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Like thousands of dads across America, I coach my son's Little League team. This is not a responsibility that I take lightly. As I see it, the job goes way beyond teaching the rules and fundamentals of the game of baseball. There are things that are more important to develop than athletic skills, such as teamwork, loyalty, responsibility, and fair play.
Unfortunately, developing a player's character is quite a bit different than developing a sound batting swing. It can't be done by lecture, nor can it be accomplished through drills or exercises. It's far more difficult than that.
It's done by walking the walk, not talking the talk.
An example of this recently occurred with our team. About half way through a close game, our manager found himself in a discussion with the home plate umpire. Although there was no arguing, raised voices, disparaging remarks, or cursing, the umpire lost patience with our manager and ejected him from the game
Our manager could not have been more surprised or embarrassed. It was his first ejection in a long career of coaching youth sports teams. In fact, until that night he had not received so much as a warning from an umpire or a referee.
He could have easily dismissed the ejection as the irrational act of a "trigger happy" umpire, and most people who witnessed the event would have agreed. But this incident played out in front of his team and, because of this, our manager wouldn't simply dismiss it.
At the next practice our manager called the team over for a talk prior to warming up. First, he apologized for being ejected. Then he spent the next ten minutes discussing the incident. While it would have been easy to put the lion's share of the blame on the umpire, our manager instead took full responsibility for the incident. Some of the lessons that the team learned from their manager were:
The team spent the next two hours running drills, practicing game situations, taking batting practice, and working on defense. A lot of important baseball knowledge and playing strategies were imparted. However, what the boys learned during the first ten minutes of practice that day was infinitely more valuable than anything else they will learn all year.
A small Catholic church in a small town suddenly became infested with a pack of obnoxious rats. The pastor tried everything humanely (and humanly) possible to get rid of the rats, but to no avail. Parish members urged the priest to call an exterminator, but he resisted their pleas because, he reasoned, even rats are God's creations, and their lives are as sacred as the next. Then one day the pastor got an idea and within a week all the rats were gone. Anxious to learn how he did it, parisioners pestered him for an explanation. "Surely," everyone said, "he must have given in and called an exterminator."
"No," explained the pastor, "I took care of it myself. I figured that since these were God's creatures and they had nested in God's house, then God must really want them to be in his fold."
"So," continued the pastor, "I followed what I believed was God's wishes and I baptized each and every rat into the Catholic church. Now we'll only see them on Christmas and Easter!!!"