When it comes to victory, defeat and breaking even, Piraro has experienced all three on the ballfield. Entering his 22nd season as San José State's head baseball coach, he has 685 wins, 520 losses, and six ties. Piraro is the standard by which all SJSU baseball coaches are measured. No other Spartans baseball coach has achieved more victories or more NCAA tournament appearances and conference championships. But Piraro knows as much about personal sacrifice as he does about sacrifice bunts. He understands a stolen season as well as a stolen base. Thus he prepares his players for the game of baseball and for life afterward. "The thing I preach to our players on a daily basis is that life is very tricky," he says. "Whether you're 18, 22 or 52, we have to deal with things during our lives. How you handle them is important. Do you go into bed and pull the covers over your head? That's not how you do things." Piraro knows this firsthand. He has had to prepare himself for life, too.
In November 2002, Piraro, then 50, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, or cancer of the bone marrow. That meant four months of chemotherapy, followed by stem cell and bone marrow transplants and 100 days in quarantine.
"Somehow," he says, looking back, "the Lord blessed me and allowed me to come through that."
But at a price. Piraro was placed on medical leave and would miss the 2003 season, and -- talk about being on injured reserve -- he would spend roughly 16 months away from the Spartans baseball program.
"When I came back (in 2004)," he says, "doctors told me, 'Coach, your immune system will be a baby's immune system, which means you'll be susceptible to colds and viruses. We recommend that you lay low this year.'"
Lay low? Piraro had asked his players to stay involved in the game year-round, so how could he not ask the same thing of himself? So he told the doctors that he missed the game, his assistants and the players too much to stay away.
Piraro always regarded himself as a "gamer," even when he played the infield for San José State in 1971 and 1972. But then he discovered the doctors were right. He didn't have the energy to return with his usual exuberance, and when he got on airplanes for away games, he lacked the immunity to ward off colds.
"I was in a different world," he says, "fighting for my life." Fortunately, he had Chuck Bell, then SJSU's athletics director, in his corner. Bell let Piraro decide when he wanted to return to coaching. Thus Piraro, with Bell's blessing, was able to resume full-time coaching eventually.
"I've been fortunate," says Piraro, now 57. "I've been healthy. I go in every six months to be checked out. And I can do what I love to do."
With one exception. He made a commitment to his wife JoAnn, at her request, that he would come home immediately after every practice, every game, every road trip, in order to conserve his strength. For the first time, Piraro turned over more responsibility to his assistant coaches. Life became more important than beating himself up over losses.
When he found his energy returning by the end of 2005, he resumed his old responsibilities, though not with the same around-the-clock vigor. Sixteen-hour work days were things of the past. He's home for dinner every night.
"I'm still competitive," he says. "That's what's helped me in the first place. That will never go away. I'm still demanding, asking people around me to give the best that they can. I still have passion for coaching."
That passion comes as no surprise to his players. Ryan Brucker was a four-year starter in center field for SJSU from 1998 to 2001, and a member of the Spartans' College World Series team of 2000. His experience with Piraro lives with him every day in his construction management work in Irvine.
"As a coach, he expects you to know small details," says Brucker. "I didn't know why he got so upset when I didn't get a sacrifice bunt down. Now I understand why, because I have to pay attention to a lot of details in my work.
"I don't think in playing for him that you have an idea of the impact he's having on you. It becomes apparent later. He comes across as a hard disciplinarian, but he's a very loyal person. He genuinely cares for his players and how they turn out. You go there as a boy, and come away from that experience as a man."
Even while suffering from cancer, Piraro showed his players how important a determined attitude was to the task at hand.
"Obviously, there were days at practice that I was not as good as I would like to have been," he recalls. "And I would apologize to the team that I was not 100 percent. The guys knew, and they were great about it. To me, that's not an excuse. My job was to act in their best interest no matter what the circumstances were. And that is something I try to get them to live their lives by. I had an obligation to be a leader, and not 'woe is me.'"
"Baseball is a game of numbers, and I always try to teach them what the numbers mean, equating them to health," says Piraro. "What's the significance of our on-base percentage and our fielding percentage? They represent the health of our team. Likewise if you go to the doctor, and he says your cholesterol is too high, you have to understand what the numbers are and fix them to the best of your ability.
"I also list the different numbers I deal with personally, like blood counts, red cells and white cells. I tell them, 'Numbers are very important, pay attention to them. If you don't listen to numbers, you're being very foolish or you're in denial. With my illness, every day is a blessing.'
