My Story: Coaching Youth Baseball
by Hal Jacobs
What am I doing here?
On a recent Sunday afternoon in Decatur, I find myself joining 20 other men at a youth baseball complex in Decatur. Today we have serious business to conduct.
It's D-Day -- Draft day.
In a few minutes, we will enter a drafty cinderblock room over and sit down at the table with our clipboards and notebooks. Over the course of 12 draft rounds, we will call out the names of boys (and one girl) we've chosen to play on our teams for the 2002 spring season of the Druid Hills Youth Sports Mustang League (ages 9-10).
Frankly, I'm a bit nervous and excited. Maybe it's the extra coffee, but I don't think so. I'm far more nervous and excited than a 44-year-old male with a solid credit history should be.
Okay, maybe I've put too much time and energy into this draft. I'm one of those dad-coaches who prepares for this day as if it were a covert military operation. The draft only lasts 60 minutes, but every second counts. There are lives at stake. I want my boys out safely (the ones who hustled during last week's skills assessment).
After all (I tell myself), these boys - and their moms and dads -- are going to become part of my life for the next four months. I'll see them more than I see extended family or next-door neighbors. At odd hours during the day and night, I will find myself thinking about them. I'll daydream about fixing the hitch in little Southy's swing. Or helping big Northy overcome his fear of sliding. Or finding a way to keep Westy from fleeing the batter's box every time the pitcher rears back to throw.
I didn't obsess over this draft so that I could win every game. Like the other coaches, I want everybody to have balanced teams so that we can all enjoy a good season. Of course, I wouldn't mind if my team did just a little better than theirs. And if my team should rise to the top of the standings, I'll blame it on lucky breaks, not shrewd draft picks.
Mostly, I've been driven by my worst fears. In the words of a dad-coach who is currently seeing his fourth son through this park: "Anybody can win all of their games. But it takes a special person who can lose all their games."
With all my heart I want to avoid that "can't buy a win" season. The kind of season that turns promising baseball players into soccer players.
What am I doing here?
Am I taking this draft thing a little too serious? Tonight, when I call my players' homes to let them know the good news, will my voice betray too much. . . interest?
"Hi, I'm Coach Hal. Just wanted to let you know I drafted your son Mojo. I'm really excited about coaching him and having a great season."
Long pause. "Okay."
In this day and age, I don't blame parents for being somewhat leery of my motives for coaching. For all they know, I could be suffering from Youth Sports Syndrome (YSS). Someone who takes this stuff too seriously. Someone who wants to win at all costs. Someone who believes that others - coaches, umpires and possibly intergalactic aliens -- are out to get him.
I'm okay. Along with most coaches, I check my vital signs often for YSS during the season. Of course, in this day and age, we have to be just as careful about parents. While keeping one eye peeled for kids swinging bats in crowded dugouts, we also have to keep an eye out for moms, dads and grandparents swinging bats in the parking lots. (Although in my four years of youth baseball, I've never seen or heard of a full-blown case of YSS at our park.)
What am I doing here?
Actually, I'm here because I want to spend these years with my son doing something we both enjoy. I want him and his teammates to fall in love with baseball. Four years from now, I want to look around and see taller, sturdier versions of him and his friends still playing at this park. One day, I'd like to hear about them coaching their sons.
At the same time, I have got to realize that baseball may not be as important to my son and his teammates as it was to me. For some of them, it's just a game. Or a childcare arrangement in which they don't have access to a TV or computer for several hours a week. Maybe a few of them, if they don't burn-out or blow-out their arms or knees in the next eight years, will receive a baseball scholarship one day. Maybe.
I can't expect any of them to have the same need for baseball that I had growing up. For me it was a lifeline. My father died when I was 8 years old and for the next two years I was the only male in a household of women. In my Jacksonville, Fla., working-class neighborhood, men went off to work during the day and disappeared at night into their dens and La-Z-Boy recliners.
During the summers, my friends and I would gather in a little park clearing to play Homerun Derby. Here's an example of what baseball meant to me. One day, while chasing down a fly ball, I slammed headfirst into the pine tree behind second base and was knocked unconscious. After I came to, we started playing again. I never told my mother for fear that it might make her nervous the next time she saw me head out the door with my glove.
Growing up in a community of mostly women, baseball was nothing less than my ticket into the world of men. It was also a ticket into a more pastoral setting - a place of grass and dirt (and pine trees) under the Florida clouds. Our diamond may not have been carved out of a corn field, but it was still our field of dreams.
I'm here because, like most of these other coaches, baseball still means that much to me. Not the world of major-league baseball, that conglomeration of big business and entertainment that has out-priced families like mine. But baseball where it counts. Where a 9-year-old pitcher paints the outside corner for a strikeout. Where a boy who hasn't hit a ball all season delivers a line drive to win the game.
It's draft time.
An edited version appeared in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Saturday, March 2, 2002
