Will Venable was still playing for his original major league club, the Padres, and had seen just about enough of how the team’s spring training was going.
It was a couple of weeks into camp in Peoria, Ariz., and already some players were getting out in the grass late to stretch. Not everyone was showing up to the batting cages on schedule. The Padres had a basketball court, and too many meaningless hoops battles were being contested while other guys were working hard in preparation for the season.
Opening Day against the Dodgers was coming, and outfielder Venable — certainly no star but with a respected voice that carried weight inside the clubhouse — knew the team wasn’t meeting manager Bud Black’s expectations.
So Venable did something many big leaguers find too uncomfortable to do: He stood in the middle of the entire group and told them the truth. He didn’t flip tables. He didn’t curse a blue streak. He didn’t run hot. He spoke calmly but to the point and nipped a nascent problem in the bud.
“That’s how I expect to be as a manager,” the White Sox’ rookie skipper said in a Monday phone call as he made his way to baseball’s GM meetings in San Antonio, where he’ll do some offseason planning with new boss Chris Getz. “Just talk it through. I think people respect that. We’re all adults.”
Venable was right around 30 that spring, but he didn’t yet have designs on a future in managing. That came at the very end of his playing career, in 2016, a year he’d spent mostly as a minor leaguer with Cleveland, the Phillies and, finally, the Dodgers. At 33, he was struggling to hit, but he found himself to be less interested in individual work in the cage than he was in guiding his much younger Dodgers Triple-A teammates with observations and advice.
“I realized it was all about investing in them at that point,” he said.
A year later, he went to work for the Cubs, first as a special assistant to team president Theo Epstein and later as a base coach for managers Joe Maddon and David Ross. He was on his way.
When Getz introduced his signature hire to the local media last week, he referred to Venable as the “perfect” final candidate. Getz wasn’t the only one to lean into the P-word. In a text, Ross said Venable has the “perfect personality” to become a “great” manager.
“I’m so pumped for him,” Ross wrote. “He’s such a great communicator and people person and works extremely hard.”
Venable reached an agreement with the Sox on Monday, Oct. 28, a day before he turned 42. On Thursday, he Zoomed with reporters from his home in Texas — he was associate manager to Bruce Bochy with the Rangers the last two seasons, winning the World Series in 2023 — and Friday evening, he actually got to celebrate his birthday with wife Kathryn, their three daughters (a 9-year-old and 7-year-old twins) and other family. This Friday at Guaranteed Rate Field, he’ll meet the local media for the first time in person as a member of the Sox and pay tribute to a family that has “given me so much support my entire life.”
“My parents, my brother and sister, my wife and kids, the sacrifices they’ve made,” he said. “I’m looking forward to speaking to that a little bit publicly.”
He’ll also try to impress upon suffering Sox fans that he doesn’t believe the organizational picture is hopelessly bleak and that he accepted this job because he’s unbowed — and invigorated — by the sheer size and scope of the task at hand.
“I understand the challenges and the adversity clearly,” he said, “and am looking forward to all of it.”
According to Bochy, a four-time World Series-winning manager and certain Hall of Famer, Venable is more than ready.
“You’re getting a really smart guy with baseball acumen, a good feel for analytics and a great feel for the game,” Bochy told the Sun-Times. “And he just has a great way about him with people, a calmness about him. When things aren’t done right, he’ll let you know. He’s honest and straightforward.”
Bochy recalled a moment when a Rangers player got upset during a game and said some things he shouldn’t have. Bochy looked at Venable — whom he called his “safety valve” — and muttered, “I’ll deal with that later.” But Venable beat him to it, pulling aside a frustrated player who wound up apologizing before Bochy could get to him.
“That showed me something, but Will was always on top of everything,” Bochy said. “I’m really going to miss him.”
Late in August, the Rangers visited the South Side for three games. The Sox were mired in what would become a 12-game losing streak on the way to a modern-record 121 losses for the season, but although they lost the middle game of the series in the cruelest fashion — Andrew Vaughn’s potential walk-off homer was brought back in a sensational, above-the-wall catch by Travis Jankowski — each game was close until the end.
Venable knows it might not be easy to believe, but he swears he was impressed.
“I watched the White Sox continue to fight and compete in the face of all those losses,” he said. “I thought, ‘Man, this would be such an easy time to give up and give in,’ but they didn’t. I could see it.”
Perhaps his mind even drifted for the most fleeting of moments to what a manager like himself could do to help.
“To have an opportunity to change that narrative? To actually build something?” he said. “I really do want to try.”