Coach Dave Season One: Coach Dave, #1

By Al Ainsworth

Unity conquers the individual goals and desires of the players and parents of a recreational baseball team when an upstart young coach introduces a new philosophy that disturbs some of the traditions of the league.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al Ainsworth
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386333326

Al Ainsworth

Hi, I'm Al Ainsworth. The platform for my writing is values storying, the intentional passing down of values through story. What is your backstory? Whether you are another link in the chain of a long, healthy family history or whether you are struggling to become the first link in such a chain, story is a key to building a strong family legacy. The power of shared experiences passed down through story from one generation to the next cannot be minimized. When my father’s mother and my mother’s father passed away a number of years ago, the generations rolled forward a notch on both sides of my family. My children will remember very little about my grandparents; what they know about them will come largely through the stories I tell. My children’s children — when my children have children of their own one day — won’t know them at all...except through story. The experiences that my grandparents had, the stories they told, the lessons they learned will all be for naught if not passed down through story. Every generation needs to know their generational backstory. The generational clock will move ruthlessly on—as most parts of our lives associated with time are wont to do—and one day the stories of my parents will find themselves at the risk of extinction. And then mine. And yours. My writing is built not only for the purpose of preserving and sharing the rich stories of my life but also to provide encouragement and tools to help you preserve and share your stories.

Book preview

1

Hello, is this Mr. Baker? asked the unfamiliar voice.

Yes, this is Brad Baker. May I help you?

Mr. Baker, my name is Dave Rivers, and I will be your son’s baseball coach this summer. I just received my roster from the parks department, and I’m calling to introduce myself and let you know about our first practice. I’m new to the area, and I don’t know a lot of folks yet, but I’m looking forward to coaching your son. Where I’m from, most people just called me Coach Dave.

Well, hello, Coach Dave, I replied. We’re glad to hear from you. We moved here in the middle of the school year ourselves, and it has been quite an adjustment for our family. Rob loves playing baseball—has played it since he was five years old—and he has been counting down the days until baseball season starts.

Same here. Tell him I’m glad to know I won’t be the only new guy at the park this summer. Our first practice is this Saturday at one o’clock on field number five. I would like to have all the parents there to join us for a meeting at two o’clock so that we can all be on the same page about our purpose with this team. I’m looking forward to meeting you and Rob at practice.

The transition to Southburg had not been an easy one for our family. We had moved from the south part of the state, where my wife, Kate, and I grew up and where our parents still lived. A change in my job forced the tough decision to move to the northwest corner of the state. We agreed to go back to visit often, but a four-hour drive each way had made that difficult.

Our daughter, Jenny, turned thirteen just after our move here. She has always long been an avid reader; for her birthday I hired a local landscaper to design and build a reading nook on the back corner of our neighborhood lot. Our new house had a back yard confined by wooden slat fences like all the others on our street, but we created an area simply known as Jenny’s Place. Located in the back left corner of the yard, four Leyland cypresses lined a narrow strip of grass that turned into a private sitting area surrounded by azaleas, complete with hummingbird feeders, wind chimes, gazing ball water feature, and hammock.  That and a steady supply of good books have kept Jenny quite satisfied.

The boys? Well, they have been a different story. Ethan, our five-year-old, became our resident complainer after the move. Nothing here in Southburg seems to match up with back home. He misses his grandfather very much, and nothing here can replace riding on Papaw’s tractor or catching bream with his little fishing rod in Papaw’s pond. Forget that there are plenty of kids in our neighborhood with which to play, Ethan remains determined to be sullen about the move.

Rob, twelve years old, just wants to play baseball. Like Ethan, he misses life in the country, but he has been holding off judgment on our new life here until baseball season. To him, everything else can be wrong in the world if baseball is right, so I have been quite hopeful that baseball season would bring a positive experience for Rob.

Roland White had coached Rob’s team since he started playing baseball. Coach White was the only coach the boys Rob’s age had known since our town only had enough boys for one team in each age group. Their league consisted of our team and others from small communities near where we lived. Coach White’s son Philip was on the team, and Coach moved up in age group with his son. Rob played shortstop when Philip pitched and pitched when Philip played shortstop. With only twelve games and a season-ending tournament, the team rarely had need of a third pitcher.

Rob was nervous about playing baseball in Southburg. When I had taken him a couple of Saturdays earlier to the player evaluation day that was required of all the new players in the league, I could tell he felt very small among the twenty or so other boys. As far as I could tell, he acquitted himself quite nicely as the league’s coaches put them through the paces of fielding, throwing, hitting, and running the bases. His size and speed were about average when compared to the others, but I hoped that the coaches noticed his baseball instincts and his hustle during the evaluations. In the car on the way home that day, I asked him how he felt he had done.

"Dad, those were only the new kids. There were more new kids than we had on our whole team last year. I’ll probably get on a team where the coach already knows all the kids, and I won’t even get to play."

Aw, son, don’t get down on yourself. You’re a good enough player that they’ll notice you, I responded. Privately, I had doubts of my own.

Coach Dave’s phone call set me at ease. Rob would be playing for a coach who didn’t know any of the kids, so it seemed that they would all get an equal chance at playing time.

