Editor’s note – This article originally appeared on AstrosConnection.com.
How can I explain what baseball has meant to me so that it will make sense to other people? My mother told me that my dad started rolling a ball to me when I was less than a year old, so I guess I never had a chance. Playing the game was a major part of my life growing up: Little League, Pony League, Austin High School, American Legion, the University of Texas. I was a pitcher, and my dad caught several million pitches from me in our back yard. Dad emphasized control, control, control, and I could hit spots when I was eight years old. My dad, who was a good enough player to be offered a contract by the Detroit Tigers, was my first and best coach. My mom was my biggest fan. My brother played from Little League through his freshman year at UT. We spent most spring and summer afternoons and evenings at one ballpark or another, at my games or my brother’s games or watching UT or the Austin Senators/Braves. My dad and I played catch for years and years, until he was too old to see the ball well enough to play, and I treasured those times with him. He is dead now, and I wish I could bring him back merely by building a baseball field.
For several years I coached high school baseball. Coaching baseball never seemed like work to me. Sue, my wife, is a big baseball fan, luckily for me. We were childless then, and my players were my surrogate sons, I suppose. I was damn lucky: by his recommendation, UT Coach Cliff Gustafson placed me at Brenham High School for the 1968-69 school year. I was 22 years old and thought there was nothing to it. During my three years in Brenham, my teams compiled a record of 76-13, qualified for two State Tournaments, finished third in State once and were 1970 State Champions (27-3). I was barely older than the kids I coached, and we had such fun together. From Brenham, I moved to McCallum High School in Austin, where I had two teams that were just as good as my Brenham teams but that were not as lucky. We achieved two district co-championships in four years at McCallum and no extended playoff successes, but the guys were just as special to me. I am close friends today with a number of my ’60s and ’70s Brenham and McCallum players, and one of them was my son’s high school coach for a year. Those relationships, which were born and nurtured on a baseball field, are priceless. I left coaching for law school in 1975.
Sue and I finally had children of our own. Mark was born in 1979 and Elizabeth in 1982. We adopted Mark and Elizabeth through the Edna Gladney Home in Fort Worth, and they are great kids – far better than I could have produced biologically! Mark began playing ball at age nine, and he was challenged, to say the least, by the skills required by the game. He had fun, though, and isn’t that all that really matters in kids’ sports? Like my dad, I was my son’s first coach, but you’ll have to ask Mark if I was his best. I coached his teams through Little League and Pony League. At age 14, it all clicked for Mark, and he became a player who could compete successfully with his peers. He made his first ever All-Star team his second year in Pony League, but for Mark, the joy always was in playing the game, no matter the results. He was the same after the game whether we won or lost or whether he got three hits or struck out three times. I admired that attribute of his, and I tried hard to instill that same attitude in all my players. For me, the joy was in watching Mark and the other kids I coached become better players during the course of the season.
Mark and I played catch innumerable times. I threw several million batting practice pitches to him. I hope he thinks I helped him become a better player, but no matter – those afternoons and evenings with him were among my best times ever. Our sessions on the ball field lasted through his high school years, and we had some great experiences together, or at least I think so. Through hard work, he made himself into a good high school player, and the zenith of my baseball life was returning to McCallum High School to be his varsity baseball coach in 1996 and 1997, which were his junior and senior years. Those two years were the happiest years of my life.
Mark called me “Coach” on the field; he never asked for or expected favors because he was the Coach’s son, and he got none. He made important strides in developing as a player, and he contributed to his team’s success. The other schools’ coaches named him Honorable Mention All-District as a junior and Second Team All-District as a senior. I was at Killeen when Mark got his first varsity hit. I was at Del Valle when he replaced a suspended starter in a crucial game and got three hits and 2 RBI. I watched from the third base coaching box as he won the Travis and Lanier games with late inning hits. I saw him become a starter at first base and a leader on a McCallum team that surprised the entire State of Texas by reaching the UIL State Tournament for the first time in the school’s history. Mark’s 1997 Knights team finished third in its district but capped its improbable odyssey through the playoffs by defeating the state’s number one team in the regional finals. The accomplishments and togetherness of that group of boys, who were led by a future Braves bonus baby pitcher but who also were a TEAM in every sense of the word, were amazing. Sue and Elizabeth were at every game, and Elizabeth was in my dugout as our batgirl for most games. We shared that magical season together – as a family, as father and son, as coach and player – and I cannot express the wonder of that experience with mere words.
Now it is over for me, in many respects. I fell victim to school district politics, and I no longer coach. Mark no longer plays. Elizabeth, a great softball player who played catch with me almost as much as Mark did, is 16, in the throes of adolescent rebellion and does not appear to like me very much these days. But baseball transcends all of those changes. Mark is a baseball fan and can watch a game with his mother and me and can analyze the strategy to its most minute detail. He loves to watch games, and we watch them together. He likes to talk baseball with me, and what greater pleasure is there than that? He understands and appreciates the nuances of the game. This year he joined my best friend and me on a trip to spring training, and that may be as close to Heaven as I will get. The three of us experiencing the languid pace of a spring training game, laughing together at some odd play, debating on-field plays or strategy, discussing the team’s current roster and needed changes, having intelligent baseball talks over the Baseball Prospectus or about days and players gone by, enjoying watching our favorite team, playing catch at the hotel, just being together at the ballpark day after day – I thank God for allowing me to have such pleasure in my life.
Baseball is timeless, and the game builds relationships and links generations like nothing else does. Sue and I share a love and understanding of the game; my dad instilled this in me, and now my son loves it too. Perhaps I passed my passion for the game on to Mark, and no doubt he will pass it on to his children. I hope we will watch many games together for many years, and perhaps one day Elizabeth again will want to watch a game with me. My days of playing and coaching have ended, but my love for baseball and for all it has given me is endless. I hope to see each of you at the ballpark this season and in years to come. I certainly shall be there.