"Out of necessity," Cooper began working for his
agent. Cooper eventually took on his own clients including
Randy Johnson,
Wade Boggs and
Joe Girardi. After working as an agent for a number of years,
Wendy Selig-Prieb recruited Cooper to return to the Brewers to serve as the Director of Player Development or "farm director," a post he held for three years. He was named
bench coach for Milwaukee in and also managed the Triple-A
Indianapolis Indians in –
04. He returned to the Major League coaching ranks in as a bench coach for the
Houston Astros.
Managing career in 2007 On August 27, , he was named the interim manager of the Astros following the firing of
Phil Garner, making him the first African American field manager in Astros' history. The Astros were 58–73 at the time Cooper was brought in as manager. Cooper's previous managerial experience was at Class AAA Indianapolis, the Milwaukee Brewers' top farm club. Cooper went 15–16 to close the year for the Astros having a total record of 73–89. On September 28, , Cooper's interim tag was dropped and he became the Astros' 16th manager. The 2008 team had a series of up and downs.
Carlos Lee suffered a broken pinky finger on August 9 that saw him miss the rest of the season. The Astros were 44–51 at the All-Star Break. However, by August 19, the Astros were 64–62 after winning twenty of 31 games to start the second half of the season. They had two different winning streaks of eight games in August. On September 8, they had eighteen games to play and were trailing by five games to Milwaukee for the NL Wild Card, and on the 11th, they had a record of 80–67. The Astros were slated to play games in Houston on September 12 and 13, but
Hurricane Ike scuttled those plans, with the resulting decision being that the Astros series against the
Chicago Cubs was moved to
Miller Park in Milwaukee for September 14–15 (sources later stated that Minnesota, St. Louis, Miami, and Atlanta offered their stadiums as alternate sites). Trailing Milwaukee by 2.5 games with 15 games to play,
Carlos Zambrano no-hit the Astros. The Astros lost the second game at Miller Park to fall to 80–69. The Astros would split their final 12 games with a 6–6 record while the Brewers cruised to the Wild Card spot. Cooper admitted that the hurricane impacted the team, stating "I think it affected us a lot. I don't want to go into it any more. I'm really past that. So if we could go to something else that would be great." At one point, Cooper abruptly ended a postgame interview by banging his hand on a desk, which he later apologized for. In the end, the Astros finished 86–75, four games behind Milwaukee for the final spot (the Astros did not play Game 162 as it was not needed). Ten games into the 2009 season, Cooper had his option for 2010 picked up. However, Cooper was fired on September 21, 2009, with 13 games remaining in the season while the team was on a seven-game losing streak that dropped them to 70–79. The team was plagued by a variety of offseason issues and poor play from star players such as
Lance Berkman and
Roy Oswalt despite having a payroll of $103 million. The Astros finished with their second losing season in three years and only the third since 1991. He finished with a record of 171–170. ==Personal life==