Doug Mientkiewicz: Olympic Gold, a World Series Ring, and Fishing Mindset

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 944 with Doug Mientkiewicz.

Introducing Doug Mientkiewicz

Tom: Hey everybody, welcome to the Tom Rowland Podcast. Doug Mientkiewicz is our guest today. He's the only American to have an Olympic gold medal, a World Series ring, and a Gold Glove. He's not only had a fantastic baseball career, he also spends a tremendous amount of time in the Islamorada, Florida Keys area — he's a big sailfisherman, which is of course why he ends up on this show, for fishing and mindset, and how he's used his experience in baseball in fishing. We had a fantastic conversation, and I think you're going to enjoy it. Here we go.

Doug: I am Doug Mientkiewicz, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom: Doug, what's happening, how are we doing? I've been dying for this one — we were talking before about how our paths should have crossed but never really did in person, so many mutual friends, like Steve Rodger, the whole thing. Baseball's very similar to fishing, it's this tiny, worldwide little community.

Doug: We haven't done it, but I've been a fan of the show since it came out, always watch it — my kids have coached in football too, that was a huge connection for me. It's way too long that we haven't crossed paths before this.

Tom: I know you don't love talking about yourself, but just to introduce you, you're the only American with a gold medal, a World Series ring, and a Gold Glove.

Doug: That's my lazy bathroom trophy shelf, I guess — I don't tell a lot of people, but yeah, it's true.

Tom: You're our second gold medalist in the last week or so — I had Ryan Crouser, the shot putter and three-time gold medalist who's also a fisherman, on recently. That guy's incredible, six-foot-seven, 335 pounds, and he ties size 28 midges — throws a shot put farther than anyone in the world but can tie the smallest fly imaginable with those giant hands. That's like doing brain surgery with your elbow.

A Childhood Split Between Sports and Fishing

Tom: When did your baseball career start?

Doug: My family moved from Toledo, Ohio to Florida — my uncle, who brought us down, owned property on lower Matecumbe and all the lumber yards in the Keys in the seventies, and he brought my dad down to build houses in the Keys while we still lived in Miami. I remember catching bonefish off the dock as a kid, it was incredible. I was a hockey player, skating before I was walking, but my dad, in the early eighties, was fearful of raising kids in Miami, then the crime capital of the world, so he put us in everything — basketball, football, baseball. Baseball became an obsession. My dad and I always had two things in common, sports and fishing, and whether we were in the batting cage or on the water, it was our getaway together, a chance to clear the brain and get back to work. My family was very invested in their kids, and I'm grateful for that.

Tom: What's changed in kids' athletics since you were coming up? It seems worse today, with parents specializing kids too early.

Doug: I always tell parents — open up a bio of an NFL or Major League player, and it never says they've been playing one sport since age six, it's he ran track, he played football, he played basketball. One sport leads to another, whether it's mental toughness or a physical skill that carries over. Football is mental and physical toughness, basketball is endurance toughness, and baseball is a combination of all three. When one sport is more challenging for a kid, it teaches them to appreciate how much easier another sport is, and not take it for granted.

Tom: Do you think a kid today can be a three-sport athlete and still make it to the D-1 level?

Doug: I hope so, and I really think they should. A lot of the problem isn't the kids, it's the parents — nobody hands you a manual when the kid is born, and we all make mistakes trying to do what's best. I always go back to people who have experience, like going to someone who's actually caught bonefish rather than someone who only fishes shellfish. Sometimes coaches get so specific because they want to win for themselves, and they don't realize that if Johnny's not at practice because he's at basketball, he's still gaining athleticism elsewhere. I always tell my own kids, play as many sports as you can — I don't think less of you for it, and I think college coaches actually appreciate multi-sport kids.

Tom: My son was a three-sport athlete, which was a bigger deal when I was in high school — he wrestled, ran cross country for conditioning, and his main love was lacrosse, though his best performances came in wrestling. When he'd step back onto the lacrosse field after a state wrestling tournament, some assistant coaches penalized him for not knowing the plays, even though the head coach had encouraged him to wrestle. It comes back to communication between coaches — when the messages get mixed, that's when problems happen.

Doug: I had the same situation with a really good basketball player who also pitched for me — I wasn't going to pitch him heavily early in the season because he wasn't in baseball shape yet, not because he wouldn't be. The good coaches are truly on the same page because they want the school to do well regardless of sport. Coaches today make it more about themselves when they focus on winning instead of developing — nobody remembers that plastic ring you won at age eight because your coach stacked the best players. It's not about being good at eight, it's about getting better at eight.

