Leave the Clipboard in the Dugout

Thoughts on Baseball Coaches for Manny’s Birthday

Manny’s 20th birthday would have been March 21st.

I woke up that morning with no game plan. I just got up, packed some water and a lunch, grabbed Flynn (Manny’s best canine friend), backed out of the driveway, and ten minutes later … I was at the baseball park where Manny played the game from the time he was five years old.

I walked first to the T-ball field, then to the Rookie field where the dads start to pitch, then to A, AA, and AAA where the kids start to pitch to themselves, and finally up to the Majors field where the 11 and 12 year old big boys play.

Manny spent so much of his life on those fields. He was a rockstar athlete out there. I’m told he holds the all-time home run record. I can’t confirm that (maybe someone reading this can). From the little field where Manny led his teammates in dugout line dances, all the way to the Majors field where he once hit three home runs in a single game — Flynn and I walked the whole park slowly, field by field, age group by age group.

It looked pretty much the same as when we left it. Same beautiful fields. Same crazy parents. Same wonderful game.

And as I stood along those outfield fences I heard the familiar calls: Hit it hard. Keep your eye on the ball. Follow through. Keep working. All the way. Lock it in. You’ve got this. Go go go go go.

The coaching dads were out in full force — those guys who leave work early and trade their evenings and weekends to teach the next generation. Dads who hold onto the quiet dream that maybe, just maybe, their kid will play beyond whatever level they did. This is how many fathers bring up our sons, and relive certain aspects of our own childhood. We think we’re wiser now, we know more, we can help them go further.

I was one of them. We father-coaches use baseball in our parenting as the metaphor for life that it is. Countless lessons, countless analogies. That book has been written hundreds of times and you know how it goes.

But I’ve been thinking about two ways in which all this baseball (and you can swap in softball, volleyball, football, tennis, soccer, or whatever your kid’s game is) may be part of the mental health and suicide story in a way that most of us have not considered.

I’ve said a few times in these emails that I believe Manny fell from a very tall, unstable tower built from many contributing bricks of anxiety and depression stacked on top of at least one significant trauma. I’ve been cautious about studying any one brick too hard, because of where that path leads: blame, guilt, if only I had done this differently. That can be dangerous.

But it can also be helpful for others. There’s value in the postgame huddle, if it helps us play the next game better. So here is the coach, coaching himself, using a coaching analogy to challenge our role as coaches and pointing out the danger of too many coaching analogies. OK team, take a knee and listen up.

First — what happens when it’s not a game?

For all of us, there are times in life when we don’t think we’ve got it. When we can’t make contact. When we’re not locked in. What if a kid’s life off the field starts to feel this way, and the only message they’ve ever received is: you’ve got this, keep going, go go go go go?

Have they built the mental fitness for those moments? Do they have the tools to recognize that life sometimes requires us to not go, to stop, to sit, to struggle, to ask for help? Do they even know that’s allowed in the real game of life? Or is the only thing they’ve been coached up for is to rub some dirt on it and tough it out … because there’s a game to win.

Second — what happens when we confuse our roles as coaches and parents?

My fellow dads, what is the dominant model of our parenting? For most of us, it’s the coach. We come from a world of: see problem, fix problem. Observe what’s not working, make an adjustment. Fix it. We have the experience. We have the clarity of observation from the dugout. Father knows best, so we think.

Despite the powerful analogy, life is not actually a baseball game. In baseball, there is always another game. It is practically a commandment of coaching: there is always another inning, another at-bat, another season.

In real life; however, we only get one. And the painful truth is that your player has the ability to take themselves out of the game permanently. No coaching plan, no action plan, no pep talk changes that truth. So coach dad, be careful.

I can hear the pushback: So we’re not supposed to push our kids anymore? We’re not supposed to set high expectations? Everyone gets a trophy and nobody loses?

No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Go ahead and push them hard on the field. Set high expectations in the dugout. Yell if that’s your style. None of that is what I’m questioning on the field.

What I’m questioning is what happens when we parents carry the coaching model out of the dugout and into the house. For some of our kids, in some seasons of their lives, it may be doing real harm.

To a kid who feels overwhelmed by the game of life, who sees no way forward, quietly drowning in his own head, your detailed game plan, your strategy of attack that’s so clear and obvious to you, the let’s adjust your elbow and get back in the box response may just be adding more bricks to a tower that he already believes is too high to climb down from.

Maybe they’re not struggling because they haven’t been coached enough. Maybe they’re struggling in part because they have been coached too much. If the only response they’ve ever seen modeled is: identify problem, make plan, execute — and for whatever of many reasons they feel they can’t execute, and no one has ever told them that not executing is something a person can survive, they may quietly conclude there is simply no way out, other than to take themselves out.

Coaching Manny’s AAA Scrappers and the infamous Phillies are among my life’s greatest memories. The car rides before and after practice. The warm-up drills. The huddle before the game. The explosion of joy at a sudden win. The quiet walk to the far corner of the outfield after a tough loss. The – it’s okay, you’ll get ‘em next time. Some of the most special time between a father and a son.

I was flooded by these memories standing with Flynn at the fence on Manny’s birthday. As I watched the coaches shout their commands and the kids try to comply on those same fields, I thought about what I would do differently if I had one more inning with Manny.

Maybe I’d give fewer instructions.

Maybe I’d leave the clipboard in the dugout.

Sit down next to him, not after they “take a knee”, but next to him.

Ask how his game is going.

Let the silence hang until he hinted at his next play.

And then in that intense moment of the game of life, resist every instinct to coach.

Information about Manny’s Band Practice QPR Suicide Prevention training [HIT HERE]