Boys and Baseball

Last night we drove into town for dinner and an interview that I was asked to do. A former Little League player of mine had to interview some coaches for a school project. During the interview he asked what one of my fondest memories was of coaching. I couldn't think of anything. Well, that's sort of true. I did but didn't think it proper to say it. The first memory that came to mind was from the 2011 season. I was standing on the mound throwing batting practice to the team and out of all the chaotic noise and laughter I hear a 11 year old voice from centerfield razzing my second baseman of equal age, "Billy's got a boner. Billy's got a boner. Billy's got a boner." I tuned into listen. The two of them proceeded to razz each other for a bit then let it rest. During the exchange I fought back the impulse a few times to tell them that they'd better put a lid on it. After all, there were parents around, and what kind of coach would let this go on at his practice? I persevered, though. I silenced the voices, buried the impulse, and smiled.

I don't know why it's one of my fondest memories but it is. Atleast it was the first one out of many that came to mind last night. I remember returning home after practice on that chilly spring evening and looking up this quote by Dostoyevsky:

"There are 'certain' words and conversations unhappily to eradicate in schools....Boys, pure in mind and heart, are fond of talking....of images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak....There is no moral depravity...but there is the appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something refined, subtle, daring and worthy of imitation."

My centerfielder's razzing chant and the exchange that followed was nothing close to what " even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak," but I knew it was a start. I'm glad I silenced the internal voices that evening. They were on their way to becoming young men.

Play or Pay

The other day the library sent me Phil Jackson's new book Eleven Rings. Outside of coaching two baseball teams, practicing with my sons, and taking care of life's other priorities I've had the opportunity to read twenty pages or so out of ER. This morning I was taken by this quote by Lao Tzu:

The best athlete
wants his opponent at his best.
The best general
enters the mind of his enemy...
All of them embody
the virtue of non-competition.
Not that they don't love to compete,
but they do it in the spirit of play.

This is probably one of the biggest challenges I have noticed when I'm coaching, especially in tight games. The spirit of play (I don't know if play necessarily needs to be light) turns into a must-win situation. I don't think this is a bad thing. It's just an observation, I guess.

There is something deeper that I got from the Lao Tzu quote, though. As a culture we don't keep that spirit of play in mind when we engage The Community of Life. We annihilate our competitors in the biological community. If they're competing with our food and our food's food we are at war with them. And we're going to go extinct if we don't stop this.

More on Christianity

I posted this on Facebook this morning. It's similar to yesterday's subject.

Lately I've found myself involved in conversations with a few Little League parents and grandparents talking about God and Christianity, so it was nice to run across this blog post. Even though I don't consider myself a Christian by any means (Yesterday I mentioned to Annie that if I attended church it would be an act of self-betrayal), I'm interested in the issue and what folks have to say about it.

Hidden Values Find There Way To Action

I just didn't have enough time to do a blog post yesterday. That's three that I missed this year. It's been a long time since I've been this busy(Over a decade?)in my life.

Quote from The Un-Game that resonated with me yesterday.

"In coaching they'll get to see that any closely held value, no matter how well hidden, even from yourself, inevitably prompts action that's consistent with it." [Pg. 127, The Un-Game]

Phil Jackson hits on this in Sacred Hoops.

Some Internal Coaching Conflict

I've mentioned in previous posts that I'm a Little League Baseball coach. I've coached my son's team for three years now. And I have to admit there have been moments during the past three years where I have felt conflicted about my role as coach. When these moments of conflict arise I usually pull out Robert Bly's The Sibling Society to try and understand the source of the conflict. The quote below spoke to me:

"Most adults have been slow to grasp how perfectionist the changed Interior Judge of their children is, and how savage. The Judge is more perfectionist than ever, but now there is not enough fame or popularity in the world do satisfy it. For parents to try to encourage the development of their children is natural, but now there is something desperate in it for both the parents and children. If a teenager is not invited to the dance, she may try suicide. A high school boy, scoffed at, may retreat behind his computer for ten years."--Pg. xii,

And this one:

"In a Sibling Society, it is hard to know how to approach one's children, what values to try to teach them, what to stand up for, what to go along with; it is especially hard to know where your children are."--Pg.xiii

Baseball Novels

Stayed up late last night and finished Calico Joe, by John Grisham. I highly recommend it to baseball fans, fathers and sons, or anyone just looking for a good book to read. Next one on this list is Chris Ballard's One Shot at Forever. Ever since reading his article in Sports Illustrated over a year ago I've been waiting for his book to come out. I've wanted to get a better idea of how Lynn Sweet coached his team. I often think of him and the Macon Ironmen when I'm around the diamonds.

Helping or Not?

Last year I read this article in Sports Illustrated about Yogi Berra. This quote has stuck in my mind since reading it. In my role as Little League baseball coach I always wonder if I'm really helping the kids out.

While walking through the museum, Berra did not even seem to notice the picture. He was talking about how he loves Little League baseball but wishes kids would organize more of their own games. When his own sons were young and they asked him to play catch, he would say, "Go ask your brothers." Adults, he thinks, should stay out of the way when it comes to baseball.--Yogi Berra

Baseball is Homeric

As the Little League baseball season continues I'm falling deeper into it. Even though I tell myself every year I'm not going to let it happen it does anyway. I don't know why I just don't accept it. Everything about the game sucks me in.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but as a kid I used to think I could die on the baseball diamond and I wouldn't mind.

