It’S All About the Kids: . . . and Other Tales from the Dugout

By Coach Scooter Stevens

Take a journey into the magical yet sometimes complicated world of youth baseball through the eyes of a volunteer coach. Its All about the Kids is a fascinating compilation of fictional stories based on actual events as retold by Scooter Stevens, a youth baseball coach for over ten years.

From baseball to soccer, from basketball to football, from lacrosse to hockey, hundreds of thousands of children participate in all types of youth sports across the United States each season. Regardless of the sport the reader played as a child, coached as an adult, or had children participate in, Scooter Stevens masterfully recounts humorous, lighthearted, and sometimes unsettling stories about the ever-present dark side of youth sports.

From West Palm Beach to Westlake, from Tidewater to Tacoma, Its All about the Kids will be relatable to any reader who has ever experienced youth sports!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504968713

Coach Scooter Stevens

Author Scooter Stevens has a unique perspective regarding an aspect of life that virtually every parent and child experiences at least once in their lifetime: youth sports. Scooter Stevens not only played youth baseball, basketball, and football since the age of five through his high school years but, as a parent of two children, he also has experienced youth sports from the prospective of a parent. Additionally, he has over ten years of experience coaching various youth sports, most notably his favorite, baseball. Scooter Stevens has coached over seven hundred youth baseball games during his coaching career. In the process, he has instructed hundreds of players between the ages of five through seventeen, and he has dealt with a vast spectrum of adult and parental personalities. As a result, he offers a wonderfully distinctive and entertaining fictional perspective of youth baseball based on his and other’s coaching experiences.

Book preview

It’s All About

the Kids

… And Other Tales from the Dugout

Coach Scooter Stevens

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2015 Scooter Stevens. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/18/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6870-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6869-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6871-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015920784

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

First Pitch

Chapter 1: Scouting Report

Chapter 2: A Player Is Born

Chapter 3: Preseason

Chapter 4: Now Batting

Chapter 5: Assessments

Chapter 6: Welcome to the Diamondbacks

Chapter 7: Baptism by Fire

Chapter 8: First Draft

Chapter 9: Spring 2005

Chapter 10: Fall 2005

Chapter 11: Spring 2006

Chapter 12: 7U All-Stars Summer 2006

Chapter 13: Fall 2006

Chapter 14: Spring 2007

Chapter 15: 8U All-Stars Summer 2007

Chapter 16: First Season of Minors Fall 2007

Chapter 17: Spring 2008

Chapter 18: 9U All-Stars

Chapter 19: 9U All-Stars Southern State Tournament

Chapter 20: 9U All-Stars Southeast Regional Tournament

Extra Innings

Appendix A The Manifesto

I

dedicate this book to my family – my wife Shelly, my son Bear, and my daughter Katy—who were by my side and supported me with unbridled enthusiasm and love every step of the way.

I dedicate it also to my parents, who taught me that the most important things in life are family and friends. I thank you for making me who I am.

Finally, to all the players I coached and to all of my fellow coaches, parents, and umpires, thank you for a lifetime of laughter, tears, and memories.

FIRST PITCH

Coaching youth baseball was a big part of my life for several years, and I wanted to have a written—albeit fictional—account based on my (and others’) experiences, good, bad, and indifferent. The title of my first book, It’s All about the Kids, states the obvious regarding what should be paramount within any youth organization’s mission statement, and I believe that in most cases, it is. The joy, innocence, and satisfaction one can experience with youth sports as a player, parent, and coach are magical.

While coaching did not by any means define me as a person, it certainly enhanced me and made me a better person. I found coaching youth sports to be a microcosm of everyday life, as I was constantly dealing with similar personalities and situations in both my personal and professional lives. Coaching youth baseball gave me many wonderful, funny, and sometimes sad memories. It also allowed me to meet many delightful people who have become lifelong friends.

I am certain that anyone reading this book who has played or coached in any sports organization or been a parent to a child within these organizations will recognize some of the same personalities, situations, and stories. From West Palm Beach, Florida, to Westlake, California, and from Tidewater, Virginia, to Tacoma, Washington, I believe the fictional characters and stories I have written about herein will be relatable regardless of where a league is located or what sport is being discussed.

The stories and characters I have written about in this book, while fictional, are based on actual events—not only events that took place during my coaching career but also events other coaches, players, and parents I knew over the years experienced. Locations, names, and nicknames have been changed, and I wrote many of the stories in collaboration with others who were involved with or shared my experiences.

My original intent for this book when I started organizing my notes was to utilize stories about comical and endearing situations about the kids, coaches, umpires, and parents as a basis for writing a fictional account of my coaching experiences. For the most part, the stories in this book succeed in this endeavor. But I would have been remiss in not also developing stories based on some events that inevitably tainted the experience of youth sports for some of the children, coaches, and adults.

An interesting pattern evolved for me when organizing my experiences in outline form over the nearly ten years that I coached. I noticed that a greater number of the amusing and endearing stories occurred in the first three to four years of my coaching tenure, and the same held true for other coaches I spoke with while writing this book. Many of these events were the basis for the stories retold in this book, It’s All about the Kids, which is the first of a two-book series.

