Chicago - A message from the station manager

By Jim Coffman

Whatever you do, don’t cheer. The kid has two strikes on him with two outs and runners on second and third. We are clinging to a small lead and if he strikes out, we have a real good chance to turn that lead into a win, our first of the season. But nobody is truly happy when coaches strike out the kids on their teams at this level. It is so much better when they hit it and we make a play on defense. So coach, don’t cheer. In fact, don’t move a muscle as the umpire cries out “Strike three!” But don’t be too tough on yourself for feeling so relieved. It can’t be helped.
Deciding just how much your T-Ball/coach-pitch team plays to win is one of the biggest challenges facing a coach at this level. It infuses every part of my son Noah’s junior division games. Of course I’m not trying to win at all costs (Congratulations coach, your team just won the T-Ball championship! Thank you, thank you very much. I’m so pleased to accept this honor because it so clearly validates my entire life . . . I’d like to thank the grounds crews, the umpires, the bottled water distributors . . . ). But the “Can’t we all just rise above this petty competition stuff?” approach doesn’t work either.

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Posted on May 31, 2007

T-Ball Journal: Welcome To Little League

By Jim Coffman

This spring and summer my kindergarten-going daughter Alana has embarked on the happy little slice of Americana that is a first season of T-Ball. She plays for the Rookie League Red Sox at a North Side park a little less than a mile from our house. And her brother Noah, 8, is playing his last year in the Junior Division. At that level, the first three innings are T-Ball and the last four are coach-pitch. That’s when the head coach, in this case me, tries to groove pitches for his own players to hit. We’ll have more on that excruciating task later.
So this is the only season in which my two oldest kids are both utilizing the traditional youth baseball starter kit. And I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll all make it through at least reasonably unscathed. Then again, one realizes early on in the process of coaching this sport to kids this age that there are a great deal of things that can go wrong.

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Posted on May 24, 2007

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