Ran across this profile piece from Ryan Ernst at the Cincinnati Enquirer.  Here’s a taste:

The mouth below his salt-and-pepper Fu Manchu mustache turns up at the corners.”He just gets to me,” Maxwell said. “There’s never a bad day with Pete around.”

Pete Collins has been Maxwell’s right-hand man for 14 seasons. In that time, the former Dixie Heights special education student has become a Northern Kentucky baseball fixture and beloved presence on the Colonels’ bench.

– snip –

“I wanted to hire him as a coach,” Maxwell said. “I didn’t want him to be a bat boy anymore. I wanted him to be my Popeye, my Don Zimmer. I needed him to be in that dugout to liven things up and get after those kids. He’s my get-up coach.”

Collins, who serves on the staff as a volunteer, helps with the day-to-day operations of the team. He gives pep talks and leads the dugout chatter. The players say he sets a tone – a tone unique to what is often one of the most laid-back high school sports.

“He’s intense all the time,” Klei said. “… It doesn’t matter the inning or the score – he’s up and at ‘em.

“That’s what he does. He is our bench coach. He’s the one who gets us up during games. There’s never a dull moment when he’s around. When he misses games, you can tell that we’re down a little bit and something’s missing.”

Collins misses some games. He works 26 to 30 hours a week at Kroger and does volunteer work one day a week at St. Elizabeth Medical Center South. When there’s a conflict between baseball and work, baseball takes a backseat. He’d like to be at all the games, especially this year. The Colonels are among the favorites to win the Ninth Region.

This is day 30 of the “7th Inning Stache”s 100 days of MLB mustaches. All of the Staches will be cataloged in our MLB Mustache Hall Of Fame. If you have any tips on some fielding first basemen follicle follies please email us the tip @ NESWblogs-at-gmail.com.

Today’s special guest inductor is Bad Kermit from Hire Jim Essian:

James Sarkis Essian, Jr. was born on January 2, 1951.  Jim Essian’s mustache was born at 5:00 p.m. on January 2, 1951.  Essian was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1969, and made his Major League debut late in the 1973 season.

Essian bounced around the American League as a catcher for the White Sox, A’s, Mariners, and Indians, but he was forever etched into the record books while with Oakland.  On June 10, 1979, Essian’s ‘stache was along for the ride when Essian hit a two-out, inside-the-park grand slam off Mike Willis of Toronto in Network Associates Coliseum.  If anyone ever tells you that he was there on the day that Essian hit the Shot Heard ‘Round the Bay, he is probably lying, since only 2,400 people were in attendance.  How Essian, a catcher, accomplished the feat can be summarized with this quote, taken from Essian after he hit his first career home run:  “I wanted to go into my home run trot, but then I realized I didn’t have one.”  Hustle and humility.  That’s how a catcher hits an inside-the-park grand slam.

Though neither Essian nor his ‘stache ever played for the Cubs during their catching careers, Essian was hired by the Cub front office to manage the Class A Winston-Salem Spirits in 1986.  Essian demanded that the players under him call him “Skip Johnson,” because-  Well, he liked the sound of it, dammit.  He had a penchant for standing at the top of the dugout steps and rhythmically clapping, which earned him a series of promotions until he landed with the Class AAA Iowa Cubs.

After Cubs manager Don Zimmer was unceremoniously dumped 37 games into the 1991 season, and Joe Altobelli failed to win the one game put in his charge, Essian was called up from Iowa.  The move may have gone unnoticed at the time, but on that day, Essian became the first (and only) Armenian Major League Baseball manager.  Essian went 59-63 to finish the year, and has tragically been out of Major League Baseball since.

Did you know that the last time Jim Essian managed the Cubs, Jim Hendry was in the World Series and Chicago won a world championship?  You didn’t, did you?

Each day we describe the ‘stache in one word.

Jim Essian’s ‘stache = Armenian