While many wonderful and endearing events also occurred in the later years of my coaching tenure, I noticed that the ugliness of youth sports politics—along with increased parental expectations and the emergence of manipulation—was much more common as the kids got older. This pattern also held true when I spoke with many other coaches and parents whose children grew up playing in organized youth athletic programs across numerous sports.

Part 2 of my two-book series, aptly named I Thought It Was All about the Kids, contains a greater number of these unfortunate dark stories, which are also fictional but based on actual events. Despite this trend, the great times far outweighed the bad ones, and I enjoyed virtually every minute of my coaching experience.

To the kids, parents, coaches, umpires, and casual observers with whom I had the pleasure of interacting during my youth baseball coaching career, I thank you for a lifetime of memories packed into a few short years. I will probably never completely retire from coaching, because it brings simple joy to my life, much of it thanks to all of you.

Finally, as a coach, my goal was always to teach the kids the wonderful game of baseball, have fun doing it, and facilitate an atmosphere in which the kids and parents could become friends and make the experience more enjoyable. If I was successful in doing that, then the wins would take care of themselves—which they almost always did for my teams. My final goal was always for the kids to look back on their youth baseball experiences as adults and say, The best time I ever had playing baseball was for Coach Scooter.

CHAPTER 1

Scouting Report

Baseball is known as America’s pastime. It is a magical game, and little did I know during my childhood that it would have such a positive influence on my life as I grew older. My first memories of playing baseball date back to when my dad would throw Wiffle balls to my sister and me inside our midwestern apartment in 1969, when I was three years old. We would wail at the ball with our plastic bats, much to the dismay of our mom, neighbors, and landlord. Each game we played was filled with so much enthusiasm and love that I could not help but become hooked on the sport of baseball.

Once, when Dad went on a business trip to St. Louis when I was three, he brought a plastic St. Louis Cardinals batting helmet back for me, and I became a lifelong baseball fan. Despite the fact that the helmet was five sizes too big and I had been born in a southern Chicago suburb and was a huge Cubs fan (yes, I know I should be a White Sox fan, being from the south side of Chicago), I wore that helmet everywhere I went for a long time. Decades later, even though I remain a huge Cubs fan, I still have a soft spot for their hated rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, because of that plastic helmet my dad bought for me.

My dad loved to give advice, and like the advice of many fathers, most of it—in retrospect—was right on target. When I was a kid, he told me that baseball was the sport I should concentrate on. He told me I was not going to be a tall man (my mom is five foot two, and my dad was about five foot eight) and that baseball was a great sport because one did not have to be a giant to play.

My dad was a remarkable guy. He was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on his left lung in 1941 at the age of three, while living in a small town in Kansas. Back then, being diagnosed with cancer was a death sentence, and my grandmother carted him all over the Midwest in an attempt to have him treated. She eventually found a doctor in Kansas City who was working experimentally with radiation therapy. This doctor was able to eradicate much of the tumor via radiation, and the remainder was removed surgically. In the process, my dad lost a majority of his left bicep muscle and his left pectoral muscle, and he sported a deep scar that ran from his back under his left arm up to his collarbone. He was embarrassed by this scar, but my mom would tell him that he should be proud of it and wear it as a badge of honor. She was right.

Although my dad was not able to play competitive sports much as a child because of his surgery, he loved sports dearly and, along with my mom, became my biggest supporter during my playing days. As I grew up, my dad lived vicariously through me in a loving and supportive manner. Neither he nor my mom, who was every bit my fervent supporter, ever pushed me in sports. They wanted me to enjoy playing whatever sport I chose to play.

My organized baseball-playing experience started when I was six years old as I played peewee baseball in a suburb of a large midwestern city. Our coaches at that level consisted of local high school kids who volunteered to coach. On the first day of the season, all the kids wore the same ugly brown T-shirts and sat in the stands as the coaches handpicked their teams as if we were playing pickup games on the playground. The difference was that these teams were picked for the entire season and not just one game. High school boys coaching five-, six-, and seven-year-old kids seemed like a good idea, as the games were typically played on weekday mornings, and few working dads could coach.

However, the downsides to high school boys coaching young kids were numerous. First of all, high school boys are loaded with testosterone; secondly, many have an unrelenting competitive attitude; and thirdly, most of them enjoy the fine art of swearing—incessantly. The combination of these three factors led to some interesting memories during my first couple of seasons of competitive baseball.

One of my best memories about my first years playing baseball revolves around a family in our league with the last name of Tucker. During one of the team-selection events, one of the Tucker brothers was picked to be on my team. A coach I remember only as Coach Doyle cracked a sly smile when the Tucker kid was picked, because he never called him by his correct last name when he was in the presence of the other coaches. He always referred to him not as Tucker but as—yep, you guessed it—a word that rhymed with Tucker and started with the letter F!

Without fail, after Coach Doyle muttered this nickname to his fellow coaches, he would launch into what later became known as a Beavis and Butt-Head laugh with the other coaches partaking in the conversation. I was often around when they called the Tucker kid this name, but I had no clue what they were talking about. For all I knew, it was an affectionate nickname—kind of like Scooter, which was what my grandpa called me as a youngster. Many years later, I learned the truth about Coach Doyle’s nickname for the oblivious Tucker kid.