"Then I tell them, 'You guys are lucky to be doing something you love to do, and you're good enough to do it. And your teammates are going to be everlasting friends. So you have to take advantage of this experience you're going through. It can go by just like that," Piraro says snapping his fingers.
"I've never forgotten one player that I've ever coached or cut," says Piraro. "I'll be with my son or daughter and I'll say, 'See that guy over there? He played for me in 1976. He was a pitcher on the freshman team (when Piraro was an SJSU assistant coach).' Then when we make eye contact, and I greet him, he'll say, 'How did you remember me?' Because you never forget a family member."
When he was sick with cancer, he received roughly 500 letters from ex-players, even some he had cut from the team who thanked Piraro for bringing them into the office and "pointing them in the right direction.
"But most of the letters told me 'to practice what you preach, which is to compete, never give up, and do what you made us do.' That was gratifying."
Piraro's son Jason is in his fourth year as director of operations for the Spartans baseball team while he's finishing up his undergraduate degree at SJSU.
"It's a blessing," says the father. "I love having him with me because he's a great sounding board. He's given me good advice, and he's not afraid to tell me when I've done something wrong. If I'm hard on a guy, Jason will go up to the guy and tell him, 'Hey, my dad's trying to get you to do this and this.' Jason has a good way with people. And he's my roommate on the road, which is a good thing."
Yet Piraro is dissuading his son from college coaching. Even high school coaching "might be uncomfortable for him. I've never known anyone to be mad at Jason. And in coaching, you can't worry about who's going to be mad at you."
"In my career," Piraro notes, "one of my skills is that I'm not concerned that somebody might be upset with me for the time being. Like I tell them, 'It will click in at some point. Something you'll look back on will be a benefit to you. Hopefully, sooner rather than later.'"
That's one sign of coaching that can't be missed.
-- Dave Newhouse, '64
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Peter Turner's confidence explodes at you like a 70-mileper-hour pitch in softball.
"I don't mind making predictions," says Turner, the San José State women's softball coach. "We will have a 30-plus winning record (in 2009). We've changed the mindset here. A .500 record is not acceptable. We want a top-20 program."
This is Turner's third year at SJSU, and there has been gradual improvement. His record was 23-28 in 2007, then 26-35 in 2008, though the Spartans did win a Western Athletic Conference tournament game last year.
However, Turner didn't exactly inherit a winning tradition. SJSU has played women's softball since 1986 and qualified twice for the NCAA by 1992, losing quickly both times in regional play. Since then, the Spartans have had only one winning season.
"We can all wallow in our self-pity," Turner says, "or we can be part of the change. I've always been able to grind things out. Whatever's broken, we need to fix it. Having been in business for so many years, I can find the sponsorships that will help me with (building) the new diamond. I have a new locker room that we went out and found the sponsorships for.
"We have five different sets of uniforms. We'll dress like the best, play like the best, act like the best. Now we just have to teach our players how to walk with the swagger of a champion."
Turner worked for Motorola Communications and then spent time in the satellite industry before retiring from the business world. He then was the women's softball coach at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, compiling a 99-30 record and reaching the state tournament twice, before accepting his current position at SJSU.
"I do believe we will do big things here," he says.
Of course, if the confidence expressed is from a Hall of Famer, you might listen more closely. Turner is a member of American Softball Association Hall of Fame, a distinction he tries to play down.
"It just means that I'm getting old," he says, laughing.
But Turner, 52, has solid Hall of Fame credentials. He coached USA men's national softball teams to a silver medal at the Pan American Games in 2003, and to a berth in the 2006 world championships. As a player, he was a 10-time ASA All-American who won a silver medal with his USA teammates at the 1995 Pan Am Games.
With those credentials, Turner is having success at attracting soughtafter softball players to San José State -- not only from high schools and junior colleges, but from the club level, where the talent is more pronounced.
"The thing you have to be very careful of as a coach is to make sure that they can play Division-1 ball. It took me two years to bring in athletes who can play at this level. We've started to pick off athletes that Cal, Stanford and UCLA wanted."
Which has only enhanced Turner's already lofty confidence level.
"I know what the competition can do," he says, "and I don't think their improvement level can dramatically increase like ours can. I'm here, first, to graduate my players. But this is a business, and I want to win. That's my job. If my players don't want to win, they should play Slo-pitch softball."
-- Dave Newhouse, '64
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