I love baseball. Always have, especially as a kid. While there were a lot of shortcomings from being, uh, short, perhaps I felt that it did not affect me in baseball. I had a great throwing arm, the best on the team. In fact, the other kids didn’t need convincing that is was me, they admitted it freely.

One practice we had a substitute coach. Being a teacher I understand substituting into a classroom where you have no expertise. The difference between me as a substitute English teacher and a fish out of water is I bring my own water. Though I cannot breathe in it, it will keep me from getting parched while sitting there waiting for the agonizingly long period to end. Neither me nor a fish would be in there trying to convince students that they needed to learn the subject of English.

However, expertise was not the substitute coach’s problem. He did know baseball. He also knew his audience, which is part two of the how to coach or teach manual.

The new coach decided that we needed to learn to hit the cutoff person when throwing from the outfield to the catcher. True statement. He planned to start the lesson with an example which would convince us to always make the shorter throw to a teammate, who would then relay the ball to home plate.

He proved to be too idealistic, thinking that this was true under all conditions. HIs first mistake. With the team in a circle he explained the concept. Now we come to his second mistake. A teacher needs to know the ability of his students.

When asked for the player who had the best arm, most of the team quickly pointed to me. They were happy to have someone else be the bad example, because they knew that none of our wimpy outfielders could throw the ball to home plate from second base, let alone from anywhere beyond in the tall grass pasture. Since we were standing in the grass, there was no way any of them wanted to try.

The coach moved me to one side, set up two random kids for the relay on the other side, then walked two catchers to home plate. When the coach said, “Go!” I was determined that I was not losing this mighty feat of valor in demonstrating my highest ability. I fired an arrow 30 feet into the air so that my catcher only took two steps to his left to proudly make the chest high grab. Then he turned and watched as the relay person picked up the ball which he had dropped, and threw a gopher, bouncing about 6 times to roll through their catcher’s legs.

A runner could have scored and made it back around to second base before the catcher had the ball back to home plate.

The coach ended it with a good statement. “Well, you should always try to hit the cut off man.” Skip the convincing, should have opened with that move, coach.

It was a good practice. Hope that you have a Happy Friday.