I was raised by the best parents anyone could ever ask for, but my folks were somewhat square and as traditional as they could be for the progressive late sixties and early seventies. My parents, like many who grew up in the fifties, married early, and they had me when my dad was twenty-two and my mom was twenty. My only sibling was my sister, who was two years older than I. My dad worked full-time, while Mom carted us around for several years before she went to work, doing errands in her classic 1960s beehive hairdo and listening to Andy Williams while doing housework. Yes, I said Andy Williams—not the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, not the Supremes or even Herman’s Hermits, but Andy Williams. I was the only six-year-old in the neighborhood who could recite all the lyrics to Strangers in the Night and Moon River.

Needless to say, I had never heard the f-bomb uttered before in my home, and it would take a few years before I heard it again and longer still before I remotely knew the meaning.

Despite my parents’ milquetoast virtues, they were the best parents ever, and I thank God often that I was blessed with them.

I was thrown the ultimate curveball in 1990, when, six weeks after I married my wife, Shelly, my dad suddenly passed away of a heart attack. One of the few regrets I have in my life is that I was not able to grow older with my dad and that our children were never given the opportunity to know him. Since Shelly and I knew each other for so long before our marriage and she and my dad were close, we often tell stories about him to our kids, who enjoy hearing about him. I know he is here with all of us, but I still have an inner bitterness about his early death.

I was one of the best baseball players in my age group for the first few years I played the game. I had a penchant for hitting and playing first base in my early baseball career. In 1972, my family moved farther away from the big city to a small bedroom community ten miles away via highway—but it could have been a thousand miles away culturally. Fortunately for me, our new neighborhood was loaded with eight-year-old boys just like me.

I met my first friends in the new neighborhood (some of whom I still stay in touch with today) at a backyard baseball game I joined while riding my bike around my new ’hood. I was affectionately known just as Kid for a few weeks until they became familiar with me and remembered my name, but happening upon the baseball game eased the trauma of the move, as I had found a new home with a bunch of baseball players.

My baseball career with my buddies continued at the local town park through the minors division (ages seven through ten), the majors division (ages eleven and twelve), the thirteen-year-old league on the big sixty-ninety field, and then the senior division until I was seventeen. My baseball career was unremarkable, and although I continued to be slightly better than average in talent (I always had a solid glove, but my hitting deserted me around age ten), I became more interested in other things, such as football, basketball, hockey, and the social aspects of growing up.

We essentially had a self-contained town, and virtually everyone knew each other, so the teams each season would mysteriously be made up of kids whose families knew each other and ran in the same social circles. Even back then, politics ruled the day.

Since most of the games were played at night after the school year was over, every game concluded with one of the families on the team hosting the others for a night of socializing at their home. We all looked forward to the social aspects of the postgame gatherings, but after we turned thirteen, the frequency of these events diminished for one reason or another.

The quality of baseball was good, as we had a number of good athletes. The regular season provided excellent competition, but the all-star teams in our league were always mediocre at best when I was growing up. However, in 1999 and 2001, long after I had played, our little hometown organization made it all the way to the Little League World Series, though they lost in the US Championship game in 2001 to a team from Florida. It was fun watching these games on television, as some of the kid’s parents were people Shelly and I knew growing up.

I believe I could have been a better baseball player growing up if I had committed to getting better on my own and practicing with more enthusiasm, but one of the things that negated my progression was watching one of my best friends attempt to improve by practicing so much with his dad.

My friend’s name was Mark, and he and I were alike in many ways; we even looked similar. Mark was always a little taller and faster and was a better athlete in the core sports of baseball, football, and basketball. While I could tie him in knots in wrestling, thump him in Ping-Pong, or skate circles around him in hockey, he was better at the sports that mattered—in other words, those that had local organized leagues. I attributed his skill in those sports to all the work he did with his dad—work that I did not want to force upon myself. I was content with my natural abilities and preferred to spend time at the pool rather than going to the ball fields for an additional two hours of hitting and pitching every other day. Although I was not aware of it at the time, Mark’s parents pushed him consistently to be the best.

During my first season in my new hometown’s baseball league, Mark and I played on the same team. Mark was the stud pitcher and shortstop, and I was the first baseman. Mark’s dad was the head coach, and my dad was the assistant coach. I vividly remember losing one of our early games of the season after starting out undefeated. After the game, Mark started crying after the last out and continued to cry on the field after the game. Crying after a baseball game was foreign to me, as I had not seen it done before.

On the way home from the game, as I sat in the backseat of our car, with my parents up front, I suddenly had an epiphany and thought to myself, Hey, if my best friend, our stud pitcher, Mark, cries after we lose, then I should cry too! That proved to be a big mistake. My parents asked me why I was crying, and I pitifully replied, Because we lost. My dad hit the brakes so hard in our twenty-foot-long lime-green 1972 Chevy Impala with the black vinyl top that it sprung me forward into the back of the front seat (this was in the days before seat belt laws). Thankfully, nobody was behind us on the country road leading into our neighborhood.

