Joe Capozzi‘What else are we going to do? Sit around and play golf all day?’ former Marlins pitcher Tom Koehler asks.
Not long ago, Tom Koehler, Steve Cishek, Brad Hand and Tim Wood made a living throwing fastballs in the major leagues at such ballparks as Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Marlins Park.
They first met as young players with the Miami Marlins and went on to pitch in a combined 1,534 career games, with and against some of baseball’s biggest stars — from Shohei Ohtani and Giancarlo Stanton to Hall of Famers Chipper Jones and Ichiro Suzuki.
They’re no longer pitching in the bigs these days, but they’re teammates again, this time as coaches for the Jupiter Tequesta Athletic Association girls recreational softball teams at Jupiter Community Park.
Their players include their own daughters and are prone to spirited in-game chants like “Watermelon, tutti frutti, come on pitcher shake your booty!”
It might be a long way from the big leagues, but it feels like home to these former pros now living in the Jupiter-Tequesta area.
“I love being able to teach these girls and give back. It’s a complete joy to be out here,” said Cishek, a former closer whose daughters Emmie and Avery are among the players.
The JTAA recreation softball program, collectively known as the Jupiter Seahawks, has 17 individual teams in different divisions for ages 3 to 13. Just as Little League teams borrow names from major league squads, the JTAA rec softball teams are named after schools that played in the 2025 Women’s College World Series.
Helping coach those teams is a dedicated roster of parents and volunteers, including former collegiate softball players like Ashley Koehler (Tom’s wife), Kelsey Hoffman, Patty Godwin, Suzanne Fillyaw and Cindy Eldred.
Some coaches played professional baseball, like Wood, a Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher from 2009-11 who volunteers with his daughter’s team of players ages 6 and under.
But only the JTAA Texas Longhorns teams can boast a staff of three coaches — Koehler, Cishek and Hand — who were part of the Marlins pitching staffs from 2010-17.
“Pretty nice former Marlins contingent. It’s really something,” Koehler said.
‘I’m just Riley’s dad’
Just don’t expect the Longhorns players to be impressed.
“To some of the kids, I’m just Riley’s dad,” Koehler said. “With the female coaches, the girls respond better to them. They think it’s cooler when they find out that one was a catcher in the College World Series or one played outfield in Division I.”
Riley Koehler, 11, started playing in 2018 when she was 4. Her first coach was her mother, Ashley, who played Division I softball at Stony Brook University. Her sister, Reese, 9, is a teammate.
Their dad joined the JTAA coaching ranks when he retired from Major League Baseball in 2020.
“It felt like the right thing to do was me giving my time to help promote the league as much as possible, and little by little I got more and more involved,” Koehler said.
Now, he starts most mornings on group texts, arranging practices and scheduling games. He helped devise rules to maintain competitive balance in the league’s different age-based divisions. And he’s usually the first to arrive at the Jupiter Community Park fields, pulling a wagon full of equipment.
“He’s like the commissioner of the league,” said Hand, a three-time All Star who pitched in the 2022 World Series for the Philadelphia Phillies.
‘Sometimes I forget that it’s just a game’
Hand got involved at JTAA after signing up his daughter, Lila, 9, to play for Koehler’s team. A Minnesota native, Hand also helps coach his 7-year-old son Cuyler’s baseball team; Cuyler serves as the Longhorns’ batboy.
Cishek started coaching while he was still playing in the majors, popping into the JTAA fields before and after his own season. He and his wife have another daughter, 4-year-old Eleanor, who he warns is an up-and-coming prospect.
“This reminds me of when I was playing Little League,” said Cishek, a Massachusetts native who pitched in the 2018 playoffs for the Chicago Cubs.
“When you’re playing major league baseball, you get caught up with how serious it is. And it should be, right? It’s your job,” he said. “Sometimes I forget that it’s just a game. You get out there, you just enjoy it, have fun and get better.”
Koehler, born in the Bronx borough of New York City, marvels at how the three former Marlins pitchers wound up coaching together on the same girls rec softball teams, a few miles from the Marlins spring training complex where they started their major league careers together.
“Three guys from cold-weather states who relocated to Jupiter, Florida, who had girls around the same age. It’s kind of a funny thing,” Koehler said.
Some parents have no idea of the coaching staff’s big-league background. Those who do are both impressed and amused by the sight of former major league players offering instruction to a bunch of 8- to 10-year-old girls.
“It’s almost like a movie. It should be a sitcom,” said Shawn Lisowy, whose daughter, Macie, plays for the Longhorns.
“We never had any opportunity to have that level of coaching when we were kids,” he told Stet News. “It’s a blessing she gets to play with them. Great guys. Sweet opportunity. These are memories she’ll be able to look back on one day.”
In February, Koehler arranged for some current Marlins to spend time with the Seahawks girls. Manager Clayton McCullough and several players including Otto Lopez and Xavier Edwards served as base and field coaches as the girls played their own spring training game.
‘They all have given back so much’
Seahawks director Courtney Rooney credits Koehler, Cishek and Hand with helping to rebuild the Seahawks after the pandemic took a toll on sports leagues nationwide.
“We are fortunate that we have them. And the growth of the league, we wouldn’t have the growth without them,” she said.
“Tom has been a right-hand man to me rebuilding the organization. They all have given back so much. It has been phenomenal and we are thankful for it.”
Koehler goes out of his way to emphasize the value of rec sports, especially for kids who don’t want to participate in competition-focused travel sports.
“Everybody is so concerned about the future: ‘If my kid doesn’t play travel now, they won’t make the high school team.’ I just think, at 10 years old, your kids aren’t playing for that reason. Your kids might not want to play when they are in high school,” he said.
“I want to make sure everybody has the same opportunity to improve regardless of what skill level they start at. We try to teach the game with the long-term plan in mind. We want girls hitting and making plays and not just looking for walks and stealing every pitch and trying to score five runs as fast as possible.”
He drives that point home in short lectures during practice: Stay focused. Make the basic plays. Hit the ball hard.
“Like I try to tell the parents, I’m loud, but I try to be encouragingly loud,” Koehler said.
“It’s nice to be out here with our own kids, but what else are we going to do? Sit around and play golf all day?”
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. He publishes the Lake Worth Beach Independent on Substack, covering the town where he lives.
