Family Coach

Two games to go. One tonight, and the last one on Friday. I had one of my players at the last game tell me something interesting, but before I get to that, some important information. I have as many parents as I can help me out during these games, and a couple have helped every game, which I appreciate very much. They are the mother and father of one of the players. Their son is a Junior. It seems to me as though the father is a bit to preoccupied with the direction of his sons baseball career. Towards the beginning of the season, I'd asked if anyone wanted to play with the other team, as they were short players. Junior volunteered and then had a talking to by his dad, after which he came back to the dugout and told me that he "wanted to play with his teammates and not desert them." I don't know any five-year-olds who would ever say that they don't want to desert something, or even that they don't want dessert. So anyway, Junior's dad is always trying to get the kids to do drills that are a bit to advanced for their skill level. He's also got this habit of trying to run infield before the games. And during these little pre-game warm-ups, he's got Junior at shortstop each and every time. So apparently, he feels that his boy will be a shortstop when he grows up. Which is fine, but kids that small can't make the throw from short to first. This always seems to discourage his dad who then tells him to get more on his throws. As if just yelling at him will somehow make him throw the ball farther. So he's a bit of an overinvolved, living through his son type of father. This little preamble will make the next part of this story a bit more interesting.

His son told me at the last game that he doesn't have to listen to me because I'm not really the manager. I asked him who the manager was and he pointed to his dad and said, "He is. He signed up to be manager and wanted it, so he should be manager. And since he wanted to be the manager, I don't have to listen to you because you're not really the manager." I found all this very interesting as I was told by the VP of the league that there weren't any managers for this particular team, which is why I was called the day before the first meeting to sign up my son and run this team. So either he didn't really sign up, or they decided that they'd go outside of the kids who were actually signed up and ask me back. I'm going to go with both of those options. That being that they didn't want him running a team (for reasons I totally understand), and with the requests for me as a manager, they asked me instead. This also helps inflate my little ego. But really, it's not that little. Anyhoo, I didn't bring this up with the parents of this particular kid, as there's only two games left. One more after tonight. One more game and we're not playing fall ball ever again. It's going to be time next year to branch out into other sports. Perhaps basketball. Maybe there's a nice 6 and under lacrosse league out here somewhere. Or if he doesn't want to play sports, he can try soccer. Two more games.