WAXAHACHIE — WAXAHACHIE — In the 102 years of historic Paul Richards Park in Waxahachie, only one couple has been married there, according to local legend.

It’s a story new Corsicana baseball coach Heath Autrey shares on a Saturday morning over breakfast tacos at Oma’s Jiffy Burger in downtown Waxahachie.

The couple — Heath and Kara Autrey — is going on 10 years of marriage.

“I was surprised she agreed to it,” said Autrey, seated in a booth next to his oldest son, 8-year-old Hunter. “But she knows how special the place is to me.”

Autrey’s father, Larry, played baseball there. Autrey’s family spent countless hours there watching him play baseball for the Indians, where he was a hitting machine.

Several relatives, including his grandfather, M.D., a barber in Waxahachie for decades, is buried in the cemetery next to Richards Park.  

Autrey, 36, even says he studied for exams in the home dugout at the historic ballpark, enjoying the peace and quiet of the towering trees hanging over the outfield walls, that solitude sometimes interrupted by locomotives whistling by on the tracks just behind the third-base dugout.

“It’s special to me on a personal level,” Autrey said. “There’s so much history and tradition there.”

Anyway, back to the big day. Kara wanted a destination wedding. Heath prefered a hometown wedding.

Richards Park won.

They set up a gazebo over the pitcher’s mound. Crepe Myrtles surrounded the mound along the infield grass. Bats lined the walkway for the wedding procession from home plate to the mound. The families sat in chairs on the infield. Everyone else sat in the stands.

“It was different,” said Kara Autrey, who like Heath graduated from Waxahachie High School. “No one had ever done it before. He loves baseball and that’s what his life’s around, so I wanted it too. It was fun and neat.”

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That Heath and Kara shared their nuptials at Richards Park offers some insight into why Autrey is the right man at the right time for Tiger baseball.

Paul Richards was a beloved Major League player, manager, scout and executive born in 1908 in Waxahachie. A recent book about Richards, who died in 1986 at 77, is titled “The Wizard of Waxahachie.”

Those close to Autrey swear he has a little bit of baseball wizardry in him.

His coaching style is all about getting on a personal level with his players, their parents and his coaches. He preaches team building, using a boot camp and sports psychology videos to build a cohesive ballclub. Hours working on things such as bunting and baserunning also get his players thinking together.

“He really preaches about it and that’s all he wants to do,” said Garett Thomas, who played the past four seasons for Autrey at Red Oak. “It’s about playing together. If you don’t play together, you’re not going to get where you need to be.”

Autrey says that his No. 1 asset is communicating with his players.

“You have to be able to communicate with the players and their families,” Autrey said. “Make sure we’re all on the same page. My main goal is to teach life lessons through baseball.”

It makes sense, seeing that baseball is a game where the players fail — especially with the bat — many more times than they succeed. Life is much the same way.

So building confidence to get his players to play at their best is crucial, Autrey said.

“How do you maintain that confidence from pitch to pitch?” he said.

Autrey uses Brian Cain Peak Performance videos (briancain.com) to teach his players about the mental side of the game. Cain works with UFC star Georges St. Pierre, the Washington Nationals, college powers Alabama, TCU and others and high schools Southlake Carroll and Duncanville.

Matt Curry, who played at Red Oak before Autrey’s arrival and then at TCU — he is currently playing Double-A baseball for Altoona in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization — remembers stopping by his old high school and seeing Autrey’s players watching the Cain videos.

“At TCU we paid Cain a lot of money to come talk to us,” Curry said. “And there the Red Oak players were watching his videos.

“I still use Cain’s stuff today. (Heath’s) teaching those guys at a young age something I never thought about in high school. I got it in my junior year in college.”

Autrey has a notebook he will give each of his players when school starts next month. In it are pyramids similar to ones another wizard, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden — “The Wizard of Westwood — used to teach Hall of Famers Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Bill Walton and others.

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In the binder, there’s a page title “The Autrey Rules.”

There are three rules:

1) Clearly defined role

2) Accept role

3) Enjoy it

Autrey believes if his players will buy into this simple doctrine, the potential for winning increases ten fold.

