Observations From My Last Season Coaching Baseball (2013)

Of all the great times I’ve had coaching baseball, my last season was not one of them.

I got back into coaching after only because I wanted to coach with my son Josh after he graduated from Belhaven University in the spring of 2012. I even dragged Jake, my eighth grade baseball player son with us. I thought it would be great. It wasn’t. I’ve been apologizing to them both for more than a decade. Most of the children hated me and resisted everything I tried to do. For years I had been asking God to “show me a sign” on whether to keep coaching or find something else to do. He did!

I loaded my pickup truck in a driving rainstorm after the season ended. The Headmaster and Athletic Director (my disloyal assistant coach) told me they were going to go in a new direction and I could either say “I resigned” or that “I was fired.” I told them to just tell everyone they fired me… just call it a mercy killing. I had already decided the new direction I would go in and if it was a few years earlier I probably would have told those clowns which direction they could go. I did not.

Here are my Top Ten Observations from my last hurrah coaching baseball:

#10. I should have stayed retired.

#9. We started a new concept in batting orders; nobody can hit, so everybody bats ninth.

#8. We installed a permanent “take” sign in hope that everyone would draw a walk.

#7. My players wondered if reaching base on a strikeout/wild pitch would count toward their on-base percentage.

#6. During home games, our right fielder would lose the ball in the sun. Unfortunately, the sun was behind the right field fence. 😎

#5. The baserunners would not steal bases because it was a Christian school and stealing violated one of the Ten Commandments; the only commandment they would keep.

#4. Even the greatest heart surgeon in the world has to have some hearts to work with.

#3. A big pile of dog poop could catch more flies than my outfielders.

#2. Our shortstop made so many errors, we changed his uniform number to E6.

And the #1 observation from my final year of coaching baseball:

It is extremely difficult for a helicopter mom to breast feed a senior through a chain link fence. 😁

PS: We did leave some great improvements and renovations to practice and playing facilities and added this great new cap logo with the cross.

The following season, someone had to say “take the cross logo off the cap.”

It was the baseball team’s first losing season in school history and well deserved and they never had another winning season and never will.

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