Did That Coach Just Call My Son An "Easy Out?"

This is one of those true stories that can only be produced by the raw emotions of youth sports and the parents who come to watch – and subconsciously monitor – the games.

It is five years ago now, but all the participants remember it like yesterday.

It played out like live theater with conflict and resolution, protagonists and victims and finally an apology, accepted without a blink, half a decade later.

It was a Saturday morning during the spring youth baseball season at a cool little field here in suburban Philly. Parents were leisurely gathered in their lawn chairs surrounding the diamond, grouped predictably but separately behind and around the dugouts of their sons’ teams.

It was late in a hotly-contested game among eight year-old boys who were now old enough to turn infield grounders into forceouts and to genuinely care about winning or losing the game, advancing in the standings and getting to the playoffs.

First and second, two down and my son, Mike, is next up at this pivotal point in the game. I’m sitting in one of those lawn chairs next to my wife, Kathi, who is a loving, charitable but emotional soul whose motherly instinct to protect her young is, let’s say, acute.

Spectating along the first base line, we are a bit more tense than usual as Mike steps into the batter’s box. Then, Kathi hears a coach’s voice from across the field, “Okay, easy out.” Her interpretation of what she heard was the coach denigrating her son, who was smaller than most and still finding his stroke.

“Did you hear that?” she said to me sternly, immediately. I hadn’t, but she was fired up. “Mike heard it too. I’m going to give that coach a piece of my mind.“

Somewhat stunned, I watched her march behind the backstop and approach the other team’s bench, stop and address the coach, who was sitting on the upside-down bucket, facing the field and completely unaware of one mother’s impending wrath. I watched his head turn toward Kathi and but couldn’t hear the exchange. It was brief, attention-getting – and one-sided. Kathi doesn't remember what she said, but knowing her, I'm pretty sure "How dare you" was in there somewhere.

Kathi did an about face, walked purposefully back and resumed her seat. Seconds later the allegedly insensitive coach approached our group of parents and declared his innocence, stating that he was exhorting his team with the well-known phrase “easiest out,” which directs them to throw any infield grounder to the nearest base, since only the last out of the inning was needed.

“I would never have said ‘easy out.’ I’m not that kind of person,” he declared, pleadingly, to an uncomfortable group of fellow Little League parents from the opposing team who had no idea who he was or whether or not he had been wrongly accused. He made his point and retreated and the incident was mostly forgotten.

Now, of course, no one remembers what happened with Mike’s at bat, which team won the game or whether either made that season’s playoffs. But we remember that it was a Saturday morning, exactly where we were sitting at that field and the various images, including that of an accused man trying to explain an unfortunate misunderstanding to a mostly detached audience.

That image struck me again this past fall and I began to realize that that coach may well have been the father of a kid who had actually become Mike’s best friend. Kathi and I had gotten to know he and his wife well through youth sports interaction and a series of sleepovers with the boys.

Great guy, who, there can be no doubt, would never have called any kid an “easy out.”

First time I encountered him after coming to the realization that he had actually been wronged, I approached and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he offered and as I proceeded to describe the scene, he stopped dead in his tracks, looked me right in the eye and said, largely unamused “Yeah, that was me.”

Kathi knew what was happening and had kept her distance before seeing his reaction. She then came running over to give him an apologetic hug.

Turns out, he wasn’t even supposed to be coaching that day. He had gone to the game as an innocent dad watching his son play baseball, just trying to get through the day, when he was recruited to handle the head coaching duties. Less than an hour later he was under fire, the object of an intense verbal attack from the horrified mother of a poor, little eight year-old boy.

“I remember exactly what I was wearing,” he told me. “I was sitting on that bucket. I couldn’t believe what Kathi was saying. When I saw (the head coach who didn’t make the game) the next week, I said ‘Thanks for nothing.’”

As we go to Mike’s games now, this is one of our favorite youth sports competition spectator stories, one that brings even greater laughs now that all the parties are friends.

And it feels good to know for certain that another youth sports dad-coach did only the right thing.

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