In Praise of Dedicated Dads, Great Coaching, and Baseball

Decades ago, two men chose me for the little league hardball team that they coached. No girl had ever played in that community league, and my family and I weren’t previously acquainted with either fellow. But after I passed the tryouts, they both welcomed me onto their team as one who belonged just as much as every boy did — including their own sons.

Laura (#7 — top row, 2nd player from L) with hardball team mates (YES — all the rest are boys)

I felt safe with those men to show my chops, learn my limits, stretch myself, and take measured risks through my fear. They spotlit and leveraged what I did well, while guiding me to adapt my body, thought and action for better results in other ways. They also celebrated my wins. I felt supported and valued by those men — even while some others in the league (including at least one of my own team mates) openly opposed my inclusion.

From start to finish, those two father-coaches made me feel that I had a genuine place and position there, with everyone.

Perhaps their greatest impact on me was that they remained steadfast in this investment throughout the stress and strife of that landmark season. And they did so fairly, without pampering me, while also serving the greater good of our whole team. Sometimes this meant reminding me of my commitments to our shared enterprise. Sometimes it meant downranking and even benching my butt when I just wasn’t cutting it in a game. And making other appropriate adjustments whenever my fellow ball players or I struggled with our execution, or lapsed in our effort, attention, motivation or attitude.

A third father — another coach and one of the league officials — had already opened the door to this new experience for us all. He did so first by observing my enthusiastic ability in the neighborhood park that we shared, and then inviting me and my younger sister to practice with him and his two sons. He went further than that by seeing possibilities (and maybe even a certain justice) beyond the rules and regs, and encouraging Sis and me to try out for the league so we could play “for real.”

In the mid-Seventies, all of this was significant.

A seminal fourth father (actually, he was the first) made it all possible: our own dad, who ventured past norms and biases when he trotted out his first-born to play throw-and-catch as soon as I could hold a ball — same as he would’ve had I been his son rather than his daughter. In the Sixties, that was significant. Yet he also didn’t force me to take up the game, but instead offered me that choice to take or decline for myself (a no-brainer, once I discovered how much I loved baseball). Dad encouraged my enthusiasm by going out with me to toss the ball around whenever he could. And he kept his promises about doing so.

And not to leave out the ladies on Father’s Day, for one does feature in this story: our mom, who'd had a solid arm herself as a girl and who championed my pursuit. She helped me practice my throw-and-catch as a “tween,” by then with hardball and gloves for us both (significant as well, in the ‘70s — maybe still so today). Rooted for Sis and me at every one of our games, often keeping official score while she did. And she helped me get back into action after my own team mate deliberately decked me during drills.

All these years later, I’m still ambivalent about that whole experience of playing little league hardball, as a pioneering girl to do so: some parts I loved, others I loathed. The gender hostility from some and my own performance anxiety felt brutal at times. Then again, I suspect that experience is what really got me into Wellesley College, where I majored in physics before going on to the male-dominated world of graduate physics and related research (where my experience was mixed again ...).

But one thing has been clear since those little league days, even if I didn't articulate it like this back then: My gratitude to these four dads + Mom, i.e., to these five coaches of mine. For equipping, emboldening and believing in me to accomplish what I fervently wanted. For staying the course with me when my morale sank, my heart broke, or I performed poorly. And for dedicating themselves to help me develop in authentic ways, while discovering new options I wasn't even aware of.

Really, that’s a lot of what great parenting does anyway. Great coaching does that, too. And though the former may eventually come to an end in our lives, the latter is always available to us. Get coached well!

*

AFTERWORD, 24 June 2017 

Four years before my father passed away, he made his last cross-country trip to visit me. I was struggling in mid-life challenges, swamped by self-doubt and even despair. At close of our visit, as his car idled on my driveway ready to head back home, Dad took my hand and squeezed into it his warm, reassuring support. Then he suddenly reached for something on his dashboard and squeezed that into my hand, too — a small engraved key ring.

“You take this,” he said. “It’s for you now. Keep it, and don’t ever forget this about yourself.”

My turn now to pass it along, back to all those people in this story and onward to dedicated dads (and moms), and to great coaches everywhere.

— Laura J. Nigro, MS

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