Autrey said his high school coach, Waxahachie legend Bill Midkiff  — winner of 14 district titles in 20 years — believed that every player had to know what was expected of him.

Autrey bought in as a player. And he’s bought in as a coach.

“Not everybody is going to be the top gun pitcher,” Midkiff said. “Not everybody is going to hit home runs. Somebody has to bunt that guy over to second. Somebody has to steal a base. Somebody has to make a great defensive play.

“You have to have some blue collar guys that are willing to get their nose dirty. And that guy who hits home runs might be expected to put down a bunt sometime.”

Autrey said no play in baseball challenges a player as a teammate as much as the sacrifice bunt, something the Tigers struggled with all season in 2011 as they missed the playoffs.

Someone has to be willing to lay down a bunt to set up an at-bat for a teammate, Autrey said.

“The biggest challenge is not per say baseball itself,” he said, “but to get the guys to be a good teammate. They have to be supportive of each other.”

Autrey’s predecessor, Billy Harlan, faced that dilemma just last season, running the Tigers several laps in Terrell because only one player congratulated Gage Curry after he threw someone out at the plate.

Autrey said if he can set a clearly defined goal for each player, combined with the tradition of Corsicana baseball, communicating with the parents and the backing of administration — he asked to give superintendent Dr. Diane Frost, the school board and executive director of extracurricular activities Harlan a special mention — then winning will happen.  

“There’s no reason why the kids can’t buy into what’s going on,” Autrey said.

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Autrey is more than just a team builder. He is a well-thought-of hitting instructor in baseball circles, one reason why he runs all of the baseball camps for legendary coach Augie Garrido at the University of Texas.

“He’s an unbelievable hitting instructor,” said Whoa Dill, coach of the JUCO World Series champion Navarro Bulldogs.

Not surprisingly, Autrey preaches the fundamentals. Thomas credits his success at Red Oak — he batted .370 as a junior and .420 as a senior — to Autrey’s hitting program.

“He knows what he’s talking about,” said Thomas, who will play next season for Brookhaven College. “He has a good resume. He puts things in perspective and he makes it easy to understand. As long as you’re coachable and you respect him and care a lot and work hard, he’ll work with you as long as you need to.”

Autrey breaks down hitting to this — every pitch is an at-bat. And thinking like that creates quality at-bats by only swinging at quality pitches.

“If you’re hooked up,” Autrey said, “then you’re ready for the moment at that time. You might foul off a pitch, you might take it, but you’re ready because you have concentration and passion. It’s the same on defense. Be hooked up in everything you do.”

There are other fundamentals. Focus on the lower half of your body. Keep your head still. Make productive outs.

One thing Autrey won’t talk about is a slump.

“The high school season is so short, you don’t have time to be in a slump,” Autrey said.

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From Waxahachie, where the Indians were 50-10 while Autrey played third base for the Indians, to Vernon Junior College and UT-Pan American.

From Navarro College as an assistant to D-Bat, a Dallas select team. The Coppell Copperheads in the Texas Collegiate League and TCU. Ferris and Red Oak. And now Corsicana.

His friends and mentors say Autrey has soaked in all of the baseball he can.

“He’s a baseball guy,” Oklahoma Sooners assistant Tim Tadlock said. “Heath has passion for it.”

The best man in his wedding, Texas pitching coach Skip Johnson, who had Autrey as an assistant at Navarro, said the new Tigers coach is there to make kids better players and people.

“He’s a teacher,” Johnson said. “He’s one of the best baseball coaches in the state.”

It all began for Autrey in Waxahachie, at Richards Park, where the game of baseball oozes out of every corner of the old ballpark.

It’s there on that Saturday morning as Autrey walks around his old stomping grounds with Hunter. He teaches his other sons, Ty and Easton, ages 6 and 3, the game.

He is about to teach the high schoolers and children of Corsicana the game of baseball.

“He is a good son of a gun,” Midkiff said. “You’ll are going to enjoy him.”

The Autrey Rules



1) Clearly define role. Ace pitcher or power hitter. Bunter or late-inning defense replacement. Starting catcher or designated runner.



2) Accept role. This is up to the player, and if each individual does so, the probability of winning increases.



3) Enjoy it. Baseball is fun. Play the game that way and the winning will come with it.