Signing With Florida State and Reaching the Majors

Tom: When did you know you had a real career in baseball ahead of you — high school or college?

Doug: I transferred my senior year to Westminster Christian in Miami, where Alex Rodriguez was our shortstop, and we had four guys from that team make the major leagues and about eleven Division 1 players. We won a national championship, but even then I didn't fully know. My mom worked at the University of Miami for over 35 years, so I'd been hanging around campus since I was a little kid, and I ended up signing with Florida State instead. Even after that I wasn't sure — it really started clicking when I began playing pro ball and saw guys I'd competed against my whole life on TV, and thought, if they can do that, I can do this. I was never the kid who dreamed of making the big leagues specifically — my dream was to play in the College World Series, and I did that twice, so after that everything else felt like gravy. I thought the big leagues were so far-fetched, up on a pedestal, but when you keep playing and see your friends from age six make it, you realize you can be an average guy and still get there. My high school area produced several major leaguers all the way up through Little League, so we were just competing and having fun.

I only spent two and a half years in the minor leagues, going from Double-A to the big leagues in 1998. I played all of 1999 in the big leagues and it was awful — I went in every day hoping to get sent down, feeling like I didn't belong or wasn't good enough, and I did get sent down. I didn't make the team in 2000, and that was the first year I ever played Triple-A, where I had the most fun I've ever had playing the game. That parlayed into making the 2000 Olympic team — without struggling, I don't have the Olympics, and without the Olympics, I don't have a career. I used the Olympics as, if this is all I've got, I can rest my head on the pillow every night knowing I've done something not many people can say they've done, put on that uniform and those colors for my country. I didn't have to carry the weight of having to be some predetermined thing — I was playing with house money, and I ended up making a career out of it. I always say I was in the right place at the right time, a lot of times, but I try to tell kids and my own son — just because it looks like doom and gloom, there's a silver lining you haven't seen yet. My son tore his ACL twice in high school as a catcher, and I was worried, but he ended up at one of the best junior colleges in the country. You take an opportunity, or you focus on the negative — but you can look at a setback as one heck of a story you just haven't finished writing yet.

Learning the Florida Keys From Scratch

Tom: That reminds me of something about my own fishing career. I grew up in Chattanooga —

Doug: That's right, I know — you managed the Chattanooga Lookouts for a while, I heard that. Hope you had a good experience there.

Tom: I grew up in Chattanooga and showed up in Key West trying to be a fishing guide, and I was by far the greenest, least experienced person there. My father wasn't a guide, I'd never been to the Keys before, and I thought that was a huge negative — those established guys had their milk routes figured out, and I didn't know what I was doing, so I stayed out of everyone's way for a few years, not wanting anyone to see how little I knew. But over about ten years, I realized that weakness was actually my greatest strength, because I saw things with fresh eyes, not the way everybody else did. I'd fish places nobody had ever fished, and if I found one fish there, that was great — later I'd realize that spot was the only place that produces when the weather's really bad. Weakness turns into strength if you stay with it long enough — not having money, not knowing anyone, having to hustle and grind because you can't just do what everybody else is doing, eventually becomes your greatest strength.

Doug: A hundred percent, you hit the nail on the head. I've done a ton of sailfishing my whole life, growing up around Miami, and we always fished the Islamorada tournaments. When I moved here full time, I realized we weren't very good at sailfishing, so I spent countless hours with no rods in the boat, just driving up and down the reef line, staying out of the way of the charter guys making a living, but watching and observing how they reacted. You can't take away what you learn from putting your time in — I don't like buying bait for tournaments, I feel like catching your own bait gives a competitive advantage, and the fish gods take care of you if you take care of everything you're supposed to do yourself. My dad always told me, a hundred swings a day, you're only fooling yourself, and I tell my son that every day — it's never been a better time to be a grinder, if you put the work in right now, you can do whatever you want, you just don't know it yet.

Tom: People always say, oh, you're so lucky, and that drives me crazy — you create your own luck, preparation creates opportunity.

Doug: Baseball's one of those sports where, when you look at the players, they look more normal than everybody else — you can spot a defensive tackle or a basketball player from across the room, but baseball players are athletic without being huge unicorns. I think that's because there's such a humbling aspect to the game, so much failure, that you learn to make fun of yourself. People say, oh, I played baseball too, and I think, here comes the high school story — I got hurt, and I think, so did we, I've had eleven surgeries and probably need four more, but I wouldn't change it. I chose to work harder, and I got told no at every turn — too slow, not enough power, doesn't fit the mold — and I'm still here, and until you rip this jersey off my back, I refuse to take no for an answer.

