R.C. Lichtenstein, Chicago baseball lifer, finds the White Sox at last

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The White Sox’ new Triple-A pitching coach, R.C. Lichtenstein, participated in a pre-draft camp after his senior season at UIC. It was 1991, and his heart skipped a beat when a Twins scout approached him and asked if he had a job lined up.

“I was like, ‘No, but wherever I need to go, I’m ready to go,’ ” Lichtenstein, 55, recalled.

The scout stared back at him and said, “I’d get one if I were you.”

Cold, man. As it turned out, also an accurate assessment of a pitcher who describes himself all these years later as having been “undersized and under-skilled.” But was the scout ever wrong about the “go” part. Over a 30-plus-year coaching odyssey, that’s all Lichtenstein — a Chicago native — has done.

After a brief stint as UIC’s pitching coach, he has coached in the Mid-America, Heartland, Pioneer, Midwest, Central, Florida State, South Atlantic, Southern and Arizona Fall leagues. Beaten the bushes in Indiana, Montana, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Texas, Michigan, Florida, Kentucky, Alabama and South Carolina, not to mention Australia and Venezuela. Been a Muddog, a Dragon, a Snapper, a Roadrunner, a Hot Rod, a Biscuit, a RiverDog, a Desert Dog and a Javelina.

And now, after working in the Rays organization from 2005 to 2023, he’s a Chicago freaking White Sox. Well, OK, make that a Charlotte Knight. Go ahead and add North Carolina to the list above. But it sure feels like coming home.

“I get to wear this,” he said Friday at Camelback Ranch, popping a Sox sweatshirt with his thumbs and smiling as bright as the sun. “This is my heritage. This is where I grew up. This was my childhood.

“I didn’t realize how important it would be for me to be with a hometown team and try to make a difference and do something for my home city that people will take pride in.”

Lichtenstein grew up in Rogers Park and went to what then was called Lane Tech — Cubs country — but was a fan of both the city’s big-league teams. He was 5-foot-nothing when his high school career began and on the mound, more than half a foot taller, in a city playoff semifinal against Simeon as it ended. Lane lost the game, but Lichtenstein pitched well and hasn’t forgotten the thrill of it.

Oh, have we mentioned where that game was played? Comiskey Park. A Sun-Times scribe who was two years behind Lichtenstein at Lane was in the stands and would know.

It wasn’t even the first time playing at Comiskey for a guy with endless Chicago baseball connections. He played a little league game at the ballpark when he was 10. He was a vendor at Sox, Cubs and Bears games during high school and in summers throughout college. His first manager in pro ball, in Merrilleville, Ind., in 1995, was former Sox rookie of the year Ron Kittle. On that same staff was former Sox and Cubs pitcher Steve Trout.

Lichtenstein lives in Round Lake with his family in the offseason. His mom is in Wheeling, and two of his three brothers are still in the area, one of them just a few blocks from Lane.

There are a couple of big questions to be asked: Will he ever make it to the big leagues? And what if he does and it’s in Chicago?

“I’d lose my [expletive] if it happened,” he said. “But I know if it happens, I’ll be ready to do it and I know I’ll be good at it.”

In 2017, Lichtenstein flew to Arizona to interview with new Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder for the Triple-A job Snyder was vacating in Durham, N.C. Lichtenstein expected to get that job; when he didn’t, his passion for the Rays wavered for a while. The next time he came back this way was to report for duty with the Sox, who put him up in the same hotel where he’d stayed in 2017.

“This is funny,” he thought. “This is irony as good as it gets.”

He didn’t get to go to the home of the iconic baseball movie “Bull Durham,” but he’ll always have the lesser flick “The Babe.” Remember John Goodman as Babe Ruth in 1992? In a key scene, Goodman points his bat toward the outfield wall at Wrigley Field, calling his shot. On the mound as the Cubs’ Charlie Root in the 1932 World Series? None other than a college kid named Lichtenstein. He’d been there as an extra, making $90 a day. An actual actor was supposed to play Root. Instead, a scrappy young hurler turned out to be in the right place at the right time.

This is some kind of baseball life we’re talking about, big leagues or not.

“I’ve bounced around and been in a lot of places because of the game,” Lichtenstein said, “but I’ve always loved the game and the game always showed me that love back. I’m not going to say I love it more than anybody else, but I know I love it as strongly as I can.”

And maybe, just maybe …

“If I get a chance to coach in the big leagues someday, it’s the icing on top of the cake,” he said. “But it won’t define me, because I’ve gotten to do something I’m passionate about my whole life. I’m blessed.”