Dad and Mom immediately launched into a stern lecture about how all sports were supposed to be fun. They told me that it was only a game and that if I ever cried after losing again, not only would they spank my butt, but also, I would not be allowed to play again. They went on to inform me that only babies cried after they lost, and when I tried to explain that Mark, our best player, had cried, they responded, Then he is a big crybaby. The powerful advice my parents provided that night stuck with me thereafter and helped me shape one of the foundations of my playing and subsequent coaching philosophies.

The only time I ever cried after a game again was after the last football game I ever played for my high school during my senior year. We lost in the second round of the state playoffs 2–0 to the eventual state champions. Yes, the score was 2–0, and the only scoring came on a questionable safety in the third quarter. After the game, I was wrought with emotion, and my parents were right there crying with me, as they knew the heartbreak I was feeling after all the work my teammates and I had put forth in preparing for that season. Furthermore, they could not spank my ass for crying anymore, because I was bigger and stronger than both of them.

My football career did not continue after high school despite some interest from a couple of small colleges. I had no desire to play at a college that had fewer students than my high school had. I chose to attend a large state university located within the Big Ten conference as a student only, despite the pleas from one of my high school football coaches, the legendary Coach Vic, to attempt to walk onto the football team.

Lee Corso, of ESPN’s College GameDay fame, was the head football coach at the university I was slated to attend at the time, and Coach Vic told me he would not hesitate to call Coach Corso to arrange a tryout. I respectfully declined the offer, as I realized there was no place in major college football for an undersized receiver with good hands and slightly better-than-average speed.

I chose to run track in high school rather than play baseball, as I was faster than average, and I received two varsity letters in track, which would have been three if I had not had my appendix removed and contracted mononucleosis my junior year. In hindsight, although track was a great experience, not playing baseball for my high school is one of the only things I would change if I could turn the clock back to my high school days.

During college and in the many years before my children were born, I became a softball junkie. I moved to California for work right after graduating from college, and during the three years when I lived there, I played four to five nights a week and in weekend tournaments. I was addicted. Softball took a backseat to just about everything but work, although I did develop my travel schedule around games.

My softball addiction continued when I moved to Tennessee in 1989 and when I relocated again to my current home in another southeastern state in 1992. When my kids came along, starting in 1998, I retired from playing softball. I could probably write an entire book about my experiences in softball alone. Those years of playing five nights a week and hanging out with other over-the-hill ex–high school jocks wearing ultratight Bike coaches’ shorts, long striped tube socks, cleats, sliding shorts, and numerous knee and ankle braces rekindled my passion for the game of baseball. My playing days officially ended around the year 1999, and the nights of testosterone-laden, meaningless games complete with postgame beer-and-pizza frenzies were now a thing of the past. The next logical step was to move into coaching. The question was when.

CHAPTER 2

A Player Is Born

During the summer of 1998, my wife, Shelly, and I were in our new house, enjoying air-conditioned relief from the sweltering heat of another blast-furnace-like summer day in the South. We had moved to this suburb of a major southern city weeks prior after living in another area of the city for nearly six years. After living in the South for the previous ten years, we had become accustomed to the hot summers, but one thing was a little different that summer.

When we’d signed the contract to build our new house the prior summer, we hadn’t known that our timing for closing and moving in could not have been any worse, as it coincided with Shelly’s ninth month of pregnancy with our first child. I, like most men, cannot fathom what it must be like to attach what amounts to a large and heavy watermelon to my belly and live a normal life, not to mention going through the process of childbirth. I thank God every day that I am a man and not a woman just for that fact alone.

The clock showed somewhere between noon and twelve thirty on that Friday, when Shelly informed me through a closed door in the bathroom that she thought her water had broken. Shelly and I are both independent-minded people who, like many, probably think we are smarter than the average Joe. We therefore had decided against doing any type of prechildbirth or Lamaze classes, because (1) we thought they were a waste of time and money and (2) people had been birthing babies for centuries without these silly money-grab classes, so we figured we would use our common sense to get through it.

Since my entire business career had been in the medical field, I was versed enough to know that when a woman’s water breaks, the baby is not far behind. But that was not so in Shelly’s mind. She exited the bathroom; lay across the bed, reading a magazine; and said she was not ready to go to the hospital yet and would be fine. I insisted she call her doctor, which she did after some prodding, and he demanded that she get to the hospital immediately.

After nearly fourteen hours of labor, at three thirty in the morning the next day, our son, whom we would come to nickname Bear because he looked like a little bear cub, was born. Although Shelly had had the prerequisite number of ultrasounds during her pregnancy, we’d elected not to have the gender of our first child revealed, as we’d wanted it to be a surprise to us and our family and friends.

Shelly came from a two-sibling family and had a younger sister. My family’s offspring consisted of me and my sister, and although we’d fought constantly growing up, we both still wanted two kids. My wish was for one boy and one girl, but if that did not work out, then two boys would have been fine. When Bear was born, we were off to a great start.

