Breaking News: A Retirement With No Regrets

Now that we are approaching Labor Day and the Fall rec basketball season is upon us, it is starting to sink in that I have officially retired from my youth basketball head coaching career.

OMG! Here come the second thoughts!

Will I regret this momentous decision? Am I walking away too soon? Do I have another year left in me? What if I start attending coaching clinics and maybe volunteer at a camp or two? Would I then be able to squeeze out another couple of seasons?

The ramifications of this are imponderable!

Wait? What about Mike?

Uh oh! The designated starting point guard for the last five years, now 14, no longer has the ear of the team owner, general manager, coach, water boy, cell phone holder, apologist, sponsor, traveling secretary and communications/PR guy.

I'm not worried about whether he'll get his equal share of minutes, but who's going to:

• remind him to take the cell phone out of his pocket;
• get him a second water in the middle of the game because he inhaled the entire, original, oversized bottle in the first half;
• tell him to stop fooling around with his teammates and get properly warmed up before the opening tap.

But, now, I'll be able to:

• keep his mother under control if he DOESN'T get his fair share of minutes;
• offer some Ex-Dad Coach wisdom that he won't listen to while he's trapped against a fullcourt press on the side of the gym where I'm standing with the other Fathers;
• get him a second water during the game without having to abandon the bench seconds before the start of the second half;
• And remind him about his cell phone, proper warm up and every other little thing.

You didn't think I was going to stop going to the games, did you?

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Please comment below.

If I Were King Of The World

With 13 years (and counting) of youth sports dad coaching, it is so clear, with hindsight, that I've been just as guilty as anyone of taking too seriously whether or not my team won the game.

But, I would not have won my share if I didn't take it seriously, because, as we all know, the other guy is almost always - with maximum gravitas - trying to send us home as losers. And since winning is more fun than losing and it's supposed to be about the kids having fun, coming out on top is a reasonable objective.

It is when winning takes precedence over fairness, equal opportunity, sportsmanship and logic that youth sports becomes warped.

I get -- and respect -- the youth sports culture of working to be successful with wins as the primary barometer of such success. And this is not about travel teams and top-tier select squads whose members (and their parents) are well aware of the pre-ordained, win-first culture.

This is for all those other coaches whose teams are populated by kids who just want to learn the sport, interact with friends, get exercise, please their parents, experience competition and practice sportsmanship.

So, I've got a couple of pet peeves (with solutions), though I know only too well that I'm dreaming. Unfortunately, human nature does not allow for such logic to prevail. Most coaches will do whatever they think they can get away with to influence the outcome of the game.

But, if I were King of the World:

1. The "meaningful experience" promise that coaches make to the parents of less talented kids would be replaced by the coach's commitment to absolute equal playing time.

• The"meaningful experience" line from the coach is code for the the following: The less talented kids are not going to play as much as the stars and never at the end of a close game because we want to win, baby.
• Let's see. Everyone pays the same registration fee. Why, exactly, should some kids play less than others? No one's ever explained that to me.
• It's just not that difficult to manage substitutions in a way that gets everyone an equal or near-equal number of minutes, snaps, innings, quarters, shifts, at bats or whatever. It can be done. We've all seen and (hopefully) admired those who do it. Many find a way to do it and still get plenty of Ws.

2. The conservative philosophy of encouraging baseball and softball players to take a strike and wait out a pitcher in hopes of a walk would be replaced by an aggressive, free-swinging coach-approach that encourages batters to confidently take their cuts.

• Some coaches order players to take a strike before swinging at a pitch. Others teach that a walk is the easiest way to get on base and encourage NOT swinging the bat. In this way, they seek an advantage through the potential failings of young, vulnerable pitchers who must avoid putting runners on base via walks.
• There is almost nothing positive that can result from this approach. The batter is tentative and the opposing pitcher is subject to embarrassment, if he cannot find the plate.
• Alternatively, if the batters are free-swinging and aggressive, they will be less nervous and more confident. Most importantly, they will also eventually become better hitters, instead of carrying a tentative mindset to the next level of competition.
• The most embarrassing thing that can happen to a batter is a called third strike. Such occurrences would decrease dramatically if coaches would let the kids be hitters, rather than hostages to a hoped-for base on balls.
• If a kid swings the bat, he or she has to take responsibility for the result. If he or she gets called out on strikes, he or she can blame the ump. Not a good thing.

It's supposed to be about the kids, right? Not the coaches, right?

Please let me know.

What's My Leverage With Mike? His Cell Phone

This fatherhood thing is tough.

Actually, it's not so tough with Meggie, who just graduated from the University of Richmond, Summa Cum Laude, and has already started her business career.

With high school freshman-to-be Mike, though, it's different. There's that male macho thing going on. It's kind of funny. He actually thinks he might be able to kick my ass.

Of course, there's no way, and we'll never know, but I can't legislate what he thinks, right? In fact, unless you're a law-and-order dad, you kind of lose control at this point as they enter high school. You can't legislate much anymore. You're kind of already cutting the cord.

You see, I'm too easy-going to start grounding him for mischief that is mostly manageable. (At the same time, I'm petrified because we're less than two years away from Mike and his friends driving cars. OMG!) Still, you have to maintain some kind of leverage. That's what makes it tough.

This "Letting go so they can fly" thing is weird. Like every father, I'll never forget the day I took him to the neighborhood sleighriding location, populated by kids his age but many older boys too, and leaving because he and I both knew it was time for him to operate on his own.