Coaching His Own Son

Tom: Is it hard to convey all that to your own son?

Doug: My son was about six, and I tried to give him some advice, and he looked me dead in the face and said, dad, you're a player, you're not a coach. He wasn't wrong, and it's hard, because I want more for my kid than he wants for himself sometimes, and being hard on him isn't a negative thing — I know there's more in there, and we're all just trying to fight to get it out. I coached my own catchers hard, and my son happened to be a catcher, and I actually had parents call supervisors about how I coached my own son, like I was being abusive, when really I was just as hard on my catcher as I would be on anyone else's kid. In minor league baseball, kids don't like discipline, but they crave it — I'd give them the freedom to show up whenever they wanted before a night game after an eighteen-hour bus ride, as long as they were there by six, and the guys who pushed for late arrival ended up being the first ones there, worried about looking bad. I miss my guys — I've coached World Series MVPs and probably fifty or sixty big leaguers over the years, and being involved in their lives is really what it's all about. You pass down information, you don't give them everything, maybe not the exact spot, but you teach them what to look for, and it's up to them to go find it.

Baseball Lessons Applied to Sailfishing

Tom: How do you see the lessons from baseball applying to fishing and its similarities or differences?

Doug: I use fishing as a way to still compete. I've been lucky to be part of a group that's won the Quest for the Crest jacket four times with JC Kler, one of the best captains in the game, who I've known since I was five. It's taught me that you're never out of it — we've been six or seven fish back with an hour to go and come back to win, caught fish in the last fifteen seconds with a lot of money on the line. It teaches you how to handle situations when you get a four- or five-bait bite in the spread and everybody's screaming — calm down, one at a time, the first one's the hardest. You compete, you put your time in on the water, you respect your opponents, and you understand you don't have it all figured out, which is very similar to baseball — the biggest kiss of death in a baseball player's mouth is saying you've got it all figured out, because the game humbles you, and fish are the same way. You can have the same experience and conditions and they still just don't want to eat, or they'll eat thirty feet over there instead, for whatever reason, over and over.

It's similar to bridge fishing for tarpon — the boat next to you keeps getting bit, you're lined up perfectly, and you look and think, they've got a force field around us today. And then there are days you do everything right and get nothing, and other days you go out with your wife, one rod, forget your leader, cut a four-foot piece back over and over, and can't stop getting bit, using a hook way too big because it's the only one you've got. When people do well in tournaments consistently, it does seem to come down to the details — the boats that are always in the top five. I had a conversation once with my friend Tim Hoover, a guide who was winning everything, and asked him what he was doing. He said he just pays attention to the details — are your hooks sharp, is your leader fresh, is your bait taken care of, each one maybe a one percent advantage, but they add up over the day to fifteen percent, and that's the difference. That got me thinking about everything as something that could possibly be improved — even writing down hookup-to-landing ratios to see if a different hook could improve it by even one percentage point.

Doug: Baseball is a lot like that too, a numbers game and a chess game. I never wrestled, but wrestlers understand anticipation, reaction, reading your opponent, and that goes into fishing too — you can be thirty seconds late and miss the tide or the change. I always say, how you do one thing is how you do everything — I feed the bait better than I feed myself some months, and on a given day my bait might be a little more lively and get bit over somebody else's just because of that extra attention, even if it's mostly in my head. If I'm going to do something, even if we're fishing for a plastic red Solo cup or a hundred grand, I want to do everything I can to prepare to win — doubles of every rig, because you never know what's going to happen. That preparation ties into how I fun-fish too — most fishermen don't really enjoy themselves if they don't catch anything, even though everyone says they just enjoy being on the water. I've always felt like the more you can make practice feel like game day, or game day feel like practice, the better — you either practice at the speed you play, or play at the speed you practice, otherwise you're wasting your preparation. Consistency is what everybody strives for, whether it's business, diet, or a workout routine — the hardest part is getting started, and once you do, it becomes a habit.