As I looked at Bear as he lay under the warming light with his big brown eyes, I said, Hi, Bear. I am your daddy. He looked back at me peacefully as many different thoughts and questions raced through my mind, including Will our son be an athlete? I was excited that as this little guy would grew up, we could spend countless hours and days throwing and catching balls. I’d teach him how to hit a baseball, skate, dribble and shoot a basketball, tackle, defend himself, and perform a myriad of other athletic endeavors.

Shelly was also an athlete in high school. She lettered in track (she competed in the hurdles) and fast-pitch softball, whereas I lettered twice in football and track and played basketball until tenth grade. Shelly’s dad was also a highly ranked high school hurdler in the early fifties, as well as a college football and basketball player. My uncle played major Division 1 football, so sports were in our blood, and we enjoyed watching and attending numerous sporting events over the years.

Shelly and I were again blessed two years later with the birth of our beautiful daughter, Katy. While Shelly’s pregnancy with Katy was not as eventful (at least that is what I say, much to the chagrin of Shelly), we were blessed with what is referred to as a million-dollar family, consisting of a son and a daughter and an infinite number of wonderful memories. Katy too was destined to be an athlete, as she would develop a passion and talent for figure skating.

Before we had children, our previous experience with children was typical of those in their early thirties who have no kids. We each had nieces, nephews, and the always-present neighbor kids with whom we could get our kid fix, which usually lasted all of about ten minutes during our interactions. Neither Shelly nor I did much babysitting when we were younger, and we opted for waiting to have children later in our marriage. Having a boat, a couple of nice cars, a big house, a pool, and the ability to travel anywhere at any time was attractive to us, so we put off having kids until our early to midthirties. Heck, we could always rent the neighbor kids our pool for a couple hours or get up a game of roller hockey in the cul-de-sac whenever we wanted. As long as they went home and we did not have responsibility for them, who needed kids, when we could rent them on a short-term basis?

But having our own kids was a game changer.

Before Bear was born, however, one event possibly changed the course of our lives: our new next-door neighbor’s youngest son, Ryan, came over to our yard adorned in his is baseball uniform. He must have been about seven or eight years old, and I asked him where he played baseball. Ryan responded that he played at a local organization only a few miles away. Little did I know at that time, this organization, which I will refer to as OAF (our athletic facility), and the game of baseball would become a big part of my life in the near future.

Ryan played in what was known as coach pitch at OAF, which was about five miles away and was the nearest organized athletic association. At the urging of little Ryan, one Saturday, Shelly and I ventured to watch him play a game. I do not recall Shelly’s exact response when we got in the car to go to Ryan’s game, but I made sure not to tell her where we were going until we were on our way and driving forty miles per hour to the game.

Our vector to the ball fields was not a route that we often drove, so about halfway into our trek, she turned and asked me where we were going. When I finally told her, she loudly responded, What! Why in the hell are we going to watch Ryan play baseball on a Saturday afternoon? I told her it would be a brief visit and promised her compensation in the form of jewels or other riches. My bribes did nothing to reverse her lack of unbridled enthusiasm.

The ball fields were housed within an impressive facility located in a parklike setting with no fewer than ten baseball and softball fields to satisfy the passions of boys and girls from the ages of four through seventeen. Shelly and I arrived and finally meandered our way through the winding paths among the baseball fields and past the concession stand and the alluring smell of hot dogs and popcorn until we came across Field G, the coach-pitch field where Ryan was playing.

As we approached, we heard the chanting of the young ball players as they enthusiastically and loudly sang and cheered in cadence to support their teammate who was currently batting. The temperature was equatorially hot, and the all-dirt infield resembled the 1930s’ Dust Bowl despite the soaring humidity of a three o’clock Saturday game. Parents, grandparents, siblings, and other assorted characters dotted the landscape; the game was in full swing.

I was instantly captivated by the coach, who was pitching to the kids while wearing blue jeans. This caught my attention because hot, heavy blue jeans were not a popular choice on a ninety-plus-degree day in the South, especially when one was engaging in an athletic event. He was also adorned with white tennis shoes tinted with dirt and a collared golf shirt, but interestingly, he was not wearing a baseball hat. At first, I was not sure why he was hatless, but I quickly determined it was probably because this particular coach possessed a full hair helmet and could not find a hat large enough to fit on top of his masterfully crafted coiffure. The guy was missing only a chin strap and face mask, or he could have played for the local high school football team.

He looked about as athletic as a second-chair flutist in the orchestra, but the guy could throw a strike. Despite his interesting baseball attire, Coach Hair Helmet became a fixture in my memory of my initial experience with this organization.

I easily spotted Ryan in the dugout with the other kids, who were all wearing orange jerseys. He was boisterously leading the cheers with a big smile, and I quickly surmised that this was his role on this team, as I do not remember him being a particularly gifted athlete. We eventually made our way through the ravenous, screaming, sweating parents and found Ryan’s mom and dad.

We were not close friends but were cordial enough to engage in small talk, make some cursory comments about Ryan’s wonderful athletic ability, and make our appearance, as we’d promised Ryan we would. We did not stay long at the game, as we probably had other important DINK (dual income, no kids) things to do, such as going out to eat greasy pizza and drink a keg of beer somewhere that night with others of our kind.