ROB! COME HERE, SON—YOUR baseball coach just called!

I could hear Rob bounding down the stairs. He appeared, breathless, around the corner of my home office. What did he say? Did he sound like a good coach? Did he say what position I might be playing? When’s our first practice?

Whoa, take a breath there, cowboy. Let’s take one question at a time. First off, he sounded like a nice enough man. He sounded young and he said to tell you that he was new to the area, too. He’s glad that he won’t be the only new guy on the team. Practice is at 1:00 Saturday but only for about an hour. He wants to meet with all the parents and players at 2:00.

Why?

To give us all the important information about the team, I guess. We’ll find out Saturday.

Oh, I can’t wait until Saturday! I hope he’s a good coach. I hope he gives me a chance to pitch and play shortstop. I wonder if he... Rob chattered as he strode out of hearing range.

SO, WHAT DID HE SOUND like to you? Bruce asked, sounding much like Rob. My wife answered the phone, and all the information she could give me was that we had practice on Saturday with a parent meeting afterward. I wonder what that’s all about.

Bruce Garrison was a lifesaver for me. His family lived around the corner from us, and he worked in the same department at work. He had grown up in Southburg and had seen it grow into a burgeoning suburb with a small-town charm that drew us and many other families to the town. Bruce always knew who to contact when I needed help with, well...anything. He also introduced us to many of the quaint and quirky aspects of life in our new town...like why a town near the state's northern border was called Southburg. He called it somewhat of a haven for those escaping city life just across the state line.

Bruce’s son Jimmy was Rob’s age and, against great odds, they had both landed on Coach Dave’s baseball team. I wondered if Bruce’s connections played any role in that, but I decided to keep my suspicions to myself. Rob hadn’t made many new friends at school, but he liked Jimmy and was relieved that he would know at least one other player on the team. I hoped that once baseball practice started, Rob would make some new friends and settle into our family’s new life here.

Here’s the way baseball usually works here, Bruce began, interrupting my thoughts. "The coach’ll line ‘em up and have ‘em throw and catch for a few minutes. Usually by the time the boys are twelve, most of them can throw and catch the ball fairly well. There’ll only be a handful of ‘em who can pitch and catch well enough to play infield, though. The rest of ‘em will get stuck in the outfield, and the coach’ll put the fastest outfielder in center field and tell him to catch everything he can get to.

The boys’ll hit a round or two Saturday, and the coach’s line-up will be pretty much set. Second practice, he’ll find out who can pitch. The kid who has a set of catching gear will do the catching. There’s usually only one of those on each team, so that’s the easiest position to fill.

Bruce continued, "I figure the parent meeting will go something like this: The coach will send the kids off to pick the team’s nickname and hope they don’t come back with something crazy like the Purple Gorillas or the Mighty Mashers. He’ll introduce himself to the parents and tell us that all the kids will play ‘cause it’s a league rule that they all play at least an inning every game. There’ll be some kid on every team that gets in for the last inning and plays right field. Every coach hopes his team is ahead by that point and that nothing gets hit to right.

He’ll hand out the schedules and let us know that we can drop off the kids fifteen minutes before practice and to be sure to pick them up by a certain time. He’ll answer a few of the mommas’ questions. The daddies will save their questions until he doesn’t play their kid enough or in the right position or bat him in the right place in the order.

Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, I said when I could get a word in edgewise.

Bruce laughed. I don’t know what baseball’s like down in the country, but we take it pretty seriously up here. I’ll introduce you to the other dads, and you can be one of the assistant coaches. He made the quotes sign as he said assistant coach." I wondered how well Rob and I would to fit into the baseball subculture of our new town.

2

Hey, guys, my name is Dave Rivers, and I’ll be your baseball coach this season. You can call me Coach Dave. I’m new to this area, so I don’t know any of you now, but we’ll get to know one another throughout the season. I have coached baseball before, but you might find that I coach a little differently than other coaches you have had. I’m going to ask that you give me a little room to introduce you to some coaching methods with which you may not be familiar.

The boys nodded nervously.

What I mean is that I may ask you to do some things in practice and in games that you don’t quite understand. I’d like for you to trust me—even though you don’t know me—and do those things to the best of your ability. I promise you will begin to understand. I want to do something for you in return. I will prepare you for baseball and life well beyond this team. You may have some habits now—in baseball and in life—that you can get away with or even be successful with now that just won’t work well for you at some point in the future. I commit that I will prepare you to be successful as a baseball player and as a person well past this year. Now, who’s ready to play some ball?

The boys let out a cheer and raced to the outfield to begin to warm up.

Practice was barely two minutes old when the dads huddled together to begin their analysis of practice and their evaluation of this stranger coaching their boys. In the interludes between each dad’s opinions, Bruce introduced me to the other dads as he had promised.

Looks like they’re gonna hit first. That’s different. They usually put ‘em out there in the field first, said a tall, slender man named Doug Trimble, who looked like he could still be playing competitive sports himself. Look, guys, he’s got ‘em hittin’ plastic golf balls!

That ain’t what we signed up for, snickered Gary Hamilton, whose frame suggested that any athletic background was in his distant past. Bruce leaned over to inform me that Gary had been tagged with the nickname Rooster as a child. This was in