Baseball Coach with a Bow Tie

It was unfathomable to me that in a town known for producing extraordinary youth baseball players, my bow-tie wearing, spreadsheet-obsessed husband would end up as a head coach.  (I mean people move to this town so their children can play baseball; it’s a bit crazed.)  This is a man who only played the game himself one season as a third-grader and had the nerve to tell his obsessively-competitive childhood coach, “It’s just baseball and we’re only children.”

(It didn’t fly then and it wouldn’t fly now…)

Yet his noble recruiting strategy has paid off seven-fold.  He simply recruited boys with actively-involved fathers, therefore securing a bevy of kind and talented assistant coaches, pitching coaches, first base coaches and the like.

This has left him–a man blessed with the spiritual gift of administration–to organize, strategize, email, analyze and seriously memorize the Little League rule book which he can, when prompted, quote expertly without blinking an eye–surprising and astounding 20-year veteran Little League umpires and coaches alike.

Apparently he has become quite an enigma in the local Little League scene: one league administrator recently described him as “always hurrying about with a laptop, important-looking spreadsheets and some black binder with all these secret plans.”

No parent is without up-to-the-minute details about the next practice or game.  Honestly, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.  We’re used to last-minute calls that were supposed to be placed by the coach’s baby sitter but never got made so we don’t know there is a practice and only get a phone call asking where we are when we are actually at the dermatologist.

And now this grand communicator with his notebook of plays and plans will coach the last game of a “best-two-out-of three” season finale.

It’s a grand, rangy bunch of boys aged 9-11.

Bar-b-cue sunflower seeds are the favored dugout currency.

They are so grown-up yet still so young–so tough and quick to punch or slam a glove or bat, yet still cry over striking out or being told to bunt.

H says it’s like a crash course in the emotional life of the ten-year-old boy…a tumultuous life it is!

“Coach H, see, I had my blue Gatorade right there on the bench and he was throwing those sunflower seeds up into the air and not watching anything–not even our game--and he knocked over my special blue drink and now it’s all over Austin’s pants there and that notebook where you write all the rules and plays…”

“Hey Coach H, can I pitch?  When am I gonna pitch?  Why can’t I pitch right now?  Why does he always get to pitch?”

“Coach H, if I run really, really fast, do I have time to go to the bathroom?”

“Don’t worry Mom, I was mad about getting hit with a pitch, but I wasn’t going to ‘walk the bird’ like Hayden did to that umpire,” the bright-eyed boy encouraged. “Walk the bird?  What is that?” the confused mother queried.  “You know, Mom, like when you use your middle finger like the two bird legs and hop it around.  Walking the bird.”  That mom breathed a quick sigh of relief;  she could still claim her innocent nine-year-old.  At least for one more day.

Also heartening is a continued zeal for the obligatory after-game Icee.

The White Sox are winners regardless of tomorrow’s tie-breaker.  Let us revel in the joy tonight, however, and not forget the reason for the Game–total domination!  (See last night’s scoreboard?)

If you could pray for us tomorrow at 6:30 Eastern time, we’d greatly appreciate it!  I’ll let you know how it all turns out!

Promise!