My theory of coaching a baseball team of kids is that they have a lifetime to love baseball if you don’t make them hate it. In a world of video games and communication through text characters, I considered it an achievement for a kid to stand center stage in front of a bunch of adults and perform, at any level.
I like the kids who need to compete, but I also like the ones that don’t. We could always find ways to make each other laugh and have fun. I didn’t always have the same experience with the parents.
The first team I coached was my youngest son’s six-year-old T-ball team. One boy on our team was a head taller than everyone else, faster and a bit more coordinated. He was a shy kid, but he could not hide in the handshake line at the end of the game.
His dad, who I’ll call Zeus, stood about a head taller than me and was convinced he had sired Willie Mays. His son wore the same “Giants” t-shirt as his teammates, but Willie incarnate came to the field with a hundred-dollar baseball bag on his shoulder. Inside that bag was a hundred-dollar bat to hit the ball off of a tee and an eighty-dollar glove to catch the screaming line drives hit by the merely mortal 6 year-olds he competed against. I would not have known the cost of these things had the dad not told me. They did not look different from the $25 bat and glove my son and his other teammates used. What was noticeably different were the plush white cotton sweatbands covering the boy’s wrists. They made quite the “I’m special” fashion statement.
Zeus did not trust me, but I did not take it personally. Zeus felt like he was giving precious porcelain to an unqualified fool who had trouble eating with his hands. He obviously did not know me well. My hands had been satisfying my culinary and consumption needs flawlessly for years. Read More
