we had no business losing to. But then Arizona State would come in, and we would bump them like nothing. We had character to defend our home against the best. At the same time, we had a lot of downs during the year. Coach Gus would address it very hard in the locker room. I remember this one time there was a guy who wanted to come to Texas but Coach Gus didn't recruit him and he beat us. Coach said, "That guy, I didn't want him. He just beat you guys." I think this prepared us to the ups and downs of the playoffs. We knew we could come back any time we wanted to.
The song "We Were Swinging" got big the year before that season. Coach Gus told everybody, "This is the best hitting team I've ever had." Coach Gus' teams were famous because they would never swing. They would just take pitches and milk the pitchers. Spike Owen was the best milker ever. Our thing was, we were swinging. Coach Gus wanted us to calm us down and encourage us not to swing so much. But he realized the character of the team and that we were swingers. It was a bunch of misfits on our team.
What was the highlight of your career at Texas? The highlight of my career was winning the World Series. There are so many. But the first is winning the World Series. Then it was realizing that Texas hadn't gone to the World Series in a long time before that.
I hit a grand slam in the final game before going to the World Series. When I hit that grand slam I'm going around second thinking, "every day we say we're going to Omaha. You wake up, you have breakfast, you're lifting weights, you're sweating and you're working so hard you're dizzy. The only think you had in your mind is, we're going to Omaha."
All of the suffering and pushing your teammates to do better and all of the meetings came to this point. Roger and I were the guys who would push the team to do better. Around second base, I was thinking, "we're spanking these guys. We're going to Omaha." That's one of the highlights for me, when I realized the road to Omaha is finished, we're there.
Do you still keep in contact with your old teammates or coaches? I went to see Coach Gus a couple of years ago. I try to keep in contact more, but life gets in the way. I finally got to go to an alumni game three years ago. I try to keep in contact with them every chance I get.
When you think back on your time at Texas, what do you remember most? I remember the everyday games. The atmosphere of being a baseball player at the University of Texas is like no other. I had never had so much fun, and I never have since then. Knowing that you are super good and that you have the whole state behind you, when you play at the University of Texas, it's not just Austin, it's all of Texas. The stadium was always full. The experience of knowing that you are the best, and you're putting on a show for your fans was so incredible.
What was the best moment of your baseball career overall? Probably my first hit in the big leagues. It came on my third at-bat. The guy pitching was going for his 200th win. I finally got a hit up the middle with a slider. That's something I will never forget. That, and getting a big league card. That's awesome.