Thanks to 21st century technology, though, I do have an ace in the hole on the legislation/discipline/consequences front. His cell phone.

I first began to realize how indispensible it is back when he was 11 and his mother told me he needed one so he could always call to let us know he was okay. I was hitting fly balls to him in preparation for little league season that spring when every now and then I'd look up and see him in the distance turned away from me looking down - I thought - at his glove.

After about three such episodes that day (I'm a real quick study, right?), I realized that he wasn't adjusting his glove or tending to a bruise on his hand. He was texting his friends! Excuse me? I couldn't even grasp the concept of him having the phone in his pocket while chasing outfield flies, never mind making me wait while he prattled on with his pals about meeting later at the mall.

Last year, while coaching our team in rec basketball, I reached to give him a congratulatory pat on the backside as he came to the huddle for a time out after scoring on a fast break. Off target, my hand caught him on the hip -- you know, near where the pocket would be if your basketball shorts had pockets -- and collided with a rectangular piece of metal/plastic alloy or whatever those Godforsaken things are made of.

Astoundingly, he was playing the basketball game with his cell phone in his pocket. Here was my son, in a game I was coaching, competing against older, taller players with a mini-computer in his pocket, buzzing distractingly and weighing him down, no small matter, since he is, after all, white.

I outlawed that practice but we had another little issue this year at a rec game being played at Cabrini College in suburban Philly, the gym location furthest from our home (but not far from my office). Of course, Mike brought his phone but forgot to give it to me or put it in his bag by the time the game was about to start. So, he pulled it out of his pocket and placed it under a chair on the sideline, next to all the other bottled drinks and articles of clothing that clutter the floor around the bench.

Through four quarters, it got kicked around and was not readily noticeable as we left the area at the end of the game but that didn't even matter, because Mr. Absent-minded didn't remember to look for it anyway. Then, when we were almost home, he realized he had left it behind. He begged me to go back, but I said no, promising to call the next day to see if it was recoverable.

That following morning, he made me promise again to check on his phone and then he called me at work from the home phone later in the day - anxiety in his voice -- to see if I had any news.

I did get ahold of the wonderful people at Cabrini by mid-afternoon and we confirmed that the lost-and-found cell phone from the previous night indeed belonged to the 14 year-old kid with the long hair. (So that's why they have their pictures on the LCD screen - to validate ownership!)

Empathetic guy that I am, I immediately called Mike that Tuesday afternoon to say that they had found his phone. I heard a sigh of relief on the other end of the line and Mike was about to hang up when I added, "So I'll head over there and pick it up at the end of the week."

Biting my tongue to avoid audible laughter, I waited through a long, quizzical (I'm sure) pause before hearing that half-pleading/half incredulous intonation of "Daaaaad. You're kidding me, riiiiiiight?"

Though it didn't last long, I had had my fun and promised Mike that I'd go to Cabrini and bring it home that night so that he could recapture his life.

Thus, I remain in control because I know that if he pulls any wiseguy antics, I don't have to take away his basketball or his baseball or his XBox or his social life.

I know - and he knows I know - what truly matters.

We're Back! The Eating Machine and I

As my transition to fulltime blogging (say, two posts per week) nears completion, I'm back in the saddle with tales, viewpoints and the wacky things that either entertain or astound in and around the landscape of youth sports.

One of the most amazing things you see on a day-to-day basis is how carefree these kids are. My 14 year-old Mike has morphed - in the space of about 18 months - into an eating machine who is especially dangerous during the summer months. Kind of like a species of prehistoric animal, one with a latin name. Let's see...the Devoursfastfoodasaurus.

Thank God he's playing in two summer basketball leagues and dabbling in jump rope and skills drills, because the calorie burn is critical. And oh can he sleep. Sometimes, like 12 hours at a time. I'm sorry. Did I forget to mention that before that one half-day slumber session he had participated in consecutive XBox-dominated sleepovers during which the boys stubbornly tried to outlast one another until about 3 a.m., before giving in to abject exhaustion?

I mean, like, totally carefree.

The other night, I was on pickup duty for Mike and his friends, who had gone to the regional township fair. Scheduled was a sleepover at our house with two of his friends plus I had to bring home a couple of girls.

I'm an easygoing guy, so I was okay with six, total, in the car. Problem is, Mike showed up with eight, so now it's a total of nine, which would be so clearly against the law that I sought another solution. Since all these kids have cellphones, I figured it should be possible to find another parent who could take a couple of kids off my hands.

But when one of the girls called another whose mom we knew was coming, the calls and texts were ignored. We found out later that that was because the two girls were having "drama." The callee was mad at the caller and not answering.

End result was that I had to make two trips on a Tuesday night following a workday of 10 hours with a call scheduled for 8 a.m. the following morning. Still thinking that cellphone technology would allow for time efficiency, I good-naturedly went about the task of dropping the girls off at their sleepover and making my way back to the fair.

But, when I called Mike to establish the pickup point for the second trip - of course he and his friends who couldn't fit in the car went back into the fair to see what the "drama" queen was mad about - my calls went straight to voice mail because Mike's phone battery was dead. Not sure why I was surprised, since his cell ends up incapacitated in that way about twice per week.

Another month of carefree and then, high school. Think there'll be less "drama," or more?

Stay tuned.....