The Dad Coach

1

Defining Success

Your Goals and Your Message

You might come at this role in one of a number of different ways. Maybe you’ve coached before. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe you really wanted this job and volunteered for it. Maybe you didn’t and were cajoled into it.

Regardless, you’re now the coach. Willingly, reluctantly, or otherwise, you want to give it all you have. I’m already on record that you don’t want to take yourself too seriously. In other words, don’t affect some persona of a big shot to whom winning “isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” I know, that made sense for the legendary Vince Lombardi of Green Bay Packers fame. But again, and I’ll be playing this tune throughout, the kids you coach are not professional athletes with virtually everything in their lives riding on their team’s win-loss record.

Frankly, I’ve seen too many youth league coaches who try to dress and act the part of the give-no-quarter leader. They strut, they scowl, they yell. In the end, they do the opposite of what I recommend.

Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t take your role seriously. Whether you intend it or not, as soon as a kid joins your team, you become a role model.

The question is, what are you going to model?

I can imagine what you’re feeling if you’re brand-new to this. You’re wondering, even before you have any idea who will be on your team: Where do I start? What do I do first?

Well, if you agree with me that molding kids into the best adults they can become is more important than turning them into a championship team or all-star baseball players, run every decision you make through that grid. What’s best for each future man? That should weigh on every decision you make about your team from day one.

Of course, you want to communicate your goals and your message in concert with, not independent of, your team’s parents. But as my manifesto letter implies, you’ll find that’s a delicate dance that requires firm boundaries and clear expectations (see Chapter 3).

My goal is to give you everything you need to be the most effective coach you can be. That means I want to make sure this book is full of drills and exercises and strategy tips, linked to videos from many trusted experts and me. Start with my introductory video here, and I’ll point to the rest of the videos throughout so you’ll know what to teach and how to teach it, trying to be sure the nuts-and-bolts side of baseball is thoroughly covered. (At any point, feel free to jump to Chapters 7 and 8 for explanations of the various drills.)

But since I am also on record that the character side of the equation is by far the most important, I want to give you an idea of how I have always tried to set the tone for my teams—whether ten-year-olds or big leaguers. While I did emphasize winning with big leaguers—it’s what they’re paid to do, after all—I urge you to emphasize fun, learning, and character. If you get those right, winning will eventually follow.

Once you’ve established who your players will be—and how you go about this will vary depending on your local league procedures (tryouts or randomly assigned kids)—your first address to the team becomes the foundation of everything you’re trying to accomplish. To be clear, this would be a meeting of just you (and any assistant coaches you can recruit) and the players, not with their parents, and it would take place even before your first practice. So, have your plan and bring your notes, but whatever you do, don’t read your speech. Maintain eye contact with the team as much as possible, peeking at your notes only as needed.

Just be sure, wherever and whenever you present this, to read the room. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a coach and manager, it’s that individual players are more sensitive than they’ve ever been—and some much more so than others. Being old-school, I’m from a generation where players didn’t generally express our feelings. We might say a few things privately to each other or vent to our families in the privacy of our own homes. But we never wanted to show weakness or vulnerability in front of our manager and coaches. If we got called out, reamed out, even shown up, we sucked it up, licked our own wounds, and stayed at the task.

That’s not so common anymore. With an epidemic of anxiety sweeping the younger generations, you can expect to find fragile, sometimes broken, kids at every level. Sometimes it’s hard to resist the temptation to tell them to grow up and get over it, but there’s little upside to that.

This doesn’t mean you should coddle players. Just be aware that they may have issues, difficult home lives, estranged parents, and all kinds of other stress factors at play. That makes it all the more important that you model and teach the life skills that will help kids cope, turning them into adults who can both live and pass along those values.

With that in mind, let me share with you a few life lessons I’ve learned along the way. I call these Competitive EDGES, and that second word serves as an acrostic for five distinct points. I have been fortunate to meet and even in some cases play with some of the greatest baseball players in history. I’ve found that these men display character qualities that helped them beat overwhelming odds and achieve their dreams. While making the major leagues should be a very low priority for your team, these same qualities apply to every relationship they enjoy. So while the examples I use may be from those ones-in-a-million who did become big leaguers, they can apply to any endeavor.

Five qualities you can model and teach your players serve as Competitive EDGES everyone needs to succeed—not just in sports, but also in life.

Competitive EDGES: Education

I’m not talking about the formal education that comes through institutions of higher learning—as important as that is. I’m talking about street smarts, life smarts—the art of staying curious and seeking always to learn something new. Making such a pursuit a lifestyle habit can result in a gift that keeps on giving for a lifetime.

I have attended many coaching seminars at various competition levels, and I always learn something. The key is to approach these with the right mindset, never assuming you already know it all. Watch for clinics and conferences in your area, even if they are intended for high school athletes or older. You might be surprised at how much of what you learn can be applied to your young players.

Don’t be afraid to offer parents your help in emphasizing the importance of the boys’ schoolwork. I will never forget, as a ten-year-old baseball player, having my coach tell me he was going to collect my report card every six weeks and that he would pay close attention to the teachers’ remarks about my effort and attitude in their classes. That extra bit of accountability really motivated me.

Later, when I coached young boys, I found that their parents appreciated my emphasis on academic excellence. Obviously, the parents should play the lead role here, but most love having outside support.

Along with this offer to be an extra eye for the parents comes the responsibility to follow up. Many parents allowed me full rein to manipulate playing time or to otherwise motivate the boys if they were not doing their part in the classroom.

I believe I would not have had the playing career I had without having taken my academics seriously in grade school, which led to the same in high school and to the University of Michigan. I doubt I would have managed in the major leagues without earning my degree. That’s becoming more important all the time, as teams search for leaders with both talent and the ability to adapt and change with the ever-evolving game.

One of the greatest coaches I was ever exposed to was George Kissell, a legend in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. I had heard about Kissell before I ever wore a Cardinal jersey, because though he never played more than minor-league ball, he became a minor-league manager, a big league coach, and so respected a teacher of the game that he became known as “The Professor.” Some considered him a Mr. Miyagi type when it came to teaching the intricacies of baseball.

Kissell was signed as an infielder by Branch Rickey in 1940 and worked within the Cardinals organization for nearly seventy years. He mentored such major league managers as Sparky Anderson, Joe Torre, and Tony La Russa.

Late in his life he served the Cardinals as field coordinator of system-wide instruction, then senior field coordinator. The Cardinals still annually honor a minor-league coach with the George Kissell Award. Former Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog once said, “George Kissell is the only man I know who can talk for fifteen minutes about a groundball.”

Though I’d long been aware of his reputation, I first met George in 2000 when I was invited to spring training as a potential backup catcher for the Cardinals after a six-year career. I was on the bench watching a game when Kissell, already nearly eighty, sat next to me and began rapid-firing questions at me about baseball philosophy, strategy, and other personnel who had been invited to camp.