My Life as a Little League Coach
Posted: Monday, November 01, 2004
by Eric Drouant
Northshore Insurance
The first time I stepped on a baseball field as an adult my son was 5 years old and my daughters were 9 and 7. It was my wifes' idea really, to sign them up. As a kid I was probably the worst athlete you can imagine, the goofy kid who couldn't hit, couldn't catch, and couldn't throw, so the idea of subjecting my kids to that horror had never crossed my mind. Also the fact that I tend to be lazy and like to lay around the house with a strenuous book or movie kept the idea at bay. But at her insistence we trudged down to the local signups and planted their names on the list and went off to buy gloves and cleats and so forth and went home to wait for the call. Oh, but I didn't know about tryouts yet. Yes, one perfectly good night you drag your kid out to the park and wait in a long line of other kids and they all take couple of swings with a bat and maybe catch or drop a fly ball and a ground ball and bingo you go home again to wait for your call from the coach who picked your kid.
Finally that day comes and your coach says "Be such and such a place at this time for practice". There are times and places in our lives that are pivotal moments and they go by without a thought. Mine occurred at my sons' practice when his first coach, a short guy with glasses and red hair walked up to me and said "Hey, I could use some help with the team, how about you be an assistant?" And with that innocuous question I set out on one of the loves of my life. I learned a lot from Les that first year and I learned a lot about myself from the kids. One thing I learned was that I didn't like to lose and even though in five-year-old baseball nobody keeps score, everybody keeps score. Yes sir, there we were counting those runs and keeping it amongst ourselves as those little buggers trotted the bases and the other team on the field chased dribblers around the infield.
My girls had the good fortune to be picked by fine coaches, nice guys with the patience to teach them the game and good teammates who taught them funny cheers to be screamed at the top of their lungs. Girls are different than boys in that regard. Most dugouts with boys in them are pretty active but there's not a lot of organized chanting going on. The girls will go at it in unison the whole game but the boys stay pretty tightlipped. The only exception I can think of to this rule is one time my son was on a team with a kid named Chris whose mom came from Arkansas with an accent and when this kid got a good hit the whole dugout got up and sang out "WAY TO GO CHREE_US WAY TO GO!" just to embarrass him.
Anyway, that first year went by, and like I say I learned a lot. One of the things I learned is that my kids had failed to inherit my clumsiness. They worked at it and turned out to be pretty fair athletes and I got a little taste of the coaching bug. The next year I got bit hard. My son was drafted by a guy named Stan whose job sometimes kept him away from practice. His assistant was a guy named Randy, a military man with a quiet voice that got louder and dirtier after a couple beers but I didn't find that out till the team party and that's a different story. So the first time I met Stan he wasn't at practice and the whole team was there with no coach, and my wife, who will always take charge, told me "Well do SOMETHING with them". Being the quick thinker I am I immediately said "Like what?" and got pushed into the middle of a pack of demonic six year olds. "OK guys" I said, "This is my left shoe and that's home plate. My left sock is first and this right shoe and sock are second and third". And it worked pretty well. We actually got a few things done and right before practice ended Randy showed up with the equipment.
That year jelled into a foundation for the next few years. The people I met that year, beginning with Stan, would form the nucleus of the experiences to come later. Stan was the head coach and I assisted. He taught me a lot more about the game and how to coach it, I got practical experience in a game I had never really played or paid attention to, and we both learned that we liked to work together and complimented each other well. It was also the year we learned playing .500 ball didn't scratch the itch quite well enough. We had fun alright, lots of it, but at the end of the year we were already talking about next year and what we would do. Yes folks we were hooked. The gleam in our eyes was the dreams of next year when we REALLY knew what we were doing.
Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Oh we finished out the year just fine, a little over .500 which was good but not the year we had hoped for. But what did work out was even better. You see, that was the year we met Bert and Hoagie. Bert is an oil guy from Chalmette , the high school athlete, and someone to whom losing is painful. Really painful. "Eric ", he told me once, "losing hurts". And he meant it. Hoagie on the other hand is a laid back pharmaceutical rep with an easy grin and a chuckle. His most memorable quote after a tough loss was "Oh well". And these two guys lived next to each other. Mixed together with Stan and myself we created a chemistry that would carry us to glory the next year.
That year would begin with a change. For some reason we decided I would be head coach. An honorary title I assure you. But it also meant I would be responsible for getting all of our kids together on the same team, not an easy feat when you're drafting in a room with 15 other coaches. Somehow it managed to get done though, with the help of a trade another coach shouldn't have made and a lot of sweating bullets over a draft list. And along the way we managed to pick up a kid named Mitchell who would turn out to be as good a second baseman as you could ask for.
