There is every reason in the world for a young kid to play competitive sports, even if they merely try it and find out they don’t like a sport after a while. As the father of a young boy, this has been on my mind a lot as he grows, but some unfortunate news recently brought this back to the forefront of my mind.
I was very fortunate in my youth to have the baseball coaches that I had, but none more so than the man we all knew simply as “Louie.” He won a lot of games, and championships, in his time, but that merely reflects how great he was for those fortunate to play for him.
When I was a teenager, I played three years for Lou, all coming after I inexplicably (in retrospect) skipped out on my first year of eligibility. I knew he had won a lot of games, so I can in feeling good about the situation, although my team initially wasn’t very good. For the first two years, we struggled, not even almost resembling his teams of years prior as many great players had aged out of the league from those teams.
My final year is when it all came together, when I was 16 years old. I had an All-Star season highlighted by a walk-off hit in one game (just hours after learning that one of my high school teachers had passed away) and settling into the No. 5 spot in the batting order, one I would not have imagined given that I wasn’t exactly a slugger. I had a great semifinal series, going 7-16 and making some key plays and clutch hits along the way. I loved being up there with the game on the line and did for as long as I played.
But all of that ultimately pales in comparison to what I gained from playing for Lou. He had his share of witty one-liners, ones that told you a lot more than just the mere words. From “You can’t defend walks” to “Errors are going to happen,” as well as his drawing the distinction between errors on a batted ball and mental errors such as throwing to the wrong base, missing a cutoff man or baserunning blunders, he taught us a great deal.
One of the first things he told us my first year is that the team is not a democracy – “it’s total dictatorship” as he said. It was his way of letting us know that as the coach, he called the shots and our job is to play at his direction. It’s the way a sport is supposed to be – not that the players are mere subjects, but that the coach makes the decisions and players play the game and learn from the coach. Years later, I would think of this when a basketball coach chewed out his best player after the player talked back to him when he was taken out of the game for a breather, letting him know that he isn’t to talk back to him. I remember something else from that, too – that same player later made a number of clutch plays to help his team win the same game.
Lou’s point about errors being part of the game, but mental errors not being part of it, is a larger point about life. We all make mistakes in this life, and we all face adversity, but those mistakes also shouldn’t be unforced ones. It’s one thing to get the wrong answer on a homework problem or a test, but quite another to fail an exam because of not studying or drive under the influence of alcohol and get injured in a serious accident.
In playing youth sports, especially a team sport like baseball or basketball, one hopefully gains a lot of values. They understand the value of putting in effort, the value of how to reinforce habits through practice, the importance of being part of something bigger than yourself, and cooperation, among other things. They come to gain a sense of discipline, that how you approach something matters more than your talent. Through sports, one also hopefully gains perspective on many things in life, because sports often serve as a great metaphor.
Lou was all about every last one of these. I had plenty of positive influences in my life that helped me grow during those years, but Lou was no small part of it.
After my playing years there were done, I wasn’t a stranger at first, especially while I still lived in my hometown of Chelsea, Massachusetts. I would see Lou at Voke Park as he continued to coach and I still came to watch friends of mine play, and Lou occasionally would share things with me, including Red Sox tickets one time. Naturally, we lost touch as the college years came and I wasn’t around as much, then moved and was not in Chelsea nearly as much.
I had heard in recent years that he had some health issues, as we all do when we get older. Even so, hearing of his recent passing was sad news. Lou was a great family man as well, as evidenced by all of his kids being high achievers and upstanding citizens, and that also shows that it’s no accident that he was a great coach to play for. It feels like a great understatement to say that the world is a little poorer than a little over a week ago.
Thank you, Lou, and rest in eternal peace.