Jim Danley, Colorado’s winningest prep baseball coach, built Eaton dynasty off the knuckle-curve and a farm system

Editor’s Note: Fourth of a five-part series on Colorado baseball icons. The first three profiled were Scott Bullock, Jenny Cavnar and Chris Hanks.

It could be argued that the roots of Colorado’s winningest baseball program can be found in two unlikely places: On a farm in unincorporated Gill, where Jim Danley was raised, and then decades later in Stillwater, Okla.

That’s where Danley went in 1987 to discover the knuckle-curve, which Oklahoma State’s Pat Hope was using to dominate Division I that season. That pitch, embedded into an Eaton farm system drawing from a community that lives and dies with the sport, was the legal cheat-code that uncorked a dynasty.

In 44 seasons as Eaton’s head coach from 1972 to 2015, Danley’s record was 807-163-2, a Colorado-best for wins and tied for the nation’s top prep winning percentage (83.1%) at the end of his tenure. Danley’s Reds won more state titles (11) than any other Colorado program in history — all after he systematically introduced the knuckle-curve.

“We started throwing that pitch after I was watching an Oklahoma State game on TV and saw Hope throw it — I stopped right in my living room and said, ‘Wait a minute, what is that? That’s either illegal or the best breaking pitch I’ve ever seen,’” Danley said. “A week later, I was down at Oklahoma State talking with (Cowboys coach) Tom Holliday and Hope.

“The state championships started in ’94, and happened pretty regularly after that — and that’s largely because of the effect of that pitch. It’s a pitch where high school kids aren’t able to do much with it and we won all but one title with a knuckle-curve pitcher on the mound.”

While Eaton’s opposition wasn’t able to do much with the knuckle-curve, the Reds harnessed its effectiveness into perennial dominance. The school made 23 consecutive Class 3A semifinal appearances from 1993 to 2015, a consistency underscored by the youth system, “Eaton Baseball,” that Danley first began developing in 1969 as an assistant coach.

“I learned a long time ago you have to give as much time to that 6-year-old as you do to that 16-year-old,” Danley said.

Eaton Baseball’s morning league program was a feeder for the high school. After the CHSAA season ended, high school players would split up and coach youth teams from T-ball through elementary school. In the afternoon, those teenage coaches dominated the Legion circuit, winning 10 state titles and another 1,131 games during Danley’s tenure.

“The biggest thing here was getting the kids playing at the younger levels,” Danley said. “The first thing (longtime assistant) Bob Ervin and I did was to get those morning leagues going. We had to do all the experimentation on our own (with the knuckle-curve), because we were coming in cold with that pitch and weren’t sure the best way to teach it and at what age.”

Kyle Ottoson played for the Reds from 2005-08, pitching Eaton to a title as a senior. The former Padres minor leaguer came up through the Eaton farm system and was introduced to the knuckle-curve in fifth grade. The southpaw is one of 76 college players, and eight draft picks, the Reds produced under Danley.

“It’s been an Eaton secret — well, I guess it’s not a secret anymore — but it used to be on how we’d throw it and how we’d train to throw it,” Ottoson said. “There were many techniques and drills even as a sixth, seventh grader that I would practice and work on that didn’t come full circle until I was 15 years old throwing on varsity, when I began to develop it as a really good pitch. I took it all the way to minor league ball.”

With the knuckle-curve as his proprietary weapon, and his youth system cultivating talent around town, Danley built an almost unstoppable baseball force. But the good times did not last forever. In 2015, after winning his 11th state title and Eaton being crowned the MaxPreps’ small-school national champion, Danley was ousted.

The controversial ending to Danley’s tenure was the subject of enormous media attention in smalltown Eaton, population 4,467. Danley and his supporters describe his dismissal as a result of disgruntled parents who had enough power to see him out the door. His detractors describe a coach who lost institutional control and was too intense and demanding toward his players.

Whatever you believe, Danley said he now has “no ill-will or hard feelings at all” toward the community or the school district for how his Eaton career ended. He was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame the next year.

“It was a travesty that a guy like him would be forced to end his career in that manner,” longtime prep baseball coach Bob Bote said. “It all boiled down to a couple unhappy parents, as it always does. But I don’t think what happened colors anything that he accomplished.”

After his unceremonious ending in Eaton, Danley became the pitching coach at Littleton under Bote for two seasons. Despite the 160-mile round-trip from his house for practices, the role proved perfect for Danley, a pitching obsessive who first fell in love with the art of throwing as a boy by learning tips from Eaton’s Hispanic farmhands.

“Sometimes he’ll watch tape of pitchers at night when he can’t go to sleep,” Bote said. “He’ll put on some old-timer like (Hall of Famer) ‘Three-Finger’ Mordecai Brown from the early 1900s. He can tell you all about him, what he threw, how he threw it. Pick out any pitcher in the history of major league baseball and he’s liable to know what he threw, because he’s probably watched him.”

The youngsters in Eaton’s system, from tee ball through varsity, took notice of Danley’s dedication. They bought what he was selling, a belief perhaps best epitomized by the signature dirty hats Eaton players wore. The grimier the ballcap, the better: It was a sign of toughness, commitment and tradition.

“People hated it, but I loved it because it was the only thing I ever knew growing up,” said Adam Geisick, who played for Eaton from 2007-10 and was later an assistant coach. “The dirty ballcaps sum up Eaton baseball — blue-collar, hard-working individuals who played the game right and hard because we wanted to win so badly for Coach Danley and our town.”

Danley, 73, said he’s done with coaching on a formal basis. He had a heart attack about a month ago but is already back on his feet, continuing to use his time to sprinkle knuckle-curve seeds up and down the Front Range through individual instruction.

As for Danley’s ultimate legacy, longtime rival Ralph Nance, who coached against Eaton for many years while at Faith Christian, emphasized how Danley put small-school baseball on the map in Colorado.

“The first number of years he was there, they were terrible,” Nance recalled. “But what I appreciated the most about him is he stuck with it and built a program, as opposed to jumping to 4A or 5A when they got good and going for a big-time individual career. He was about community, the program, the kids…. And in doing that he showed a lot of the guys who played in 3A were just as good as the 4A or 5A guys.”

So is Danley the greatest Colorado high school baseball coach ever? That debate comes down to him and Cherry Creek’s Marc Johnson, who is one win shy of Danley’s all-time wins mark. Johnson would’ve broken the record this year, had the CHSAA season not been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But even if Danley’s all-time mark is destined to fall, those who wore red pinstripes — in addition to many who witnessed the height of the Eaton dynasty — believe his place as Colorado’s greatest prep coach is already cemented.

“He’s the best coach who ever set foot in Colorado, period,” Ottoson said. “Marc Johnson, whom I had the pleasure of playing for on a couple select teams, is neck-and-neck with him. But in my biased opinion, Jim is the best in Colorado baseball history…. Look at the wins, the titles, the winning percentage. The stat lines don’t lie, and to have that kind of success from a relatively small pool of talent — obviously that has to attest to great coaching.”