TUSCALOOSA _ When Andy Phillips wakes up in the morning, there's no longer a sense of "Where am I?" or "What day is this?" that professional baseball players frequently experience.

There's no thinking about time-zone changes or packing for yet another long road trip, wondering what the family may be up to or even if there's anywhere nearby to get lunch.

There's something to be said for sleeping in your own bed at night, which the 33-year-old now gets to do because he's home. That's home as in his own house, being a part of the community where he was born and spending his days on the University of Alabama campus.

"This is great," he said without showing any sign of doubt.

Friday afternoon, when Alabama opens the 2011 season against Alcorn State (6:05 p.m.), instead of getting ready for another spring training he'll once more have on that familiar uniform that he prized so much as a player and now gets to wear again as the Crimson Tide's new hitting and fielding coach.

It's something that a lot of people can't wait to see.

"I can tell you after three weeks, this guy is going to make a major impact into our program and in a lot of different ways," said head coach Mitch Gaspard, who got to recruit Phillips for a second time, the first as a player.

Phillips the player

For those who don't know, Phillips was not only an All-American for the Crimson Tide but if you were going to try and select the best player in program history he'd certainly be on the short list.

The Demopolis native was drafted in the 41st round out of high school by the Milwaukee Brewers, but during his four seasons at the Capstone batted .356 with 61 home runs, 224 RBIs and 322 hits. When he was selected again by the New York Yankees during his senior year he was the Crimson Tide's career leader in home runs, hits, RBIs and total bases (590), and had helped lead Alabama to three appearances in the College World Series.

When Phillips made his major league debut on Sept. 14, 2004, he immediately became a trivia answer by hitting the first pitch he saw from Terry Adams over Fenway Park's Green Monster - making him just the 21st player in history to hit a home run on the first pitch and the seventh New York Yankee to hit a home run during his first at bat, joining Wilson Betemit, Bubba Crosby, Curtis Granderson, Cody Ransom, Marcus Thames and Todd Zeile.

But Phillips' major league career ending up only being 259 games and 557 plate appearances, with a .250 batting average, 14 home runs and 70 RBIs, as he spent a lot of time going back and forth to the minors. After the Yankees, he bounced around in different organizations, including brief stops with the New York Mets and Cincinnati Reds, and spent the past two seasons with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of the Nippon Professional League and the Tohoku Rahkuten Golden Eagles.

That's a lot of miles traveled, not including the countless trips home when his wife battled cancer and after his mother was in a horrific car accident.

"I'll put my SkyMiles up against anyone's," Phillips said.

Most recently, the language barriers and lifestyle changes in Japan weren't that bad, but the long seasons and seemingly never-ended coming and going took a tool, not just on his wife Bethany, but their young daughter.

"It's very difficult especially because spring training over there you can't be with your family, it's two months you're away from your family, on a island half that time when there's nowhere to go, nothing to do," he explained. "You go to bed and you do the baseball thing. It's very monotonous unlike here where you may play spring-training games every day. You may play eight to 10 spring training games over two months there.

"This year was more of a grind because during the season my family couldn't be with me. The first year they could travel with me everywhere."

An easy decision

On almost the exact same day that Alabama's pitching coach Kyle Bunn resigned, Gaspard received a phone call from Phillips asking if he and assistant coach Dax Norris could hit to him during a tryout with the Boston Red Sox. It was mid-December, when few people are thinking about baseball, but the timing turned out to be a lot more than a coincidence.

"Andy Phillips is someone no question would be at the top of my list," Gaspard said about a possible staff replacement. "He had a workout the next day and I was telling my wife I don't know if I want to dump that on him right now. She said, 'If you don't you may regret it if three weeks later he says I would have taken that job if you would have offered it to me.'"

While Boston wanted to test Phillips' knee after he had offseason surgery, it wasn't the only team he had heard from. The Florida Marlins had already offered a spring training invitation with a Triple-A contract and two other organizations had demonstrated similar interest.

Only Phillips had had enough of shuffling back and forth, and minor-league deals. The Red Sox were appealing because they appear to have a legitimate shot at the World Series this season, but the thought of "it's this or nothing" was already brewing in his head.

"There seemed to be a need for a corner utility guy who can play multiple positions, but also be a veteran guy who had experience in that role, and would embrace that role so-to-speak," Phillips said. "That in my mind was going to be the best opportunity playing-wise."

Only the Red Sox offered the same as Florida, a Triple-A contract.

"Same old song and dance," Phillips said.

After Gaspard took his shot in the dark and realized there was mutual interest, things moved fairly quickly. Phillips thought things over, talked to his wife, his family, his agent, gave interested teams a final chance at him while making sure that he was ready to walk away from another shot at the majors. In the end, it wasn't a difficult gut decision at all, with numerous reasons to move on with his life.

"It was almost scary to take it because you're like all of this can't be falling into place like this," Phillips said.

"I'm back to a place I love."

Phillips the coach

In his office, which overlooks Sewell-Thomas Stadium, Phillips has most of everything in the back corner, including his desk, family photos, a picture of a play at third base in front of Gaspard, and a lineup card from the Yankees at Red Sox.

On the other side, the only thing on the wall is his framed No. 12 jersey from the Yankees. Except for Alabama, it's the only team that felt right. Now every recruit is going to see it during visits.

"I think it's kind of like the same thing of how someone knows they're a good player," Phillips said about why he thinks he'll succeed as a coach. "I think you have to have a reality. There's a reality of who you are and what you can do.

"You come into contact with coaches at all different levels, who have different styles and whatever. To me it ultimately comes down to be a good coach, a great coach, is how well do you communicate with people and players, and how well can you teach the game. Those are things you have to access and you have to be realistic. That's not easy for a lot of people to do."

Some of those who have influenced him along the way include former Alabama coach Jim Wells, Don Mattingly and Kevin Long with the Yankees (Phillips won the organization's 2004 Kevin Long Minor-League Player of the Year award), and Brian Butterfield - possibly the best infield fielding coach in baseball, now with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Of course, there's also Joe Torre.

"Two very different styles," Phillips said. "Coach Wells was such a strategist when it came to game stuff. He had such a feel for players and situations to put them in, how to run a game. It's unbelievable.

"Joe was phenomenal in how do you handle that, handling players, media and making those all work together, and still at the end of the day put a product on the field that was very successful."

Through it all, Phillips has always had a reputation for being a student of the game, and took it all in. It's a lot of what he'll drawing on this season and beyond, while missing "nothing" about being a player.

"I had a great time doing it, but that was then," he said.

And should a major league team call in a couple of years and ask if he wants to give it another shot, this time as a coach, for now his answer is simple.

"No," he said without hesitation.