Although our appearance at Ryan’s game was brief, I enjoyed being there, as it rekindled my love of baseball and brought back fantastic memories. The facility, the aromas, the dust, the heat, the cheering, the thrill of competition, the crazy parents, and Coach Hair Helmet were all things I enjoyed. I decided that once we had kids, they would play baseball or softball at OAF.

CHAPTER 3

Preseason

The first few months of a new baby in the house can be a shocking experience for new parents. It was incredible driving home from the hospital with a little eight-pound baby wrapped in a blanket and strapped into a new car seat with Shelly sitting closely next to him. We had no instruction manual or nannies to pawn our kid off on, but we did have the advantage of ever-present grandparents.

Shelly’s parents and my mom, despite living in different states, were good friends as a result of Shelly and me dating in high school and college. My mom was able to fly in while Shelly was in labor and was there when Bear was born. My in-laws arrived shortly after Bear was born, and they each came in to save the day and give us countless pointers during our first several days of having a newborn.

The long days of suffering sleep deprivation, changing nasty diapers, and spending countless hours rocking Bear to sleep passed quickly, and we soon graduated to a more set daily and nightly schedule. The first couple of years flew by, and the standard parental duties now consisted of reading Dr. Seuss books at all hours of the day and night, playing games on the floor, and suffering through an infinite number of odd kids’ television shows. Shelly and I actually grew fond of some of these shows, such as Thomas the Tank Engine, The Wiggles, and Power Rangers, but some of them represented, in my opinion, the most horrendous entertainment ever created (Teletubbies, anyone?).

In 2000, we welcomed the addition of our beautiful new daughter, Katy, and now we had two children in diapers. This, of course, led to another round of sleep-deprived lunacy and a few more years of even worse television entertainment, including an atrocious production known as The Doodlebops as well as an ultra-annoying show about a whiny little bald kid named Caillou. These shows might be perfect birth-control measures for those wanting to have more children.

By the time Bear was two years old, not only was his room outfitted with sports-themed items, but also, he had the full complement of sports equipment, from footballs and baseballs to miniature hockey sticks and a full set of junior-size golf clubs that Shelly’s parents decided to give him on his third birthday. The clubs, designed for twelve-year-olds, had shafts as long as he was tall, but it was a nice thought. One morning just after Bear turned two, I sat on the family room floor with him, attempting to roll a ball back and forth. At the time, he was preoccupied with something else, and he displayed no interest in playing ball with good ole Daddy. Needless to say, I was beside myself, and unfortunately, Shelly was there to witness my reaction.

It was one of the first times I had tried to play ball with my son, so it was a monumental event in my life as a dad. When he did not seem interested and did not reciprocate my enthusiasm in rolling the ball, I panicked and screamed, Shelly! Bear has no interest in playing ball! He has no hand-eye coordination and couldn’t care less about this! Exasperated, I said, What are we going to do? My panic and subsequent comments represented an epic mistake on my part. First of all, Bear was only about two years old at the time, and secondly, Shelly was there to witness my meltdown.

Shelly is not blessed with the memory that I have, but there are certain things she will never forget, and this moment was one of them. To this day, she loves to bring up this event, and as the years go by, the story becomes more and more dramatic, and her description of my reaction becomes even more demonstrative. She (justifiably) paints me as an emerging psycho sports dad on the verge of hysteria because my two-year-old had something else on his mind that morning and had no interest in playing ball with his dad. Thankfully, my initial absurd reaction about Bear’s interest in sports would prove to be wrong.

When Bear turned four in the summer of 2002, it was time to enroll him in the Learn to Play sports clinics at the local YMCA, which happened to be only about a mile from where we lived. These were great programs, and the kids and coaches who ran the programs did a fantastic job of making the activities fun, interesting, and engaging. Typically, the clinics would meet two times a week for about an hour at a time and have anywhere from ten to fifty kids in a session. Shelly and I agreed that we did not want to force any particular sport or activity onto either of our kids, so we enrolled both of them in baseball, soccer, and basketball and also signed both kids up for swimming lessons throughout the next couple of years.

The baseball program was my favorite, as I thought the guys who coached the kids did a nice job of teaching the basic fundamentals. The groups consisted of four- and five-year-old boys and girls with seismic differences in their degrees of talent. Shelly and I had spent a great deal of time with our kids, not only teaching them both how to throw and hit a baseball but also spending quality time with them in general, doing physical activities, such as playing tag, riding bikes, swimming, and playing basketball on small plastic basketball goals. Needless to say, we were fortunate that Bear in particular excelled in the baseball clinics despite my initial panic attack a couple years before.

Maybe I was oblivious to the personalities and demeanors of the other parents at the time, but it seemed like most of the parents were enthusiastic and supportive and had not yet been afflicted with the deranged thoughts that their kids were going to be professional athletes.