The Grind of a Professional Career

Doug: People think baseball players get four months off, but we really only get about two weeks — I'd come home, put the hurricane shutters up, make the house a cave, and hibernate for two weeks to take a mental break before getting right back into training and getting on the water. That mental reset is what most of it comes down to. One thing I've always admired about you guys is that you don't just do this because you love it, it's also your job, and I've seen too many times where the job aspect ruins something like that for people. The guys who keep their passion for it, like Alex Adler, who I fished with the other day after he'd fished nearly every day for years and only had two days off, and he still went fun-fishing with us — that's what I'm talking about, that old-salt mentality you don't see enough of in this younger generation.

Tom: I have respect for the guy who loves fishing so much that he chooses not to become a guide, so he can keep it purely for himself, and just as much respect for the guide who says, I'm out here because I love the whole process of putting someone else onto their fish, not wishing it was me catching it. That's the whole idea behind Saltwater Experience — when we go out just to fish for ourselves, that's different from a working day, because a fishing guide who works a lot doesn't actually fish much.

Doug: Right, and I've always been on the deck more than actually fishing, running boats for tournaments because I love that aspect of it — I get more of a kick watching someone else catch their prize now. But there's still a part of me that, whenever I'm on the deck I want to be in the tower, and whenever I'm in the tower I want to be on the deck, because when that fish comes up and it's not you holding it, you still think, I wish that was me. It's like any other job — people have this stigma that you live in paradise, but if you realize the absolute mental and physical grind these guys go through fishing every day, it's not for everybody, and don't let the TV shows fool you.

What makes it even tougher is that to fish 300 days a year, you need a place with enough tourism to support that, and there aren't many places where the weather allows for it consistently. The Florida Keys is one of the only places you can fish all year, every day, which also means it's an expensive place to live, so as a guide you have to work constantly — you can't take a day off after seventy-two days in a row because they'll come take your house. You make hay when the sun shines, especially during tarpon season, working morning, midday, and night trips back to back.

Steve Rodger, Key West Baseball, and the Talent Code

Tom: Have you fished with Steve Rodger?

Doug: A couple times, and I've loved every second of it. My son went to Key West High School for his senior year and played baseball there, and a college friend who's basically my son's godfather introduced me to Steve, along with Rush Maltz down there too. I owe Steve so much for helping us out with my own son. Watching him work, and the fact that he'd get in the water where he couldn't see three feet down and come up with the biggest man he's ever seen — I understand how hard this game is and how much knowledge it takes to reach that level while still being a good person. He's a riot, makes me laugh, and that personality gets overlooked in charter fishing — you've got to be an entertainer, because whether you caught a lot of fish or none at all, people need to leave saying that was such a great day, let's book it again right now.

Tom: I learned that from my dad running walleye trips on Lake Erie when I was three or four — that excitement as a kid, walking down the dock, I want to keep that feeling as a captain or a mate, because I know what these people feel driving down here, and it's my responsibility to deliver for them.

Doug: My girlfriend and I go to Costa Rica for the Pescadora, a female billfish tournament, at least once or twice a year, and I still get that feeling walking down the dock — I want to make sure I deliver that same feeling for my people.

Tom: Your son played for Key West High School, which has a tremendous baseball history for such a small place — what is it about Key West that keeps that program performing at a high level?

Doug: A lot of it is the culture — if you're a Conch, you've got a hometown chip on your shoulder, and the community is tight, with kids playing together from age four or five all the way up. Jack Niles and Ralph Enriquez built a machine down there with the little leagues that just doesn't quit. My high school coach, Rich Hoffman, a hall of famer, told me you better be up by a touchdown going into the last inning against Key West, because winning down there isn't easy — the fan base and the players have a toughness. I wanted my son to be part of something where the games truly mattered, played in front of a raucous crowd, which builds character. Teams from all over the state want to play games in Key West because it makes them better.

There's a book called The Talent Code that gets at this — it's about places that produce an extraordinary number of high-level performers, whether violinists, baseball players, or tennis players. The author visited a Russian tennis academy expecting something grand and found a desolate, single court with not enough balls to go around, yet it produced Sharapova and others — because they built a culture of winning and process, doing drills without balls. He found the same with a violin academy, a crappy-looking place with an amazing culture. It's not about the facility or even the coach necessarily, it's the culture and mindset — players get better in the dark. I equate that to Latin American countries like Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, and now Germany and Asia too — in organizational meetings, scouts would say these kids are coming from places some American kids wouldn't even step foot in, playing games on rough fields, and that's part of why they're mentally tougher. It's not disrespect to American kids, but there's a difference between a 16-year-old Venezuelan kid and a 16-year-old American kid for the most part. Again, weakness is strength — a kid who grew up playing on a rocky dirt field and then moves to a perfect field thinks it's amazing, but that difficult upbringing ends up being their greatest strength, and they end up becoming some of the best teachers too, because they hold their players accountable without excuses. I've learned to really respect my Latin American players and would go to them for advice on toughness.

