Last winter my son Tavish said he wanted to play baseball this summer. He's played softball for four years but with all the hype about the Toronto Blue Jays and the fact he participated in a baseball camp last year convinced him baseball was the way to go.
I warned him I didn't know how to coach baseball. My game has always been softball. Tav didn't care. He wanted to switch and so I told him I'd help out the coach as much as I could.
I pictured a carefree summer where all I had to do was drop my son off at the ball diamond and help the coach out if he or she needed it. No lineups, no practice planning, no scorekeeping, no dealing with vacations, call ups or arguing with umpires. It was going to be the summer of Ian!
Why not coach? Well I told myself I wanted to get to know Baseball Oshawa, I wanted to see how the league ran, I wanted to see how different it was to coach baseball. I grew up playing softball but I never played baseball as a kid and I certainly had never coached the game. Would it be radically different? No. But I wanted to test the waters, dip my toe in to see how cold it was if you know what I mean.
Then I got the call. The league needed coaches or the kids wouldn't be able to play. So much for the summer of Ian!
But as it turns out taking the coaching plunge with Baseball Oshawa hasn't been the worst thing to happen to me. The field dimensions may be different but the game is as fun to coach as softball. I told my team (The Pee Wee Pirates) at our first practice I wanted to accomplish one thing this summer, to have fun. If we won a few games that would be great but even if we didn't we'd learn a lot (them and me) and we'd get to spend some time together out in our field of dreams.
One of my players was sitting with me on the bench the other night and he said he played for another coach last season and all that coach did was yell.
"It didn't make me want to play that hard for him, you know?" he said. "But you don't yell, you make it fun. You're a good coach."
Hearing that from one of my players was a better feeling for me than winning a championship. And given we've only recorded one victory this season a championship is a long ways off! Don't get me wrong, I'd love to win a few more games but there's more to baseball than wins and losses. Together we're building character, we're learning teamwork and we've developed new friendships. It's a great game and I've got some great kids.
This has turned out to be the summer of Ian after all!
Ian, thanks for stepping up.
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