As much as I enjoyed the baseball and basketball clinics, I secretly loathed the soccer clinics. I think it is imperative for kids’ social and physical well-being to be involved in any type of team sport when they are young and in adolescence; however, with due respect to those whose kids play soccer, to me, it is the most boring and brutal sport on the face of the earth to watch. When faced with watching a soccer game or watching reruns of the aforementioned abominations Teletubbies or Caillou, well, it is a close race, and watching soccer seldom wins this contest for me.

Soccer does take an immense level of talent at higher levels. What soccer players do with their feet is incredible, and I catch myself watching the US men’s and women’s teams in World Cup matches, which, thankfully, only occur every four years. But watching a game for more than ninety minutes only to have the final score end up 1–0 is torturous for me. Players appear to waste time jogging around with seemingly no sense of urgency, they often kick the ball into oblivion, and the feigning of injuries is laughable. Soccer games generally put me to sleep faster than the highest dose of Ambien ever could. Being a hockey player, I bristle when soccer people try to compare soccer to hockey. Hockey is a much faster game played in a smaller setting with more scoring and action. I also believe it takes considerably more talent to skate and play hockey, but of course, I am biased.

Youth soccer is fairly big in our geographic area and is growing, which is unquestionably a good thing for the kids (as long as my kids don’t play it!). Based on my experience in being involved at the YMCA soccer clinics, watching a few games along the way, and talking to parents whose kids are involved in soccer, seemingly the only key to being good in soccer at an early age is speed.

Soccer games at the young age levels resemble a giant swarm of bees buzzing around the grass field with no rhyme or reason other than to hope the fastest kid can break away from the pack and kick the ball into a goal that is typically defended by a portly little chap. You know the type of kid I am referencing, as every youth sports team seems to have one or two—the kid who is thrust into the goalkeeper spot because he is a fitness challenge and consistently lags behind the herd. His shirt is stained with remnants of the hot-fudge sundae or the twenty-five-count box of Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins he had before the game as his morning energy booster.

He has the lateral quickness of a two-toed sloth, he is definitely not a hinge at the waist, and his most effective defense is unwittingly using his face to block the laser-guided breakaway missile shot from Johnny Speedster’s right foot. Oh, nice save, Pugs! It’s almost time for his postgame snack of chocolate-chip cookies and a keg of fruit juice. One of the advantages of watching youth soccer games is that at least the number of goals can mount up, so you are not forced into watching ninety minutes of 1–0 games.

As our kids grew older, I always got a big kick (no pun intended—I promise) out of talking to parents whose kids stuck with the sport of soccer. Like most parents in every type of youth sport, soccer parents attempt to glorify their soccer experience when discussing their kids’ sport with non-soccer-playing parents. For instance, I cannot tell you how many times over the past several years I’ve experienced following type of conversation when speaking with a soccer mom.

Soccer Mom says, How is your son’s baseball going? This is a feigned-interest question to get the conversation started, but Soccer Mom is paying careful attention regarding when to move in for the kill shot.

I say, Oh, he is having a lot of fun this season and playing really well. I make the mistake of pausing slightly, which gives Soccer Mom a chance to aggressively launch into a rapid-fire dissertation about her kid.

Soccer Mom replies, That’s great! Again, she is feigning interest. Did I tell you about my little Bobby’s soccer team?

No, you haven’t. I’m thinking to myself, I’d better hunker down because I have a feeling you’re about to tell me whether I want to hear it or not.

Soccer Mom says, Well, he is on a select travel team, and we recently got back from the Super-Duper Top-Eight-Thousand Regional Select Elite Grand Master Gold-Silver-Platinum Cup of Youth Soccer for the Eastern Hemisphere and Baltic States for his age group, held in Dumas, Arkansas!

I silently think to myself as she talks, Take a breath. I may have to go watch Caillou when this is over.

Soccer Mom says, Well, anyway, Bobby scored thirty goals in one game, and his team is ranked sixth in the state! Isn’t that wonderful? We are so proud of him, and now we are off to the International Tournament of …

As she continues, I stare at her like a deer in the headlights, and all I hear is Blah, blah, blah, blah. The Teletubbies anthem rings in my head: Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Po! I think to myself, trying not to scream out loud, Get me outta here!

I have had that conversation, or a variation of it, with numerous soccer parents over the years, and I cringe every time it occurs. First of all, I am unaware of any house leagues for youth soccer in our area. Virtually every organization where we live consists of all travel teams, meaning that nearly every kid who participates plays travel soccer. Secondly, I don’t understand how it is possible for the team of virtually every parent I speak with to be ranked sixth in the state. It is a strange phenomenon: never is a team ranked first, tenth, or seventh—always sixth!

Again, my hat is off to all those who have kids who play the game of soccer. It is great that parents get their kids involved in sports and keep them active. I know these people probably find baseball to be as boring as I find soccer, and maybe they are right. But right up there with me thanking God that I am a man and do not have to experience the physical aspect of childbirth, I am thankful that both of my kids decided not to go the soccer route.

After several successful and fun sessions of baseball at the YMCA, it was time to graduate from the baseball clinics, and when Bear was five, in the spring of 2004, we signed him up to play T-ball at the YMCA. I have no idea why we did this, as there were other organizations in the area where he could have played, but we decided to stay with a familiar setting and play at the Y.

