Koskie aims to inspire young athletes with new website

Ex-big leaguer Corey Koskie (Anola, Man.,), shown here at his Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame induction in St. Marys, Ont., in 2015, has started a new website with the goal of inspiring and encouraging young athletes. Photo Credit: Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame

By Kevin Glew

Canadian Baseball Network

Corey Koskie believes in the power of a story.

And few athletes can offer more inspiration by sharing their personal experiences than the former Minnesota Twins third baseman.

Now more than 12 years removed from his last major league game, the Anola, Man., native, who resides in Plymouth, Minn., could be considered an expert in a number of areas, including overcoming long odds, conquering adversity, adapting to life after a professional sports career and how to motivate young athletes.

Fortunately for parents, coaches and the athletes themselves, Koskie has chosen to share his stories on his most recent project, a website called Linklete (linklete.com).The slogan for the site is “Connecting Youth Sports for Good,” and Koskie’s goal is to use the platform to share stories that provide positive life lessons.

“In my coaching experiences, I saw that I was able to connect with the kids, it doesn’t matter if they were 10 years old or if they were 18 years old, through stories, through the power of the story,” explained Koskie, who, along with his wife, Shannon, is a parent of four boys, ranging in age from seven to 17.

The 2015 Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee has coached more than 90 youth sports teams and he has found that sharing stories is one of the most effective ways to motivate the kids.

“In a teenager’s mind, unless you present something that’s engaging and they truly choose to engage, then you’re not going to get them,” said Koskie. “So that’s where I see a lot of coaches making their mistakes. They go on forever and then they try to force engagement. You end up getting their minds instead of their hearts. You’ve got to get their heart, when you get their heart then they will engage and they will listen to you fully.”

And the stories on Koskie’s site will hit you smack dab in the heart. The former Twin bares his soul, writing about his own personal experiences with adversity.

“Anxiety is going through the roof. Depression is going through the roof in our young athletes. If my stories can help them process their feelings, then it’s all worth it,” said Koskie. “I’m being transparent so they can read my stories and know that there were times when I was an idiot, but now I’m OK. It’s OK to think you’re stupid. You’ve just got to get through it and figure it out.”

Since the website launched this spring, Koskie has published several personal stories and at the end of them he summarizes what he learned from his experience as an athlete and how this can be applied to business and youth sports.

Several other professional athletes have also contributed inspirational stories, including fellow big leaguers and ex-Twins Justin Morneau (New Westminster, B.C.) and Brian Dozier, as well as former NHL players Blake Sloan, Ryan Carter and Lou Nanne. Business executives, doctors and coaches have also shared their personal experiences.

“What these stories do is say, ‘It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to suck. Look at all of these people and what they had to go through, how they failed and they came out of it OK,’” said Koskie.

The ex-big leaguer clearly puts a lot of thought into the site. He even chooses monthly themes.

“December is what I call pride month,” said Koskie. “So all of the stories are going to focus on stories of pride, where people overcome prideful events.”

In the first story, Koskie discusses how his pride was wounded when after his outstanding 2001 season – in which he belted 26 home runs and drove in 103 runs primarily as the Twins’ cleanup hitter – he felt slighted when his new manager Ron Gardenhire dropped him to sixth in the batting order to start the next season. Koskie writes that pride hindered his performance that campaign.

“I’m giving my story to people to say this is the mistake I made, so I’m hoping they don’t make the same mistake,” said Koskie. “Pride is a big, big thing for every one of us. And a lot of us don’t challenge it head on.”

Corey Koskie (Anola, Man.) played seven of his nine major league seasons with the Minnesota Twins.

Koskie also regularly records YouTube videos and has a podcast called “How I Got Here” associated with the site. For this podcast, he interviews successful athletes, coaches, health care professionals and business people about their careers.

“The goal with the podcast is to present other people’s stories, because when we see successful people, we think they have got all their junk together,” said Koskie. “People think everybody else in the world is so perfect and that their life sucks. And you start hearing the stories of these successful people and then you realize that it is hard. It was hard for these people to get to where they got to. And it’s encouraging to hear their stories and the battles they had to go through to get to where they are.”

Koskie also has Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts for his site.

