Chuck Kniffin
Charles Edward Kniffin is an American former professional baseball player and coach. Much of Kniffin's three-decade professional career was spent in minor league baseball, but he served 2½ seasons as the Major League pitching coach of the –04 Arizona Diamondbacks on the staff of then-manager Bob Brenly.
Kniffin was born in Rockville Centre, New York. A, left-handed pitcher during his playing days, he was selected by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 25th round of the 1969 Major League Baseball draft out of Nassau Community College. He pitched for ten seasons in the Phillie farm system, compiling a 55–40 record in 244 appearances. Kniffin pitched through injury for much of his career and, by the time he stopped playing, his pitching elbow was "grotesquely misshapen."
After leaving affiliated ball, he settled in Colorado with his wife and got a job as a driver for UPS. In 1984, at the suggestion of a friend, he left his job with UPS to play a season of baseball in Italy. When he returned to the United States, he took a job as a pitching coach in the Seattle Mariners organization. He switched to the Montreal Expos' organization in the early 1990s, then to the Diamondbacks' farm system when that expansion team began play in, serving such teams as the Harrisburg Senators, Ottawa Lynx and Tucson Sidewinders.
Kniffin succeeded Bob Welch as pitching coach of the defending 2001 World Series champion Diamondbacks in, when Arizona won 98 games and the National League West Division title before falling in the Division Series. He worked on Brenly's staff until July 3, 2004, when both he and Brenly were fired in the midst of the rebuilding D-Backs' disastrous 51–111 season. Kniffin then served as pitching coach of the Triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox from 2006–09 until his retirement at the close of the 2009 minor league season.