I was not ready to start my coaching career yet, and when Bear’s new coach, a guy named Cory, called to let us know Bear was on his team, I was thrilled. My son was about to enter the world of real baseball.

Coach Cory, whom I spoke to briefly when he called, seemed like a good guy on the phone, and when I asked him what he looked like so we could spot him in the mass of humanity before our first practice, he told me that he would be easy to find, as he was the one who would be wearing the high-top canvas Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars. Oh no, I thought to myself. No respectable baseball man would wear those on a baseball field! What have we gotten ourselves into?

CHAPTER 4

Now Batting

It was time for Bear’s first practice, and Bear and I trekked down the steep hill into the grass bowl at the YMCA with Shelly and Katy in tow. Bear was excited to meet his new coach and teammates. He had experienced small, controlled games at the conclusion of the clinics, but he knew that this was the big time, with uniforms, cleats, and matching hats. The fields at the YMCA were actually painted and lined on the soccer fields, but they were perfect for this eclectic group of T-ballers.

Coach Cory turned out to be a nice guy who had a workable knowledge of the game, but his intent was to keep it fun, which was perfect for that age group. His team consisted of the typical assimilation of five- and six-year-olds: a couple of kids who were clearly athletic; a couple of girls, which I thought was great; a couple of beefy, plodding kids; some smallish kids; and the ever-present I don’t want to be here, but my parents made me kids. I was introduced to the assistant coach, Coach Brandt. The entire season, I assumed he was a good friend of Coach Cory, but I later found out that they’d just met before the first practice, and Brandt had volunteered to be the assistant for Cory. Brandt was also a good guy, but his approach was slightly different from and a little more intense than Cory’s.

One of the I don’t want to be here, but my parents made me kids on our team was named Grady. He was a small kid with little athletic ability and even less of a desire to be there. His mom and dad seemed pleasant enough, but I thought it odd that his dad wore baseball cleats to the practice. When I saw him in his cleats at practice, I thought, Are you kidding me? For a T-ball practice? I guess that explained who wanted to be there more.

Well, it took all of five minutes for the disciplinarian, Coach Brandt, to figure out that Grady would be an issue, and disciplining him would be a consistent theme for the rest of the season. Coach Brandt would constantly offer Grady instruction such as, Grady, we don’t walk on the baseball field or Come on Grady, we need to hustle a little. I liked the fact that Coach Brandt challenged Grady, and although he never yelled at him, he was firm. But despite Coach Brandt’s efforts with Grady, his comments had no impact as Grady did not change.

Two years later, when I coached at OAF, while walking to a game on the asphalt path, I heard a click, click, click behind be me. As the noise closed in on me, I thought, No way. It can’t be. I turned around, and there was Grady’s dad, walking at a fast clip toward one of the fields with his baseball cleats on.

I am fortunate that I inherited my dad’s and also his father’s exceptional penchant for remembering names and faces. Most of the time, this trait is a blessing, but at times, it can also be a curse, as there are some things and some people I would like to forget. So when I saw Grady’s dad, I reintroduced myself, and he claimed that he remembered me. We then discussed Grady’s reentry into the game of baseball.

Grady was in the same coach-pitch league as Bear that season, but he was not on our team. I watched and listened from afar, and occasionally I would hear, We don’t walk on the baseball field, Grady. This was not coming from Coach Brandt but from another coach challenged to motivate Grady to at least jog on the field. Sadly, after that season, we never saw Grady or his parents again. He is probably a grand master video-game champion nowadays.

Most of the games at the YMCA were fun to watch, but as the saying goes, it was barney-ball. No scores were kept, and everybody was a winner, but that is the way it should be at that age and playing level. Both teams batted around through all eleven to twelve kids in each of the three innings played, and the kids moved around to different defensive positions each inning. Most of the kids hit from a batting tee, but some of the more athletic kids had a coach pitching to them on one knee from about twenty feet. Some teams were more talented than others, and it was evident.

Bear’s team wore red uniforms, and they were one of the better teams. The other solid team wore kelly-green uniforms. It happened that we played each other in the last game of the season, and word had gotten out to some that the two best teams would be playing each other that night.

I happened to be on crutches that game due to a broken ankle suffered during a pickup basketball game earlier in the week, so I walked in with Shelly and Katy, set up our cheap eight-dollar nylon folding chairs, and watched the game. Bear was one of the kids who could hit pitches thrown from Coach Brandt, and he consistently put the ball in play hard. Coach Cory had gladly accepted Coach Brandt’s offer to pitch, as the ball sometimes rocketed dangerously back at the pitcher.

In the last inning, Bear was playing what appeared to be right center field. Twelve kids (eight of them with ADHD) spread out over a paint-lined grass field can be difficult to monitor, and typically, during any given inning, a team would end up with three first baseman, four shortstops, and five outfielders. Toward the end of the game, one of the kelly-green team’s most athletic kids came up to bat. He zeroed in on the pitch from their coach and smashed a frozen-rope line drive toward right center field.

The ball traveled quickly toward Bear, who enjoyed playing the game so much that he kept his eye on every pitch and every batter. As the ball rocketed toward his left,