Funny Guy Friday... Tournament Time...

     Well, it is baseball season, and I am in full tournament mode... when everything I do is either work-related or baseball-related. This is much different from regular season baseball mode when baseball is only a relatively small part of the day. Tournament time is filled with phone calls and conferences---90% of which have absolutely nothing to do with work.
     In fact, I told someone the other day that I spend my days concentrating on work and baseball. More specifically, I spend my days figuring out how I am going to get out of work to go coach baseball. My secretary blocked me out every afternoon of tournament week and everyday I have feared that one of my afternoon cases may go to trial causing me to be late for a game or practice. Look Judge, you can put this guy in jail on another day, I have got to get going because I have a 5:45 game in Baltimore. It's not that bad... but it's close.
     Actually, believe it or not, having to coach has actually helped me in Court. The Prosecutor makes an offer and my client turns it down. I go to the Prosecutor and advise them that my client said no, and I have a little problem---I have to be in Baltimore at 5:45 for a game that I am coaching. We then talk about baseball and the Prosecutor sweetens the deal with a comment similar to this: "Well lets see if we can get you out of here. Will your client accept a plea to a lesser charge with no jail time? This schtick works so well, my clients might be better served if I take up coaching basketball, football, field hockey, chess and competitive cheerleading so I have to be somewhere every night.
     The team I am coaching is an All-Star team made up of kids chosen by their Little League coaches. I had coached most of them on a different team during the season and knew what kind of players they were, but I had never met some of the kids, and there were others I had seen play only a handful of times. They were good, I thought, but I was not overly impressed. Frankly, I did not know what to expect.
    Initially, after our first practice, I thought we were going to struggle. When I reported this to Cheryl she was not surprised: "You say that about every team that you coach and your teams always do well," and then she added, "God put each one of these boys with you for a reason... there is something that you are going to give to them... or they are going to give to you... so figure that out and just do your best." Great. Now I had to coach this ragtag team and worry about God's plans too. This was too much pressure.
    As the week of practice progressed, and I watched the kids practice every night, for three hours each night, as one parent commented, I could see that I may have been wrong... we might be pretty good. Of course I worried, Where can I play this particular kid? or That kid may not be able to hit good pitching, but it was clear to see that the kids were pretty good. In fact, every single one of the new kids was better than I had thought, and the kids that I had coached before continued to play well. The pieces were coming together. Now if the coaches don't mess anything up, we might be okay.   
     I am coaching the team with two assistant coaches. Two very different assistant coaches.
     Assistant One I have coached with, on and off, for about fifteen years. He does not have a kid on the team, in fact he has no kids at all. He rarely questions anything that I do, and he never calls me on the phone to discuss our strategy.
     Assistant Two I have coached with for one season, and he has twin boys on the team (very talented twin boys). He questions everything that I do, and we talk on the phone four or five times a day----in at least four of those five conversations, he finds a way to slip in that he coached his Little League team to a 16-3 record and the 10U championship. Big deal, he has two good players for the price of one---kind of inspires me to talk Cheryl into having twins so I can enjoy that same kind of success. Most of the time he ends up frustrated with me because I tend to put off making a decision until the last minute, and he wants to know everything right now. Anal is not the right word, but then again........it is.
     The difference in the two coaches became clear when Assitant Two advised that he purchased a white dry erase board for the dugout. Great, no problem. But then he wanted to get together after practice to review how we were going to use the dry erase board. Sure, but can we do it over burgers and dogs at my house after practice? I don't want the parents to see us practicing how we are going to use the dry erase board before the tournament. This will not instill confidence. This was a good idea because in addition to practice using the board, we could continue our strategy discussions, he thought.
     I asked Assistant One if he would like to join us and he replied, "I have 100% confidence that our supreme leader will make the right decisions. He has operated from the seat of his pants for 48 years and has done quite well for himself. The only thing that I see him doing with the dry erase board is breaking it over his knee like Belushi in the movie Animal House. I will pass!"  
    Did I mention that Assistant Two has two very talented twin boys on the team? Why else would I put up with this?
    Anyway, I am happy to report that we are now three games into the tournament, and we have won every game. The fretting and the worry have all been for naught, as the kids have been playing great. There have been very few decisions to make, and very little for me to do, as they are winning by wide margins. We need to win one more game to advance to the State Tournament but so far, so good. In fact, the only hiccup has been with the dry erase board.
     I will admit that the board came in handy in the first two games, as we were able to record our changes and make sure that every player met his playing requirements. But last night the marker would not write on the board. This had our dugout in a panic. I thought quickly, and advised my assistant coach to get a pad of paper and a pencil and write out our lineup and our changes, using the pencil and the paper. It worked. Imagine that, it worked. The one managerial decision that I had to make in the heat of battle, and it worked like a charm. You see, you may not know this about me, but I have been flying by the seat of my pants for 48 years and have done quite well for myself. Sometimes flying by the seat of your pants can come in quite handy.