Sports from the past week.

Past sports article for the week of 5/30/06

T-Ball: The Sport Where Even You Can Coach.

By, Puns McKenna

Ok this last week my son had a t-ball game where the coach was going to be out of town. No problems right? Coach is going out of town, ok we're going to cancel the game right? Eh! Wrong! We had a game the day before the coach had to go out of town, and after said game he comes up to me. "I need to go out of town. Can you cover for me?"

I was floored to say the least and I about fell over. Well that honestly could have been the heat of the building. By the way, Whoever said it's better to play T-ball indoors was smokin something. Eighteen small children and about a dozen adults can make the confines of an indoor gymnasium seem like the Hot Springs at Yellowstone. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah the coach asked me to cover for him. After having seen the games we'd played so far this season, I thought sure why not. So I said, "Okay. What do you need me to do?" Trusting fool. Not the coach...me.

So he tells me what I need to know, the basics of what I need to do, and then I'm forced to go chasing off after my youngest. No big deal, the one piece of information I didn't get from him, while important, wasn't life threatening or anything. So I give the local YMCA, where the game is supposed to be held and ask them to have the coach give me a call to tell me where to get the equipment for the game, before he leaves town. So I go to bed that night wonderin how the heck I'm going to herd wet cats by myself.

Well it turns out that the next morning as I'm heading out to do some errands, I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do about equipment. Well I get a phone call (on my Cell) about ten minutes after I've left. So here I am driving down the road talking on my cell, something I hate to do when I drive, to the coach whose brains are scattered all over Northern Nevada. He proceeds to repeat everything he'd said the night before, and then asks me if I needed any other information. So with a chuckle I told him that I needed to know what to do about equipment.

Finally after several moments of silence, he chuckles and says, "Oh yeah. Just go into the office and ask for it."

I let out a bit of an exasperated chuckle at his scattered thoughts and assure him that everything is under control and to drive careful, we'd see him next week. Hanging up the phone, which by this time is a relief as I'm coming up on a lot of road construction. Yes for those who don't know it, Nevada's alternate state bush is the Orange construction cone. We seem to have an inordinate number of them around all year long, though it's worse in the summer.

Anyway where was I? Oh yeah. So I finish my errands and come home. The whole afternoon I'm thinking to myself, 'How the heck am I gonna coach these kids?' Well I figure out some sort of plan in my head and by the time it's time to go to the game, I'm feelin pretty set. So we go to the game, after a driving fiasco due to road construction, and I get the equipment and set up. The first of the kids start to arrive and so I begin warming them up by tossing them balls. After about twenty minutes the rest of the team arrives so I warm them up the normal way with stretching and such.

And then the other team arrives. Ok when they started out the season the team was named the Cubs. Well unbeknownst to us, the team changed its name to the Wolves. Cute name, especially since all the little kids kept running around growling and stuff, which while it was funny and cute was kind of confusing. So I walk up to the opposing coach, and I already have planned out in my head what to say... and something completely idiotic comes out. "Hi. I'm substituting for our regular coach. Do you have any idea what you want to do?"

The minute the words were out of my mouth I was like: "D'Oh! Good God that was stupid!" Thankfully I recovered my composure quickly and asked him if he needed to warm his team up. He did, so I told our team to take five and watch the clouds roll by. We cooled our heels for about fifteen minutes and then the game began.