My baseball life...Part four...fall ball...member of the board

So after Summer ball year two, and my baseball family came together to give every member of my team an award on top of the participation trophy they got, and yes I do not agree with participation trophies as a rule but for kids this age playing games where we do not keep score dangling the carrot a little bit for them is a good thing. Really that is why I decided to give out awards based on what my kids actually did on the field that year. I wanted them to know that I saw how they performed and that I was proud of them. The awards went over very well and I have to thank my collection of baseball mom's for helping me get that done. A year and a half later kids and parents alike still talk about those awards so I know it was worth the effort and money I put into them. 

We also added Fall Ball to the curriculum after year two and I had about three weeks to find enough kids. Since most of my kids had now played two years of Tball and where six and older they were all going to be moving up to Coach Pitch leagues. So we brought back the entire team for fall ball and got started working on those skills. Of course my whole team came back but we still needed to find a team to play so I spent three weeks finding every little kid I could and getting them signed up for ball. Again with the help of my ever growing baseball family we were able to find enough kids and even added important pieces of the baseball family for year three. 

So it looked like for a long time that we were not going to have enough kids to play at all. I went to the board and was like look we just want to play. All my kids are coming back, I will coach both teams I will pitch the whole game let me go find the kids to play. It took a minute but we eventually ended up with two teams of 10 kids each. We transitioned them from Tball to coach pitch and since it was my first experience with fall ball we made a few critical errors along the way. 

To get enough kids and insure that we could play fall ball that year we moved a handful of Tball kids up to coach pitch early. It was a mistake that played itself out that fall and the following spring. So much so that instead of simply coaching one team in year three I felt so guilty I stayed in Tball to coach all the kids that had to go back down for one more year even though in my humble opinion most of them were ready, save one who became a rather large issue. 

This kid was five and had all the skills to play at this level, but he was going into kindergarten and just wasn't mentally ready to deal with his teammates or how I go about coaching. He didn't understand that sometimes the coach yells, sometimes the coach has to yell at the whole team to make his point, and that the coach is never happy. He was pretty good till school started, and in our neck of the woods it’s all day kindergarten so it’s a big change and we saw this kid change over night. One game he was the kid we had seen all season and in practice and the next he just couldn't cope with it anymore. I would go out and fire my team up and he would cry. I would yell at my team and he would cry and his mother got really upset and got pretty ugly with me in some post game comments. Again to their credit, my baseball moms where the first to come to my defense and at this point we are talking about moms who had let me coach their kids for three plus seasons. Let me yell at their kids, make their kids run to fence, and gotten the most out of their kids that I could. 

Fall ball was particularly hard for me because by that point there were at least two people too many in my marriage and my personal life and my family were disintegrating all around me. It was hard to keep all of that in check and it came to be that baseball became my escape from all that especially after my now ex wife stopped attending games. Baseball was now my happy place a place where none of the poor choices I had made mattered. It was the few hours a week that I could be happy and smile, even though I tried my hardest to screw that up as well. That would become a big part of my life and the theme for how involved I got from this point moving forward. 

Since I worked so hard to get fall ball off the ground the league invited me to be a member of their board of directors and it would set up all the things I would come to do in year three. 

Related Links:

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three

My baseball life part three...Year two..we work the plan

After year one I stepped away from baseball, even though I had already been asked to be on the board and I was ready to be more involved. However, at the time I had a full plate. I had my career which was banging, I was going to school to learn how to host radio show/podcasts and  I was already doing one podcast a week at the time. I was also trying to get out of a failed marriage and not going about that in the most constructive ways possible. So I have a lot on my plate, not to mention my kid was going into first grade and all of that normal every day problems of life.

So after year one I took some time off from baseball. It was already in my system I was already hooked on it, but I had a lot going on that fall and I wanted my kid to play for a team that I didn't coach and learn some skills that way so he played fall ball that year at the YMCA.I am not sure if my league had fall ball that year but we did in year two and it would be another key component of my baseball life.

The biggest thing about year two is I decided I needed to step up my game and work on keeping my kids in the game. In year one way too many kids were in the dirt, or looking at the clouds. I decided that even at this level my parents were gonna get their monies worth, and my kid being one of them in the dirt and looking at the clouds was going to pay attention...if nothing else. It was also In year two that we added the rest of the core of my baseball family. My baseball mom's who now I cannot imagine life without, and am so happy they gave me the honor of coaching their children.