I'm going back through my notebooks and reading quotes I've written down from baseball books I've read. This quote by Chad Harbach in The Art of Fielding lays out nicely one of the reasons why I love the game so much.

"But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric--not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football. You stood and waited and tried to still you mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?"--Pg.259, The Art of Fielding

Thank You for Fungo Bats and Sugar Maples

I've been wanting a fungo bat (What coaches use to hit groundballs and flyballs to their team) for a couple of years now. I've held off on buying one, though. I just couldn't justify spending the money. Yesterday as we were pulling into Antigo just after sunrise my Dad mentioned that there is a lumber mill in Antigo that makes bats for Brewer's sluggers Ryan Braun and Cory Hart. He said there is a special characteristic to the sugar maples in that part of the state that produces a good bat. I thought it was interesting, but didn't think about it much after that.

Well, it was getting close to dinner time and we were looking at the house my Dad was born and raised in. There wasn't much else we wanted to do, so we were getting ready to head back home. But just than we'd noticed just two blocks down from his old house was the mill where the slugger's bats are made. So we decided to stop in at the office and see if they actually sold the bats right there. The secretary confirmned they did and went it got someone from that part of the mill that could show me the bats.

Twenty minutes and One Hundred and Twenty Dollars later I walked out of their with two fungo RockBats, one 33" and the other 35." I don't really regret buying them. With my families' interest in baseball I think I'll be hitting fungos for quite some time. One thing I will say, though, is that I don't like to see sugar maples cut. I never liked cutting them when I was a logger and I hate seeing others cut them now. I'd rather see the trees being tapped for maple syrup than being killed for lumber. So thank you to the sugar maple trees who gave up their lives to make my fungo bats.

They'll be put to good use.

What Holds The Wheel Together

Off to Antigo, Wisconsin today. My dad and I are making the trip east to visit the gravesites of my grandparents and meet up with my aunt.

We had our second Little League game last night and won. I'm proud of the kids. In the three years that I've been their coach this is probably some of the best baseball I've seen them play.

I still feel like I could be a much better coach though. Part of the problem is that I don't think I understand 9-12 year olds well enough yet. I'm turning to the notebooks for more inspiration.

I often think of this zen teaching that Phil Jackson had in Sacred Hoops: "See beyond what is seen. Never forget that a wheel is made not only of spokes but also of the space between the spokes. Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between. The essence of wheelmaking lies in the craftsman's ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?" [Pg. 150, Sacred Hoops]

First Game of the Season

We had our first Little Leageue baseball game last night. We ended up losing 18 to 2. I was nervous as hell the whole day leading up to it, but the weird thing is that I was extremely calm during the game as my team of 9-12 yr. olds self-destructed. I remember experiencing the exact same thing playing baseball as a child. So after 25 years not much has changed. The same sort of thoughts and feelings (I wrote about some of them yesterday) happen leading up to the game, but during the game they fade or simply just go away. Upon reflection I think part of the reason this happens is explained in this quote by Phil Jackson:

"[Players] live for the moments when they can lose themselves completely in the action and experience the pure joy of competition."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 180, Sacred Hoops

Right now I'd say that it happens not only to players but coaches too.

Turning to the Notebooks

Yesterday I had a bad day coaching Little League baseball practice. It felt like the team and myself were out of whack. Twenty-four hours later I'm still feeling the effects of this. I've taken the responsibilty of this onto my shoulders because I am the head coach, the team's leader. So I'm turning to my notebooks for some help and inspiration. I wrote this down when I read Phil Jackson's Sacred Hoops back in October of 2010.

"This ancient Zen teaching holds great wisdom for anyone envisioning how to get the most out of a group. Just as fish don't fly and elephants don't play rock and roll, you can't expect a team to perform in a way that's out of tune with it's basic abilities. Though the eagle may soar and fly close to the heavens, it's view of the earth is broad and unclouded. In other words, you can dream all you want, but, bottom line, you've got to work with what you've got. Otherwise, you're wasting your time. The team won't buy your plan and everyone--most of all you--will end up frustrated and disappointed. But when your vision is based on clear-sighted, realistic assessment of your resources, alchemy of the ten mysteriously occurs and a team transforms into a force greater than the sum of its individual talents. Inevitably, pardadoxically, the acceptance of boundaries and limits is the gateway to freedom.

"But visions are never the sole property of one man or one woman. Before a vision can become reality, it must owned by every single member of the group."--Phil Jackson, Pg. 100, Sacred Hoops

I think I have somewhat of a better understanding where my occasional frustration and dissapointment come from. And I'll be learning more about the alchemy of the ten.

Baseball and Balance

I woke up this morning, sat zazen, poured myself a cup of coffee, went outside with the dog (He ran off and barked and I ended up yelling my head off to get him back to the house)and started a fire in the masonry stove. This is my usual ritual before I sit down to either read or write.

This morning my intentions were to read some of All of the Above (only 60 pages into it and I've had it for a week), but instead I ended up watching Billy Ripken explain infielding basics on our laptop until other family members awoke. I should have known better than to order AotA book from the library. Once baseball starts I have a strong desire to read and listen to baseball fiction and nonfiction. I also find myself(like this morning!)looking for ways on how to become a better coach.

So baseball slowly takes over my life in a way. I don't think it can be helped. I don't know if my character will allow a balanced approach. It's been that way since I've been a kid.