Sarasota area legend left his mark on the field

All Steve Altier ever wanted to do was play catch with his dad. His three brothers, Larry Jr., Jeff and David, were only interested in playing catch during baseball season, but not Steve. 

Steve wanted to play catch every day. He was a second baseman, like his father, and would go on to play first for Riverview High and later at Division II Rollins College in Winter Park. 

“He’d hit me ground balls left and right, day and night,” Altier said. “I learned that I had a good glove from all of those years of fielding ground balls. He taught me how to read the ball off the bat, understanding the pitch that was thrown and the angle of the bat to get an extra step on the ball.”

Larry Altier hit Steve thousands of ground balls throughout his childhood. He hit thousands more to children that were not his own, the young baseball players of Sarasota. 

There’s a good chance that if you’ve stepped on a baseball field in Sarasota in the last 46 years, you’ve walked in Larry Altier’s footsteps. The former Riverview High baseball coach and athletic director passed away on Dec. 30, at 93 years old, leaving behind a legacy that will live forever in the infield dirt of the city’s ball fields. 

Altier, a father of five, came to Sarasota in 1966 after serving in the U.S. Navy and quickly ingrained himself in the community. He started at Riverview as a teacher and assistant coach for the football and baseball teams, eventually becoming the baseball team’s head coach in 1979 — Steve’s senior year. 

Altier’s 13-year tenure led Riverview into what Steve refers to as the “golden age” of high school baseball in Sarasota in the 1980s and ‘90s. A time where the sport grew exponentially because of the talent of the team’s two top high schools, Riverview and Sarasota. 

From 1979-92, Altier’s teams posted a 278-142 record, winning the Class 4A state championship — the only two baseball state championships in Riverview’s history — in 1983 and 1992. 

Eight-time state champion Sarasota High, helmed by the legendary Clyde Metcalf, won the 4A state championship in ‘87 and ‘89, going on to win in ‘93 and ‘94. 

Altier, Steve said, was a true student of the game. While Altier played baseball in the Navy — he grew from 5-foot-6 to 6-foot-1 during his deployment — he did not come from an athletic-oriented background. He learned the game by reading books and studying various coaching methods. 

It allowed Altier, Steve said, to have a flexibility in his coaching style, one that catered toward players instead of a “my way or the high way” type of approach. 

“He didn’t coach one particular way,” said Altier. “He coached to what your strengths were and what your skills were and helped you develop in that regard. He wouldn’t completely change your swing, for example, he’d just help you with a few things to get your bat through the zone quicker.”

Altier’s expertise turned him into the go-to guy for coaching even before he took over at Riverview, in the 1970s, when he was coaching community programs, like his son Jeff’s Babe Ruth team that went 20-0 one season.

The Altiers had a homemade batting cage in the backyard of their Sarasota home, cobbled together with tennis nets, fishing nets and chain-link fence. In the middle of it sat an old, discarded pitching machine, which would launch balls with a rusted crank arm. 

For baseball players around Sarasota, it was hallowed ground, the place to go if you wanted to rub shoulders with the best of the best and get worthy instruction. 

For Steve and his siblings, it was home. 

“At one point, every baseball player in town had come over to take batting practice,” said Steve. “I always marveled at the respect that they had for my father. I wanted to be a ballplayer. These are the older kids in town, basically like grown men to me, and they’re coming by to get instruction from my dad. That always made me feel proud.”

Even when Steve went to college, Altier’s instruction never stopped. They were, after all, more than coach and player — they were father and son. 

In 1983, Steve was buried deep in a batting slump while playing second base at Rollins College. 

“I couldn’t hit a ball if you put it on a tee,” said Steve. 

He knew just what to do. With a game looming the next day, he drove home, waking early the next morning to work on his swing with his dad. 

“I took about five swings and he told me to widen my stance just a bit, lift up my hands and hit everything to right field,” said Steve. “I hit about 20 balls to right field and he said, ‘you’re good. You’re just getting anxious. If you try to hit the ball to right field and spread out your stance, you’ll wait on it longer and keep your weight distributed perfectly.’”

His father was right. Steve flew back to Rollins on a flat tire, made it to the game and immediately broke out of his slump. 

Perhaps his favorite memory of his father came later that season when Rollins College was playing Florida Southern in the 1983 Division II South Region Championship in Lakeland. 

Earlier that night, Altier had steered Riverview to its first state championship win over Sandalwood High in Orlando. 

Steve was jogging off the field in the top of the ninth inning, Rollins down by two runs, when he saw his dad in the stands. 

“There he was, with his Riverview uniform on and both arms in the air,” said Altier. “It was obvious that he’d just won and it hit me, that this guy had just had the biggest achievement of his career and he showed up at my game. He didn’t get to see me play a lot in college because he was busy coaching. To see him standing there was one of the great moments of my life.”