With his distinguished baseball pedigree, first-year Salt Lake Community College baseball coach D.G. Nelson has the perfect blueprint for success. Now it's up to him to follow it.
"I would have to be one of the dumbest guys around not to be successful because of all the people I've been associated with and everything that's in front of me," Nelson said.
Nelson is the son of the late Dave Nelson, longtime Utah Valley State College coach; and the nephew of both Kim Nelson, longtime high school baseball coach, and Clyde Nelson, longtime high school and college basketball coach.
"I really learned and had those guys help me along the way to not make some of the dumb mistakes rookies make," he said.
He has also worked alongside current Dixie State College baseball coach Mike Littlewood and former SUU and SLCC coach Bill Groves.
He credits all of them for helping him shape his coaching career, but it was his father who influenced him the most.
"(He helped me) more than I can put into words," said Nelson, who is the fifth in a line of Nelsons bearing the name David George. "He taught me a lot about the game and I think his strength as a coach was how he dealt with kids and how he dealt with people."
Dave Nelson, who had two liver transplants, died 18 months ago from complications due to cancer, and the younger Nelson misses picking up the telephone and asking his advice.
"Where I really, really miss him this year — in this being my first year as a head coach — is there have been several things that have gone on that I wish I could call him and carry on a conversation," he said.
D.G. Nelson was an all-state player at Mountain View High School and Western Athletic Conference honoree at BYU, the same school where his father played.
He played middle infield at Mountain View and pitched and caught at BYU. He did the same while playing professionally for the independent Bend (Ore.) Bandits in 1997 and the St. George Pioneerzz from 2001-02. He was a career .276 hitter with 16 homers, 27 doubles, two triples and 84 RBIs in 132 professional games. His first year with the Pioneerzz, he was second in the Western League with 15 homers.
He coached alongside his father and uncle at Timpanogos High School in 2000, in between his stints in professional baseball. He broke his wrist 11 games into the 2002 season, but he was later hired by the Pioneerzz as an assistant coach and worked alongside Littlewood.
"I was always realistic that it was hard to make it (to the major league)," Nelson said. "I took advantage of who I was around to learn as much about the game as I could while I was playing. It was a career that shaped my knowledge to be a coach."
He later was hired by Littlewood at Dixie State College as an assistant and he stayed there for one season before joining Groves at SLCC as an assistant. Two-and-a-half years later he was named the Bruins' head coach.
He's got the X's and O's of the game down pat, but to rise to the baseball pedestal on which his father stood, he still has some work to do.
"My personality, I have always been more technical," said Nelson, who along with his wife, Jodi, are the parents of three daughters: Kynra, Payton and Kelsey. "My dad even told me a long time ago, I knew more about mechanics and that part of it that he ever did,"
"But I was never in the ball park (with him) in how to deal with people as well as he did.
"His funeral was a testament to that. He had a ton of people there from every aspect of his life and everyone would say the same thing. They always thought he was one of their best friends."
As a result, Nelson finds he is slowly understanding and applying what his father taught him.
"The biggest part of what I try to do now and my biggest asset as a coach is I truly love the kids I coach," he said. "With everything I do I try to prepare them and set them up to be successful."
Why shouldn't he? It's a tried, tested and proven method, and he has his father to thank for it.
E-mail: jhinton@desnews.com