Do you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl the nurse asked? We both looked at each other, eyebrows went up in unison and we answered together, “Yes!” She said it softly and clearly, with a smile. It’s a boy. I hugged Diana and my son in her belly and then looked up with tears already flowing I said, “We’re gonna play baseball.”
Last week my son’s team won the Little League Championship in our town. I was the team’s manager but winning the championship was probably the 10th coolest thing that happened on that team all year.
I never intended to manage little league teams. I started as an assistant coach, helping where I could. I also tried coaching soccer, but only because the rec league begged parents for help. My background is all about little league, but my responsibility wasn’t always as clear to me as it is today.
I grew up in a town with a good little league organization. Of course, with some perspective, we all took it for granted and had no idea how much work it must have taken to run a thing like that. If you’ve ever participated in a poorly run little league game or event, you have seen what it’s got the potential to look like. It’s usually characterized by parents screaming, umpires tossing people out, coaches yelling at kids, and lots of tears. I suppose this same thing happens in well-run leagues too, but certainly not as often…
The intent of the volunteers and their high level of commitment is vital toward providing a strong basis for learning, and that is at the heart of an organization’s success or failure.
As a little league player, it wasn’t the wins or losses that left the biggest impression on me, it was the coaches. The good ones and the bad ones. Moreover, it was the things I learned from those coaches that had the greatest impact. Of course, at the time, I just took the coaching for granted. Kids do, mostly. Parents do, mostly. I had some good coaches and some great ones but there was one coach in particular that ended up inspiring me the most later in life, but…like I said, I never intended on managing little league teams.
If you ask a teacher what their biggest reward is, they’ll rarely say money or summer vacations. They’ll almost always say the best part of their job is when they make a breakthrough with a student or when a less-likely-to-succeed student comes back and lets them know how much they helped them. Coaching is the same. With kids, winning is cool, but little league is not about winning baseball games. It’s about teaching. It’s about finding a spark. It’s about the opportunity to pass along life lessons that go mightily farther than any home run could ever travel.
Particularly memorable for me were the years between twelve and fifteen, around the time when we moved from the “kid fields” to the “real fields.” I remember it being utterly daunting. Back on the smaller fields, I played third base a lot and the throw to first was never a problem. When we got to the major league fields, it seemed like first was a football field away. I had to arc the ball twenty feet in the air to get it to first on a fly. We’d been traipsing across those fields for years on our way to and from the parking lots and in school, but the size of those fields seems to grow when you’re holding a baseball in your hand.
While the league I was in WAS pretty good, we still had few coaches that had very bad reputations. Before rules were preventing it, they’d do things like signing the best player’s Mom and other no-show parents to be “assistant coaches,” to get the good players automatically on their teams. It was dirty and everyone knew it, but there were “gentlemen’s rules,” that until that point, had been respected. A few of the other coaches were always screaming at their kids and their players too. Every kid knew who the bad coaches were and you prayed you wouldn’t be picked to play for them.
I lucked out in the teenage leagues because we got a coach that was new to that teen league too, but who still had a lot of experience coaching kids. Our first team had some older kids and also a few kids in my grade who had been playing at the higher level already. I was just about the youngest you could be for my grade so most kids in my school grade were a lot older. Everyone was always bigger than me. Always. Our coach was a young guy, younger than most of the other coaches. I remember thinking “These other old guy coaches must have worked here for a long time.” They seemed way too old to be Dads.
Our coach didn’t work there, he was a volunteer with another job somewhere else. Some days he looked pretty frazzled after what must have been a long workday. You could tell he loved baseball though because he seemed to transform quickly once he got on the field. Barely out of his twenties and energetic, he appeared to love just about everything about baseball and coaching. That sort of attitude rubs off on a kid. If the coach is having fun, the kids probably are too.
Our coach also knew everything there was to know about baseball. Sometimes the kids would try to stump him on baseball trivia, which it turns out, was quite impossible. He was like a living encyclopedia with every statistic and every possible baseball situation at the tip of his fingers. He knew lifetime batting averages, who has the most, second-most, and third-most of everything, and this was way before Google. And, don’t even get him started on the Mets. This guy was deep, he knew every player from 1962 on and could probably have given you the play-by-play of every game for the last twenty years…
During our practices, I was just trying to keep up. He’d hit the ball so damned hard it was all I could do to stick my glove in front of it, look straight up in the air for fear of dying, and hope the ball went in it and stayed. It seemed he hit them way harder to me than to the other kids. He’d always be yelling, ‘What am I gonna do if the ball’s hit to me?” We’d have to say it out loud and he told us to say it in our heads. He said it so much I started dreaming it. Ulgh.
My first year on the big field I played 2nd string at third, behind Artie, who must have been at least two feet taller than me. He seemed to reach first no problem — while I sailed it over the fence or off the pitcher’s mound. Over at shortstop was Matt who was so tough, he seemed to have baseball dirt coursing in his blood. He ate ground balls and spit them out like sunflower seeds. He had a cannon for an arm. He was obviously going to the Hall of Fame and would certainly be drafted straight out of seventh grade. When the coach hit the ball to these guys they made it look effortless. I was in awe.
Then, out there somewhere in the outfield was Jimmy. Jimmy was not going to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The coach must have needed him though because he would always be picking him up and dropping him off at home and his Dad’s job. Jimmy’s Dad worked at a factory and didn’t seem to have too much time to teach him how to play baseball. So our coach did. This happened over and over. Not just with Jimmy but with lots of other kids. Some nights, the coach’s car was full with both his kids and other people’s kids…after practices and games. I thought they must’ve been paying him extra for that.
Coach seemed to always focus on the kids who were never going to the major leagues — and I was one of them. He kept me after practice in the freezing Spring evenings, drilling me with ground balls. Most of those nights I did not want to be there. Many times I just felt defeated. Everyone was huge and I had never struggled like this before.
As I got older, I always remembered how hard he made me work. Moreover, how hard he made me WANT to work. I was the smallest on the team, so he would always say that meant I simply had to work harder than everyone else. I was never the best on my team, but once I learned that lesson I never lost that fighting spirit. I always remembered that if the competition was bigger, I had to be bigger inside. I had to work harder and want it more. I had to use what I could, my speed, my heart, my spirit to try and even the playing field. No one was giving me a break out there. No one was hitting the ball more softly to me because I was little or because it might hurt. I use those lessons today, every day, over and over. I try to teach them to all of my teams.
Over those years, I didn’t turn into a baseball phenom but I got a lot better. I was far from the best player, but I became the best player that I could be. I also learned how to be a teammate. I was there to play a part and no matter how big or small, it mattered. Coach taught me that, gave me that gift. And I think he gave it to lots of other kids.
Those years were a lot of fun and if you want to know the truth, when that team went on to win the league championship game, it all made sense, and we knew why the coach made us work so hard. Guys on that team continued to work hard and went on to do great things. Jimmy from the outfield became a Managing Director for the largest international bank in the world! After all of these years, every once in a while I see one of my old little league teammates and they still rave about our Coach…My Dad.
My Dad was great about strategy, gamesmanship, tactics, and (of course) trivia, but he was much better at something else, something much more important to a team. He knew how to make us work hard, work together and have fun, all at the same time. He knew that if he supported the ones who struggled the most, the rest of the team would see that too and we’d be that much more effective later…long after little league was over. The lessons he taught us were not just good for a couple of years. They were good for life…mine, and the ones that came after me. As my team takes the field today those lessons are still being taught. Amazin’!
From your son and your grandsons, Happy Father’s Day Dad!
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This post was previously published on A Parent Is Born.
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