The Never-Ending Learning Curve

Doug: Both baseball and fishing, you're never done learning — fish change, baseball analytics change everything, the games are always evolving. We've got Seymour maps now, every hump and rock known to man, and for us, shark populations have changed the way sailfish eat, especially up around West Palm, and it's trickling down to us — it's changed their eating habits and migratory patterns. If you stop learning, you're getting left behind.

Tom: Similar to bass fishing, where you might make four hundred casts and catch four fish and call it a great day — three hundred and ninety-some casts that got nothing, twenty that got snagged and broken off, and it could be considered dismal failure, but it's not. I think that's great for young people, dealing with adversity, trusting your instincts, and celebrating the win while being grateful for what you get.

Winning Olympic Gold

Tom: What was the Olympics like?

Doug: Outside of my son being born, it doesn't get any better. I was born in Toledo, and the Toledo Goaldiggers were our minor league hockey team — Mike Rosione scored a famous game-winning goal, and I had Rosione Goaldiggers shirts as a kid, so watching the 1980 Olympics was huge in my house. My cousin and I would play hockey in our Ohio basement and play the national anthem before we started, that's how much it meant to us. I played on the USA team in 1994 in college, back when college players were still eligible, then signed pro in 1995. My mom was upset because she thought I could've played in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, though I don't think I would have made that team, probably the best amateur team ever assembled. Getting the call to tell her I'd made the 2000 Sydney team instead was a great phone call — she lost it.

Walking into the opening ceremonies, you feel like an ant, people everywhere, walking next to Kevin Garnett and Mia Hamm, with this sense of pride you can never quite explain — you're goosebumpy, surrounded by nothing but Team USA. Even if we hadn't won gold, just the opening ceremonies make you feel completely alive. On the medal stand, I lost it, bawling, because I looked down and right across from me was my mom, my dad, and my sister — all the sacrifice they put in to get me there came rushing back, and I couldn't hold it together. To this day, watching any Olympic event, whatever it is, when it's the United States, that sense of pride is second to none.

Funny story about Mike Rosione — I got to know Jill and Brian Buchanan, whose father-in-law was John Havlicek, through the minor leagues, and we went to the Sportsman of the Year event in 2000 for Tiger Woods, where I was the token baseball guy. I was standing next to John Havlicek, Tom Seaver, and Bill Russell, in heaven, when I spotted Mike Rosione out of the corner of my eye and literally pushed Bill Russell out of the way to go meet my childhood hero — I could barely speak. We ended up riding in the limo together and talking frequently after that, and when I got traded from the Twins to the Red Sox mid-season, it turned out his sister worked for the team, and there was a USA Rosione jersey with a C on it waiting in my locker at Fenway — I wore it three days a week and still have it. That's what being an Olympian is about, no matter the year or the sport, a bond that never breaks.

Wrapping Up

Tom: What an incredible career. I can't wait to meet in person and get on the boat one of these days.

Doug: Absolutely, let's do it. Appreciate you having me on — I'd love to have you on my show sometime too, The Dugout. I want to do baseball breakdowns, college football, training, mental and physical longevity — what makes you tick, what keeps you doing what you're doing at your age, since my dad still does push-ups and sit-ups at 84.

Tom: I'd love to do that, physical Friday. Watching your workout stuff online gave me hope that it's still possible at our age.

Doug: It made me feel that way seeing your stuff too — that's a guy my age still doing it, so it's possible.

Tom: Well, thanks so much for coming on, and if somebody wants to listen to your podcast, where do they go?

Doug: The Dugout Podcast, D-O-U-G-O-U-T, on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio. We're just getting started, doing Olympic stuff, baseball breakdowns, college football, anything sports related, plus the mental and physical side — a youth call-in show where parents can ask questions, since I get the same questions over and over in recruiting, and if I can help five more parents get their kid to where they're trying to go, it's worth it. It's not about being the smartest guy, it's about bringing on people who are actually in the industry to keep reiterating the truth, because sometimes people need to hear it from the horse's mouth before it sinks in.

Tom: That sounds great, man. We'll do this again, and good luck with the sailfish.

Doug: Appreciate it, thanks buddy, see ya.