It’s a truly altruistic project for the Canadian who, thanks to nine years in big leagues and his successful business ventures, is financially secure. He certainly didn’t have to create this site which is important but also time-consuming. But he chose to launch it because he is passionate about encouraging and inspiring young athletes.

Raised on a farm five kilometers south of Anola, Man., Koskie was a multi-sport star in high school. He particularly excelled as a hockey goalie and in volleyball, while baseball was just something to do in the summer.

He went to the University of Manitoba for one year and played volleyball and then he began receiving calls from a baseball coach named John Smith from Des Moines Area Community College in Boone, Iowa, asking him to come play for his squad. The young Canuck initially turned the offer down. But Smith was persistent and called every day until Koskie relented.

It’s important to point out, however, that Koskie did not receive a full baseball scholarship. He had to secure a student loan to head south to college. And in his first (and only) collegiate season, he was named a second-team All-American. After that, he came back to Canada to hone his skills at the National Baseball Institute in 1993 and 1994 and his prowess on the diamond was enough to convince the Twins to select him in the 26th round of the 1994 draft.

Needless to say, the odds of a 26th rounder making it to the big leagues are slim, but Koskie worked relentlessly and after five seasons of progressing through the Twins’ system, the 6-foot-3 infielder made his big league debut on September 9, 1998. He became a regular with the Twins the following season and batted .310 and belted 11 home runs in 117 games.

But his true breakout season came two years later, when he scored 100 runs, socked 26 homers, collected 103 RBI and swiped 27 bases to become the first third baseman in American League history to record at least 100 runs, 25 homers, 100 RBI and 25 stolen bases in the same season.

In the ensuing three campaigns, he never hit less than 14 home runs in a season and he helped the Twins to three consecutive playoff berths before he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in December 2004.

Corey Koskie (Anola, Man.) socked 11 home runs in 97 games for the Toronto Blue Jays in 2005. Photo Credit: Getty Images

He would slam 11 round-trippers in 97 contests for the Canadian club in 2005 prior to being swapped to the Milwaukee Brewers in January 2006. He had 12 homers in 76 games for the Brewers in 2006 when he sustained a concussion on July 5 when he fell backward while he was chasing a bloop fly ball. It seemed like a harmless play at the time, but Koskie would endure nearly three years of post-concussion symptoms – including nausea, dizziness and fatigue – before he felt like he could resume normal everyday activities, let alone play professional baseball.

After a comeback attempt, he retired in 2009. In all, in nine big league seasons, Koskie suited up for 989 games – more than any other player from Manitoba – and ranks eighth all-time among Canadians in home runs (124) and seventh in on-base percentage (.367).

After he retired as a player, he purchased two Planet Fitness franchises. Being a health club owner was an eye-opening experience for Koskie. After making millions as a big leaguer, working in the real business world was a harsh reality check. He went from chartered planes, clubhouse attendants and fan adulation to unplugging toilets, being yelled at at the welcome desk and trying to balance his own books.

But after many long hours, hard lessons and deep soul searching, he transformed the clubs into profitable ventures before selling them off in 2017. He has not been shy about sharing stories about his business travails and triumphs on Linklete.

Through all of his recent successes and struggles, he has continued to coach his son’s teams. But after coaching more than 90 teams, what would Koskie most like to see change about youth sports today?

“I would like to see more support for the kids,” said Koskie. “Parents are saying now that they support their kids and many of them are supporting them on a monetary basis. They’ll pay for this coach or they’ll send their child to a certain program. It’s more vanity support versus a true emotional support. It seems like as parents we’re afraid that our kids are going to fail and we don’t want our kids to get their feelings hurt, so we try to bulldoze all adversity.”

This is unfortunate because Koskie says – and he emphasizes this in the stories on his site – that failure and adversity are two of life’s greatest teachers. They have taught him a lot on and off the field.

Koskie plans to expand his site to include more stories from business people, parents and coaches in the future. In the meantime, he’ll continue to divulge his personal stories and discuss the mistakes he has made in hopes that others can learn from them.

“My goal is to inspire and encourage,” said Koskie. “It’s tough to be transparent in the social media world, where people will rip on you and just get all over you, but at the end of the day, what keeps me going is that I want to make a change in kids’ lives. And I want people to learn from my mistakes, because there are two ways to learn: one is to go through it, the other is to learn it from somebody else. So I want to help kids and parents with what they’re going through and help them have a great experience.”