Well, that year was our year. We had the coaches with the perfect personality mix, Bert and I were the fanatical win win win guys and Stan and Hoagie were the laid back
"Oh well" guys. The parents were a coach's dream and Bert had a swimming pool in his backyard. We would rack up a win and retire to that pool with grins on our faces and joy in our hearts. That team, and those people, are the essence of what SBBA is about. There are bonds that form among people thrown together who might not have met otherwise. There are memories carried through life, of the times we shared and the idea that something special happened to us when we were together. No, we didn't take first place in league play, but we did take second place, and we won the post season tournament and that night the kids from that team cut off all my hair, a promise I made to them and kept just as they kept their promise to win it. Second place and a post season win. That might not seem like a lot to some, but years later, when I run across the coaches and the players from that team, we still grin at each other and the feeling is still there and that's something to hang your baseball cap on.
Next year, when the time comes, sign your kid up. You might find something more than baseball. In fact I guarantee it. You'll find memories and friends. And something else you might find is me, because although my older kids are long past playing, Stan has an eight year old and just for insurance I've got a four year old.
Eric Drouant
April, 2003
985-643-5126
My girls had the good fortune to be picked by fine coaches, nice guys with the patience to teach them the game and good teammates who taught them funny cheers to be screamed at the top of their lungs. Girls are different than boys in that regard. Most dugouts with boys in them are pretty active but there's not a lot of organized chanting going on. The girls will go at it in unison the whole game but the boys stay pretty tightlipped. The only exception I can think of to this rule is one time my son was on a team with a kid named Chris whose mom came from Arkansas with an accent and when this kid got a good hit the whole dugout got up and sang out "WAY TO GO CHREE_US WAY TO GO!" just to embarrass him.
Anyway, that first year went by, and like I say I learned a lot. One of the things I learned is that my kids had failed to inherit my clumsiness. They worked at it and turned out to be pretty fair athletes and I got a little taste of the coaching bug. The next year I got bit hard. My son was drafted by a guy named Stan whose job sometimes kept him away from practice. His assistant was a guy named Randy, a military man with a quiet voice that got louder and dirtier after a couple beers but I didn't find that out till the team party and that's a different story. So the first time I met Stan he wasn't at practice and the whole team was there with no coach, and my wife, who will always take charge, told me "Well do SOMETHING with them". Being the quick thinker I am I immediately said "Like what?" and got pushed into the middle of a pack of demonic six year olds. "OK guys" I said, "This is my left shoe and that's home plate. My left sock is first and this right shoe and sock are second and third". And it worked pretty well. We actually got a few things done and right before practice ended Randy showed up with the equipment.
That year jelled into a foundation for the next few years. The people I met that year, beginning with Stan, would form the nucleus of the experiences to come later. Stan was the head coach and I assisted. He taught me a lot more about the game and how to coach it, I got practical experience in a game I had never really played or paid attention to, and we both learned that we liked to work together and complimented each other well. It was also the year we learned playing .500 ball didn't scratch the itch quite well enough. We had fun alright, lots of it, but at the end of the year we were already talking about next year and what we would do. Yes folks we were hooked. The gleam in our eyes was the dreams of next year when we REALLY knew what we were doing.
Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Oh we finished out the year just fine, a little over .500 which was good but not the year we had hoped for. But what did work out was even better. You see, that was the year we met Bert and Hoagie. Bert is an oil guy from Chalmette , the high school athlete, and someone to whom losing is painful. Really painful. "Eric ", he told me once, "losing hurts". And he meant it. Hoagie on the other hand is a laid back pharmaceutical rep with an easy grin and a chuckle. His most memorable quote after a tough loss was "Oh well". And these two guys lived next to each other. Mixed together with Stan and myself we created a chemistry that would carry us to glory the next year.
That year would begin with a change. For some reason we decided I would be head coach. An honorary title I assure you. But it also meant I would be responsible for getting all of our kids together on the same team, not an easy feat when you're drafting in a room with 15 other coaches. Somehow it managed to get done though, with the help of a trade another coach shouldn't have made and a lot of sweating bullets over a draft list. And along the way we managed to pick up a kid named Mitchell who would turn out to be as good a second baseman as you could ask for.
Well, that year was our year. We had the coaches with the perfect personality mix, Bert and I were the fanatical win win win guys and Stan and Hoagie were the laid back
"Oh well" guys. The parents were a coach's dream and Bert had a swimming pool in his backyard. We would rack up a win and retire to that pool with grins on our faces and joy in our hearts. That team, and those people, are the essence of what SBBA is about. There are bonds that form among people thrown together who might not have met otherwise. There are memories carried through life, of the times we shared and the idea that something special happened to us when we were together. No, we didn't take first place in league play, but we did take second place, and we won the post season tournament and that night the kids from that team cut off all my hair, a promise I made to them and kept just as they kept their promise to win it. Second place and a post season win. That might not seem like a lot to some, but years later, when I run across the coaches and the players from that team, we still grin at each other and the feeling is still there and that's something to hang your baseball cap on.
Next year, when the time comes, sign your kid up. You might find something more than baseball. In fact I guarantee it. You'll find memories and friends. And something else you might find is me, because although my older kids are long past playing, Stan has an eight year old and just for insurance I've got a four year old.
Eric Drouant
April, 2003
985-643-5126
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