Jaime Vela and Chase Tunstall have always had a common bond: baseball

Whether it was little league; winning a district championship at Moses Lake High School; or rounding out the pitching staff at Big Bend Community College, the white pearl with the red stitching linked the two.

So when both players’ eligibility ran out for American Legion summer baseball the natural next step was to shift from player to coach. Vela joined Robert Haensel’s staff on the AA Walleyes, while Tunstall worked under Jameson Lange — an assistant coach at Big Bend — with the AAA Spuds.

“I’ve known from a young age that I wanted to be around baseball so really it was my first summer that I didn’t have the option to go play Spuds,” Vela said. “I was a little old so I talked to coach Haensel right around baseball season for the high school and I talked to him and I said, ‘Hey, I’m open this summer and I’m interested in a coaching position.’ He kind of just jumped right on it and we just kind of rolled with it.”

Tunstall and Lange linked up after Big Bend’s season ended.

“He just asked me after this last year if I’d join him to help coach the pitching and do other stuff to help him out during the year,” Tunstall said.

Both first-year assistants went through the tumult a baseball season can bring. The Spuds struggled on the road and narrowly missed the postseason. In the AA ranks, the Walleyes finished their first 20 games with a 2-18 record.

Welcome to coaching.

“The biggest thing I took away from it is just that how much I enjoyed actually coaching and everything,” said Tunstall, who is headed to Northern State University in the fall. “It was a lot different experience and you get to see the game from a whole different standpoint and I really understand now how stressful and how different coaching than actually playing is.”

Despite the mounting losses, Vela also enjoyed his time in the dugout.

“It was a lot of fun, it was a ton of fun,” he said. “At times it may have been a bit difficult because I have to sit back and remember that I’m teaching it and I’m not doing it anymore so now it’s more how to get across the fundamentals of the game and why we do certain things and things like that to the kids instead of it just being automatic and knowing why and now you have to teach them why.”

More, Tunstall had the added dynamic of coaching former teammate Nate Ball and brother Cade Tunstall. Being the pitching coach, when Cade Tunstall ran into trouble it was the older brother who ambled up to the mound for a conversation.

“I’ve played college baseball for two years and I had somewhat of success at that level so he’d (Cade Tunstall)) listen to me every now and then, but you know how little brothers are,” Chase Tunstall said. “Sometimes they kind of just blow you off, but overall he was great. It was fun coaching him. That was probably one of the greatest times is actually being able to coach him.”

Vela commended Chase Tunstall’s ability to switch roles seamlessly and command respect from friends and a little brother.

“I tip my cap to him a little bit because usually when a coach speaks it’s done now,” Vela said. “If somebody’s older than you and somebody older than you says something it’s for a reason. It’s like trying to coach your best friend. You have your friends on the team and you’re trying to coach them and help them.

“Sometimes it can be a little bit difficult, but he went out there and he did a darn good job with those guys and he did well coaching those kids up and even the kids our age respect him a lot because of the amount of knowledge he has for the game.”

The Walleyes made strides in practice and in-game, finishing 8-13 over the last month or so of the season.

“We didn’t have a lot of days off to go and practice so we found out we had to get our practices in before a game, much like a big leaguer,” Vela said. “Big leaguers don’t practice every day, they usually practice before a game. So we took that approach and we kind of just ran with it.”

Starting off in the same program, just at different levels, before long the two former teammates could transform into a coaching staff.

“He (Chase Tunstall) enjoyed it,” Vela said. “I know it’s something that he’s interested in doing in his future. It’s interesting, him being at their level and me being down there at the bottom level... We definitely could be a combination in the future.”