LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Pursuing a Kentucky state championship with the Trinity High School baseball team always stirred boundless passion in David Troutman.
It started in the mid-1980s when Troutman served as a student manager for the Shamrocks. That fire returned with fervent joy after he accepted head coach Rick Arnold’s offer to become Trinity’s outfield coach in 2021.
“The baseball park was his place,” Troutman’s daughter, Erin, a freshman at the University of Kentucky, said.
David Troutman (center) coached the Trinity High School outfielders until his passing on May 22.
“He loved being here. If he didn’t feel good one day, he’d come out to practice and come home with the biggest smile on his face.”
But chasing championships was not what drove Troutman to fight through the terminal cancer that burned through his body over the final three years of his life, until his passing on May 22.
Troutman’s inspiring persistence for serving the Trinity baseball program was about more than dogpiles and lifting a trophy overhead.
No, #TROUTSTRONG is about directing young people into sharing and sacrificing for goals while seeing a world beyond themselves.
“There’s no textbook for a situation like this,” Arnold said. “But we’re not here to win for David. We’re here to win with him.”
#TROUTSTRONG is about relationships — the incredible relationships David built with his players, with his friends, the Trinity community and, certainly, his family.
Start with his relationship with center fielder Kyle Campbell. Before Campbell developed into one of the team’s best players, a talented hitter who will join the University of Louisville program next season, Campbell bristled through his first season of Troutman’s snarky critique of his outfield play.
“At first, I was like, ‘Who is this guy? What is he doing? Whatever. Forget this guy,’ “ Campbell said.
That was freshman Campbell. This is senior Campbell:
“I wanted to talk to him every day because it wasn’t just about baseball, it was about life,” Campbell said.
“You could always go and talk to him and he’d have some funny comments. We connected because we were both sarcastic in our ways.”
Move next to his relationship with his son, Ryan, the 24-year-old backup goalkeeper for Louisville City FC. Soccer, not baseball, became Ryan’s game. But as his father’s illness became more challenging, Ryan encouraged his Dad to follow his passion and ask Arnold about working on the field with Trinity baseball players.
David coached in Little League and American Legion ball but serving at Trinity would be his shot at the big leagues. Showing his outfielders the importance of lining up throws and hitting cutoff men in the best spot to make a quick relay. Understanding angles. David Troutman lived his favorite sport.
“I told him that he needed to do something that he really, really enjoyed,” Ryan Troutman said. “For him that was baseball, especially at a place like Trinity that meant so much to him and our family.
“To do that with people that you really care about, who you really love and at a place that you really love is special. Not many people get a chance to do that.”
“When I asked him if he wanted to be a coach, he was almost in tears,” Arnold said. “He said, ‘I would love to be an on-the-field coach.’ And then I was almost in tears.”
Arnold and Troutman began talking ball and giving each other grief in 1983 or 1984, when they were Trinity underclassmen. They remained close at the University of Louisville and after they started families and careers.
They’d see each other at high school games across Jefferson County, when Troutman was scouting, searching for prospects to recommend for the Florida Marlins while Arnold did the same thing for the Kansas City Royals. Their passion didn’t require a paycheck. Their love of baseball was their reward. They were volunteers, baseball lifers.
“David always had an eye for the little things,” Arnold said. “He saw things other people missed ...
“... not everybody can connect with younger kids all the time, especially older people. That was David’s gift, getting kids to respond. He would have little nicknames for guys.
“He had a great feel for the room. If practice was going poorly or the effort wasn’t there, David could say something funny. That would lighten up the tone and things would take off from there.”
Do not overlook his relationship with Caleb Ricks, a junior outfielder who has already committed to the University of Louisville but doesn’t always get as many at bats as he likes. Troutman knew what was required to wait your turn.
Trinity baseball coach Rick Arnold (center) huddled with David Troutman's daughter, Erin, and son, Ryan, before a recent practice. WDRB Photo Rick Bozich
“He wasn’t like a coach, he was a mentor to me,” Ricks said. “Whenever you needed something he would be right there beside you.
“Always had a little joke when you were down, something that would get you right back up. He always wanted the best for you.”
And, of course, nothing was more important than his relationship with his daughter. Sports was not Erin Troutman’s passion. Theater at Assumption High School was her sweet spot.
Her Dad was an accountant who worked for Kruse Plastic and Intrado Enterprise before he started Trinity Analytics. Troutman volunteered for community boards, served at Trinity and piloted a hot air balloon. He was an insightful, intelligent, busy man.
But Dad always made time for his daughter’s theater events. So Erin made time to sit on frosty metal bleachers and watch baseball with him.
“I would sit with him at the ball park and watch 21 innings of baseball some days,” she said. “I mean, we would literally watch a million innings of baseball. I fell in love with him watching the game.”
You want the definition of love? Try this. At some point early this season, Erin convinced her father to let her have a car for the final months of her freshman year at UK so she could drive to Louisville and watch every Trinity game.
The Shamrocks (37-4) are three wins from a state championship. After defeating Pikeville, 2-0, Thursday at Legends Field in Lexington, Trinity returns there Saturday at 10 a.m. for a quarterfinal game against Russell County.
If the Shamrocks survive, they will return to Lexington next weekend to try to finish something Troutman taught his players to call “The Journey.”
Yes, this team is absolutely determined to deliver what Troutman asked them to do — stay #TROUTSTRONG.
There are T-shirts with the hashtag phrase. There is a banner they hang in their dugout. There are family members and friends who will follow Trinity’s quest for a championship to the final pitch of the season. There are huddles and pep talks before every game.
The idea isn’t simply to win the trophy for Troutman, who lost his 3-year battle with Leptomeningeal Disease on his 57th birthday. The quest is to win it with him — respecting the promise they made to David Troutman over his final weeks.
“When I went to say goodbye to him, because he knew and I knew (the disease was terminal), David made me promise him that I wouldn’t let this situation become a distraction,” Arnold said.
“And I said something like, ‘That’s going to be impossible.’ And he said, ‘You’re going to make it happen.’
“So we’ve tried to do that. We’ve honored him by continuing to play hard. Win or lose, ahead or behind, we continue to play hard.”
The Troutman family, which includes his wife, Shannon, and Ryan’s twin brother, Christopher; David’s parents, George and Mary Troutman; and his brother, Patrick, has established the David Troutman Foundation.
“The money will go toward raising awareness and hopefully developing some cures for rare forms of cancer, like my father had,” Ryan Troutman said.
“But he was also very passionate about giving back to the community and developing young athletes into young adults. So we’re also planning to do some youth development, youth leadership stuff.”
You can read about the foundation and donate here.
Then there is one more thing, one final celebration that is talked about while creating motivation and smiles in the Trinity dugout because smiles and rewarding passionate work were essential to Troutman:
The quest to earn an all-you-can-eat session of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.
Campbell and Ricks said if there was anything David Troutman talked about more than his family and Trinity baseball it was Chick-Fil-A food. Nearly every day he would visit the restaurant on Shelbyville Road that sits about 500 yards from the baseball park.
“He had that app and like 130,000 points, something unbelievable,” Campbell said. “He said that if we won state, he was using all those points and buying us whatever we wanted.”
“It was the spicy chicken sandwich,” Ricks said. “He would always call it, ‘The Spicy.’ So we’re all getting The Spicy.”
#TROUTSTRONG, indeed.
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