Accidental Coach

Are you a referee, line judge or umpire? Have you seen the man whose photo accompanies this byline? If so, I probably owe you an apology.

After thirty-five years of torturing officials I am considering retirement from coaching youth sports. Umpires and referees from here to the shores of Long Island will mark their calendars and dance in the streets when informed of this historic surrender. Who can blame them?

Terrorizing game officials since the age of sixteen, coaching was never on my radar screen early on, in fact, as a child I was a coach's nightmare. On every team there is a kid who thinks he or she knows more than the adult who is running the show, a pint-sized fledgling manager who believes that the formula for a winning season resides alone, under his or her 6 ¼ sized baseball cap. A young beardless Jon was that kid.

In my first four years of youth baseball I played for four different coaches. Labeled a "distraction" one coach cleverly announced that I was not to ask him any questions during the game, answering any attempted query with the phrase "Jon, that sounds like a question." Other coach's would either ignore my managerial tips or simply sprint in a different direction if I drew too near. My wonderfully patient Dad would tell me "When you get to be the coach, you can make the decisions", hoping to soften my image and detour my path as a journeyman Little Leaguer. By age fifteen I was out of the local youth baseball system and had moved on to irritating my high school coach.

Following my sophomore year, I was approached by a neighbor who had been coerced into coaching his son's fifteen year old Babe Ruth League team for the summer. He needed a first base coach and someone to pitch batting practice and was unable to pressure any of the team parents into lending a hand. My neighbor even offered to pay me ten dollars per game for my services. Bored, broke and dateless, I agreed to come aboard for a negotiated rate of twelve-fifty per game if we lost and fifteen bucks if we won. The big leaguers were starting to pull in some nice cash during the seventies due to the advent of free-agency, why not me?

The first two weeks went swimmingly. The team was winning and I had a little jingle in my pocket. On the way to a Saturday practice I drove by the coach's house to pick up my weekly stipend and noticed that my boss was loading furniture into a truck. Following a short investigation I discovered that my benevolent neighbor had been promoted to a new position within his company and would be moving to New Jersey in a matter of days. It became clear to me as we spoke that I would now become the head coach of this team and my income would now come in the form of voluntary community service and good will.

Perhaps it was a plot devised by coach's I had wronged in the past sensing a shot at retribution or merely the apathy of parents unwilling to enlist their spare time for the sake of the team, but I was anointed head coach in an eye flash. No background check like today, oh no, just a scorebook and keys to the field hastily dropped on my porch one summer evening.

Admittedly, the prospect of bossing around kids just one year younger than me was an appealing possibility, however, I was reticent, an "accidental coach" if you will. The following day I headed to the ball field and have been there ever since.

Over the next thirty-four years I've coached thirty-one baseball teams, twenty-seven basketball teams, a girls softball team and a faculty basketball team comprised of Rabbi's at a private school. (Note: the Ramblin' Rabbi's finished the season 4-12-1 with one tied Friday afternoon game which ran long and was suspended due to the Sabbath).

I've been thrown out of games by umpires, referees, and even a scorekeeper here in Roanoke. Some of my players are doctors, some have been to prison, and others are in their final resting place.

Pablo Picasso once said "The accidental reveals man," if that is indeed the case I've been fortunate to stumble onto something I love.

This is a bitter-sweet time of the year for me. Spending Father's Day with my son Will and wife Janet is an annual treat which I cherish dearly. Sharing that same day with Hank, a father-in-law who treats me like a son and for whom I hold the utmost love and respect, propels that one Sunday in June to near perfect status. The missing ingredient is my Dad, who passed twenty-three years ago while napping.

(Note: Four generations of men in my family died in their sleep at age sixty-eight, including my father and grandfather, a harbinger that sort of stands-up and demands to be noticed. On December 12, 2026 when I turn sixty-eight, I have decided to forgo sleeping, napping and resting of any kind, determined to once and for all end this dynasty of death. You will find me in front of my TV at 2:30 am watching reruns of "Cheers" and guzzling a Red Bull or two, desperately trying to make it to dawn).

Charming, kind, and honest to a fault, my Pop was a simply lovely person. One of my favorite recollections of spending time with my Dad was the time the two of us decided to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. One of my Dad's boyhood friends owned a summer home in the small town of Walton, New York, just twenty or thirty miles from Cooperstown and had offered to board us for the weekend. It was an enormous old home that was rumored to have been a bordello of some note during the Civil War and would splendidly serve as headquarters for the adventure.

Every trip I accompanied my father on was an adventure, for, like me, Pops had no sense of direction. Dad could get lost in a one-way tunnel. Every time we went to Levittown, New York to visit Dad's friend Nat we ended up at the beach miles from out destination. I started packing a swim suit whenever Dad mentioned Nat's name. Come to think of it I am not sure if I ever really met Nat or visited his home.

Unlike his son who has managed to embrace his own ineptitude, Dad took great exception to those who referred to him as "directionally challenged." He would carefully plot his course with a collection of hand-made maps and written directions, shunning the help of his co-pilot. I had flown second seat enough times with my Dad to know that we would be hopelessly astray within minutes of leaving HQ.

Plowing aimlessly through the farmlands of rural New York, dad and I succeeded in turning an enchanting country ride into the Bataan Death March inside of ten minutes. We were so far off of the beaten path that our only hope would be to find a talking cow that was familiar with the area and was coincidently a baseball fan.

While Dad pulled over to check his maps I noticed a small house in the distance. We agreed to abandon our present strategy (pointless wandering) and headed for the farm house. When we arrived a thin old man appeared in the yard and made his way to our vehicle. Dad, rolled down his window and asked the gentleman "How do you get to Cooperstown?" Asked that same question in Brooklyn you might have gotten a wise guy retort like "Practice, Practice," however, this fellow had apparently not caught Henny Youngman's act over the past forty years. The farmer did provide us with detailed directions and punctuated his discourse by spraying my Dad's light green Ford Torino's door panel with tobacco juice.

Confident and well informed, we left our friend the farmer and within minutes we were lost again. Explaining driving directions to the Kaufman boys was like describing nuclear fission to a pair of flip-flops. Things had gotten ridiculous to the point of being funny. We were laughing and enjoying each other's company, barely concerned that the day was getting late.

We spoke about life and about dreams. Dad was a simple person of simply means. He always considered work as a "means to an end" and that he "started" living when he arrived home every night to his family. Often I have to remind myself how fortunate I am to have a family and how lucky I was to have Pop's around as long as I did.

We stumbled upon Cooperstown, purely by accident, sometime around 2pm. We toured the exhibits, walked the grounds and stayed until closing. It was a day that lives in my mind every time I watch the Hall of Fame inductions on television.

Pop and I ate dinner at a local café and loaded ourselves back into the tobacco stained Ford. Several minutes later we were back on the road without an inkling as to where we were or in which direction we were going. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.