Former Auburn baseball player named new Cubs manager

Former Auburn catcher and MLB veteran David Ross has been named the manager of the Chicago Cubs. Ross and the Cubs have agreed to terms on a three-year contract through the 2022 season with a club option for 2023.

According to the Auburn Athletics Department, Ross is one of 51 former Auburn players to make his MLB debut and becomes the second former player to be named a big-league manager. The last time an Auburn man managed a team was in the 1960s when Bill Hitchcock spent portions of five seasons as a manager for three different organizations. That was 1960-67.

Ross played for the Tigers from 1996-97 and was a two-year letterwinner who appeared in 80 games and earned 41 starts.

His most iconic moment in an Auburn uniform, according to Auburn Athletics, was hitting a walk-off home run against Florida State in the 1997 Tallahassee Regional. That helped send the Tigers to the College World Series.

Ross left the Plains for Florida where he played for a year before going to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the seventh round of the 1998 MLB Draft. Over a 15-year career in the MLB, Ross played for seven different teams

The veteran catcher won a pair of World Series. His first was with the Boston Red Sox in 2013. The second came in his final season with the Cubs when, in 2016, he hit a home run in game seven to help the organization snap a 108-year World Series championship drought.

Following his time on the diamond, Ross spent time as an ESPN analyst and as a special assistant in baseball operations for the Cubs before Thursday’s announcement.