I will never forget the day Caryn signed her kids up, and not that I knew then what role she would play not only in my baseball life, but in my real life as well...she was the second domino that fell. Once she was on the team and her kids were with us things really started to come together. I'm not going to lie my team in year two was not the best team I have ever coached but it was my favorite by far.

I guess it felt like I had all the pieces in place. I had a core group of five or six kids and I knew then that we would be together for at least the next few years. I was very excited at the raw talent of this team and my and my coaches went to work polishing that talent into something awesome. After fall ball that year we would see the fruit of that labor start to blossom in year three.

This team will always hold a special place in my heart. Maybe because we were the Mudhens, maybe because I had extended my baseball family, maybe cause I had a lot of parents around that really got it, or maybe just because I felt like I knew what I was doing in year two.

I knew I was doing a good job because one of my kids was sick, and he didn't play in one of the games and I think it was later on in the season. I was concerned because I didn't hear about it till last minute. But his mother brought the team snacks anyways and walked up to me and said 'we couldn't let the team down.' It was in that moment that I realized the team was more important that any of the things we were doing on the field that at this age and skill level that is the lesson I want to teach my kids. It is a core of my coaching philosophy now, team first, team above all else, win lose or draw we are a team.

I think it was at the start of year two where I started to not only be a baseball coach but a positive male influence in the lives of all my kids. That is a very important role, and I take it very seriously. I was lucky enough to have a man, who had no moral or legal obligation, step up and be a father figure to me when I had no other. It is a lesson that has stuck with me all these years and it is at the core of how I parent my child and coach all of my kids.

Year two was also special because of Justice. Justice was a classmate of my son's and she lived four doors down from us at the time. Really she lived in my house and I wanted to adopt her because her home life was something far short of what it should have been. That entire summer she played ball with us, lived at my place and touched not only my soul but even the soul of my soon to be ex wife.

Year two was also memorable because by the time practices started both I and my soon to be ex wife were dating other people. For spring ball I was dating this crazy girl Michelle. The sweetest nicest thing about her was that she wanted to be a part of it all, but couldn't be because of the situation we were in and stupid geography. It may not sound like it was serious but it kinda was. One of our games got cancelled due to weather and all the parents went to the bar instead and it was there that I told Caryn my marriage was over and that I was gonna leave for Michelle. Her reaction to that was what are you completely retarded?? She then explained that Michelle was just a fantasy and for the most part she was right,. However, the door had been opened and by the time fall ball rolled around there was Lea.

I was now hooked, baseball was a part of my life, and it was an awesome feeling as my real life crumbled to dust in the background.

Related Links:

• Part One
• Part Two

my baseball life...part one the begining

So I have to put my other story on hold while some of the details get worked out in the real world and in my own fucking head.

With that we are gonna tart telling the tale of my baseball life. A lot of my readers and fans from Livejournal and Facebook already know that baseball is a huge part of my life. For those of you not in the know I am a baseball coach. That started with coaching my son in Tball three years ago. I now coach multiple teams at different age groups and skill levels and am a member of my local Baseball association Board of Directors. It wasn't always like that three years ago I was just trying to find something my son could be good at and something for my family to be involved in.

Three years ago, right before his first baseball season started my son played flag football. He played in two different league through the Spring and Summer but he just didn't have that killer instinct you need for football. He is just too sweet a kid for all that. Maybe one day he will find that inside himself but three years ago it just wasn't there. Football wasn't his thing and as much as I wanted him to be a football player and as much as he was around football at the time I really hoped football would be his thing. It wasn't so we signed him up to try baseball. Tball to be exact and they were asking people to coach and I was like sure I can help coach be an assistant or something.

Like a month after sign ups I get a call from the league saying they need someone to step up and be a head coach. Now I may be a sports writer, and I may even take that job pretty seriously but until that point in my life I had never even considered coaching anything but I felt the need to be involved with my son as he found a sport he liked and was semi good at. So I agreed to become the head coach of my first tball team. Who knew how much that one decision would change my entire life.

I am not going to lie I was pretty nervous and I started watching all kinds of baseball videos on you tube to learn what drills to do and reading all kinds of advice columns on coaching teams. I didn't know then that you coach from the gut and if you keep your practices very regimented and structured the rest kind of takes care of itself. Well at least at that age level it does.

The first time I stepped out onto the diamond with a whistle around my neck and asked my collected parents for volunteers to help me coach...I had no idea how much that answer was going to change my life. I had no idea that just three years baseball would be such a huge part of what I do and who I am, and that all the good things in my life would stem directly from my involvement with my local baseball organization.

To be Continued