Bronson Arroyo: These are the 3 best leaders I played with during 16 MLB seasons

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Bronson Arroyo pitched for 16 years in Major League Baseball with four teams.

These are the three best leaders he played with.

Jason Varitek, catcher for the Boston Red Sox Jason embodied everything you look for in a leader.

Advertisement He was always one of the hardest workers and crushed leg workouts.

Thats why he had those massive thighs.

He was organized.

He was like a half-coach, half-player.

He ran the pitching meetings.

On most teams, the pitching coach does that.

But Jason was the guy we leaned on.

He was also the only guy I ever played with who wore the captains C on his jersey.

He was the only guy I was ever around who pulled that much of the load.

When youre looking for somebody to lead the charge, you want the guy who you think can go to the top of the mountain and fight a grizzly with a knife.

That was Jason.

We played the Yankees one day, and Alex Rodriguez was a guy we were trying to beat on the inner half of the plate.

I wound up hitting him with an 87 mph sinker on his elbow pad, and he just started yelling at me: Throw that s over the fing plate.

He yelled that out twice.

Jason just wasnt having it.

Alex was big and strong and a huge superstar, so it took somebody with some balls to stand up to him in a meaningful way.

Jason didnt even hesitate.

He was just right there to protect myself and the whole pitching staff.

Jason would have done that 15 times in a row if he had to.

Dusty Baker, manager of the Cincinnati Reds Dusty was a very unique manager.

He felt like the principal of the high school, and at the same time, he felt like one of the cooler kids in class.

Thats hard to do.

Ive seen it many, many times where a guy goes from an assistant coach to the manager and they become a different person under the stresses of the job.

Dusty was not that guy.

He was always a players manager.

He always sided with players over contracts and disputes with the front office or anything.

He felt like he was pulling on the same rope as we all were.

He was also the most eclectic guy Ive ever been around.

Ive been in his office, where he had Willie Mays hanging out while at the same time he was sending flowers to Hank Aarons wife and then calling Joey Votto in to give him two tomatoes he had grown because he heard Joey wasnt feeling good and then handing me a T-shirt that was signed by Buddy Guy.

Ive never seen a guy juggle so many humans in that type of way.

Advertisement If a pitcher he had coached in the past came into the locker room, hed call me into his office and hed tell stories and hed say: That reminds me of you, Bronson.

You guys pitch alike.

He really knew how to connect people together.

He did it throughout generations.

The greatest gift that Dusty had was that he could relate to a player off the field.

That was his No.

1 leadership skill.

He would be out at the club.

He might see me out and know I wasnt pitching in three days, and he might see somebody else on the team and send them home.

Get outta here.

What are you doing? That was leadership in a way, too.

He commanded a ton of respect from his players and everyone around the league.

If Dusty told you something, you knew he believed it.

He wasnt bullsing you.

I really thought that was remarkable.

There are some managers who try to play the middle of the road: They tell you one thing to your face, but they tell you something different to management.

Dusty wasnt that guy, and that made him special.

Kevin Millar, first baseman/outfielder for the Boston Red Sox A few things made Kevin special.

One was the ability to bring the most out of personalities inside a locker room.

Ive never seen anybody affect superstars like that who wasnt a superstar himself.

He made Manny Ramirez want to be like Kevin.

He made David Ortiz turn into Big Papi.

He could turn a locker room into a circus, but everyone knew that when we stepped between the white lines, it was very serious.

It allowed people to be themselves.

The second thing was that he wasnt afraid to speak up to management.

He had no problem walking into the managers office or the general managers office and speaking up for the team.

I was rarely around a guy who was as witty as he was.

You might think: What does wit have to do with baseball? Youre playing 162 games and youre not always comfortable in the locker room.

He just had a way of making everyone feel comfortable.

He made it so everyone had to feel comfortable.

Advertisement It was notorious that Curt Schilling never spoke to anyone on the day he pitched, and you better not speak to him.

Less than two months into the 2004 season, Schilling was playing cards with guys and laughing on the day he pitched.

That wouldnt have happened without Kevin.

As told to Jayson Jenks.

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