Vikes Ignore Flag Football Coach

Last Wednesday the Star Tribune published a list of the eight men who had the best chance of succeeding the deposed Leslie Frazier as the next head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.  There were a few familiar names (Darrell Bevell, Jack Del Rio, Ken Whisenhunt) and some not so familiar (Todd Bowles, Dan Quinn, Ray Horton).  By Sunday's edition, the list of candidates had grown from eight to eleven.  My name was not included on the short list, and to add insult to injury, it was not even on the long list either.  Assuming the lists' accuracy, what I deduce is that my one year's experience as the head coach of the Most Holy Trinity girls flag football team thirty-eight years ago was not enough to impress Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman or owner Zygi Wilf.  So be it.

The humiliating experience of being shunted by The Purple's top brass, however disappointing that might be, is not enough to erase the happy memories of my coaching days.  By my count, I have coached forty-four teams, including the aforementioned girls flag football team, one girls soccer team -- I didn't know the rules, but nobody else stepped to the plate -- one wrestling team (all boys, in case you were wondering), three T-ball teams, eleven softball teams, nine baseball teams, thirteen girls basketball teams and five boys basketball teams.  The ages of my players ranged from five to fifteen.

There used to be a TV police detective show called The Naked City which ran for five seasons starting in 1958.  Each episode took place, and was filmed on site, in New York City.  At the end of each broadcast, a deep-voiced narrator would say, "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."  Just like the TV show, I could probably come up with a little story about many of my forty-four teams, but there are couple of anecdotes which I like so much that I've told them several times over the years.  With apologies to those of you who've heard them before, I offer them today for your amusement.
  
The Aquila Atrocity:  Every T-ball league in America is a treasure trove of comedic stories.  How could it be anything else, considering that the players are five and six years old?  A third of the kids are clueless, and another third are hapless.  Yet almost every parent looks at her precious darling as the next Joe Mauer. Michael's T-ball team was an anomaly, as we had no less than seven or eight kids on that coed team who were good little athletes.  Therefore, the coaches could actually teach the kids some of the basics.  We even pulled off some force plays, relays, cut-offs and run-downs, all things one would rarely see in a T-ball game.

 

I was the head coach -- the manager, if you will -- of the team, and my two assistants were Craig and Mike, who were fathers of two of the players.  Craig and Mike fit the definition of "good cop, bad cop."  Craig, a marine veteran, was a person who commanded attention, and did not want to have the kids waste his time by not listening to his instruction.  Mike, on the other hand, was laid back, soft-spoken, and saw T-ball as more of a recreational activity than a competition.  (True confession:  I was more like Craig.  My feeling was, if the league is going to have us keep score, then we are in it to win it!)  Mike was one of those guys about whom it could honestly be said, "He does not have a mean bone in his body."  That's why what I'm about to write is preposterous, yet true.

 

The game in question took place on a field adjacent to Aquila School in St. Louis Park.  The diamond was surrounded by grassy slopes (grassy knolls?) which ran along the first and third base lines, and it was on those slopes that the parents sat. Most T-ball games are very well attended because they are among the first athletic competitions when parents can see their children in action.  This game was no exception; the hills were crowded.

 

At one point in our four-inning game, our opponents had the bases loaded.  Coach Mike yelled out to our infielders, "Get the easy out," meaning "if the ball is hit to you, throw it to the nearest base."  It is something that 99% of all baseball and softball coaches have yelled to their players under the same scenario.  That sentence is definitely part of the baseball lexicon.

 

Unfortunately, the mother of the kid who was batting took umbrage at Mike's choice of words.  She thought he was yelling to our pitcher that the batter was a weak stick!  Totally oblivious to the fact that Mike was only using conventional baseball parlance and was not demeaning her little Johnny in any way, she started swearing at him as if she were from the cast of Scarface.  She was sitting on the first base hill and our team's parents were across the field on the third base side, so her bellowing went across the diamond, audible to everyone there including the kiddies.  Finally, presumably when her husband or one of her friends explained things to her, she sat down and zipped her lip for the duration of the game.  The parents of our team laughed about that incident for the rest of the summer. But poor Mike!  He didn't deserve the verbal abuse.  

 

The Brookside Beanie:  My favorite sports quote of all time was uttered by John McKay, the head coach of the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers which, in 1976 under McKay's leadership, went a perfect 0 and 14.  Following one defeat late in the season, McKay was asked at a post-game press conference what he thought about the execution of his team.  "I'm all in favor of it," he quickly replied.

 

I only bring this up because my second favorite sports quote was delivered by my coaching assistant, Craig -- yes, the same Craig who coached T-ball with me -- during a hotly contested fourth grade boys game in the St. Louis Park Rec League at Brookside School.  The fourth graders played on a court drawn width-wise across the gymnasium floor, and the baskets were adjusted to eight feet (instead of the regulation ten) for the little guys.  The parents and other spectators sat on folding chairs lined up on the stage which ran along the length of one side of the modified court.  The team benches were along the opposite side.  As a result of this configuration, the parents could hear virtually every word that was spoken (i.e., yelled) by the coaches.

 

The teams in the fourth grade league were assembled by neighborhood, which for us meant Fern Hill, heavily populated by Jewish families.  Half the kids on our team, the Rockets, were of the Jewish persuasion, including Uri.  Uri was one of the most conscientious players on the Rockets, a hard worker, a good listener and a diligent competitor.

 

In the closing minutes, the game was on the line, and the Rockets were clinging to a slim lead.  The hot shot guard of the opponents was dribbling up the floor, and Uri was defending him well, although having difficulty keeping up with the kid.  While Uri was holding onto his own yamaka with his left/back hand, he was attempting to swipe the ball away from the dribbler with his right/front hand, all the time side-stepping to stay between his "man" and the basket.  Just as it looked like the guard was going to blow by Uri, Craig yelled out, "Uri, let go of that damned beanie and play some defense!"

 

If I could have dug a hole and disappeared into the Brookside floor, I would have.  There was no doubt the parents heard Craig.  Of course, the action didn't stop, and by the time the game ended fifteen or twenty minutes later, the shock value, if any, had dissipated.  There was the usual mingling of families after the game while we exited Brookside.  No one brought up the "beanie" comment.  I breathed a sigh of relief as I made my way out to my ice cold car.  I felt like we'd just dodged a bullet.  Craig and I straightened things out before the next practice.