Quit baseball in high school? No chance
I”m trying to think back to my final days as a member of the Healdsburg High School varsity baseball team. I”m trying because it was almost 30 years ago when I patrolled center field at Recreation Park. And while center field is still there, only with much better turf and surrounded by much better lights these days, and while Rec Park is still a prominent fixture in my hometown, I”m long removed from its spacious confines.
I loved playing baseball in high school better than almost anything else back during my teenage years. I lived for the months of February through May and if I didn”t always see eye to eye with the coach, it never crossed my mind to do what I”ve seen happen the last couple of weeks in Lake County.
1) Quit the team. Clear Lake varsity players Roman Rose and James Robinson, both sure-fire All-Leaguers, pulled the plug after the team”s second-to-last game of the season. No way I could have done that and that goes for my Healdsburg teammates, especially those who were All-Leaguers.
2) Ditch a practice (for any reason) as four members of the Upper Lake varsity baseball team did last week. Hell, the baseball players in my day even made sure our senior cut day was a non-game day.
3) Get into a heated conversation with my coach as a varsity player did last week. That thought never crossed our minds and not even the bonafide stars on the team would challenge, let alone loudly and in front of a crowd, he who provides playing time and also bench time.
Maybe I”m just a dinosaur some 30 years later, but I never could have screwed my teammates (see Clear Lake baseball) or my coach (see Upper Lake baseball) and felt good about it. In fact, that will be their lasting high school legacy. There goes (fill in the name), remember what he did his senior year?
Don Meri, the Upper Lake coach, summed it up pretty well last week when he said he felt like he had just been kicked in the teeth by his seniors. I can only assume Clear Lake coach Paul Larrea probably felt the same.
Loyalty and pride appear to mean less and less these days. In their place, you”ll find bad excuses and shoddy reasoning, one of which leads to the other.
I don”t get it. As a parent of two teenagers, I can tell you now that I wouldn”t react well if my son or daughter did what I”ve seen happen in Lake County the last couple of weeks. Whatever problems you have with your coach, work them out yourself and leave parental units out of the equation. If you can”t work them out yourself, just grit your teeth and play out the season. I never played baseball because I loved or hated my coach. I played baseball because I loved baseball.
Unfortunately, it seems the easy way as opposed to the right way is the path of choice all too often in the nearly 30 years since I caught my last flyball at Rec Park. The two are rarely the same.
One satisfaction I certainly took with me when I walked across the stage to pick up my high school diploma, as so many Lake County seniors will be doing in just a couple of weeks, is the knowledge that I always played my hardest, tried my best and never quit — on my teammates or my coach. It didn”t earn me a single dollar or a college scholarship, that”s for sure. It did earn me the respect of my peers, and that was plenty good enough.
n Athletes of the year
The Record-Bee is currently in the process of compiling its Athlete of the Year and Coach of the Year candidates for the 2007-08 sports season. We”d like your input on the subject and if you”d like to run a name or two across our sports desk, drop us an e-mail at RBSports@aol.com.
