HOUSTON — Like father, like son.
For now, at least. In a week or so, Brian and Troy Snitker will differ in that only one will have earned a 2021 World Series ring.
Brian Snitker, the Braves’ manager, and his son, Troy, the Astros’ co-hitting coach, are the First Family of this Fall Classic, facing off for Thanksgiving dinner bragging rights.
“Quite honestly, tomorrow at 7:09 or whatever, he’s going to want to kick my ass,” Brian Snitker said Monday at a Minute Maid Park press conference.
“Obviously, we probably both feel the same way in terms of that this is about the guys that are playing, this is about the teams that are playing,” Troy Snitker said. “I know he feels that his guys have overcome so much to get to this point and are very deserving. I obviously feel the same way.”
Troy grew up with his dad climbing the Braves’ organizational chart, managing eight different minor league affiliates and working as a big-league coach under five different skippers. As much of a Braves supporter as he became, though, “My first tee-ball team was the Astros,” he said. “So at 5, 6, those were the first uniforms I ever wore.”
Many questions concerned how Ronnie Snitker, Brian’s wife and Troy’s mother, would handle this intra-family matchup.
“I don’t know that she knows what she’s getting into,” Brian said. Said Troy: “I definitely think she’s a work in progress for how she’s going to deal with all this. I don’t think any of us know.”
The one certainty, with Tuesday’s Game 1 approaching, was the mutual pride the father and son hold for each other.
“I know it was a dream of his to be able to do this and be able to manage in the big leagues, and I think he always knew that he could do it,” Troy Snitker said of his father, whom the Braves tabbed as their interim manager in 2016 at age 60, “but I definitely think there was a point where he probably didn’t think it was going to happen anymore, which makes this very special.”
Said Brian of his son, who refused to take a job with the Braves: “I’m very proud of him. He went about it the right way. He’s always been just a really hard, dedicated worker. He got his foot in the door, like a lot of us have over the years, and it’s just where he’s at.”