This blog was originally created to record my thoughts on returning to playing baseball decades after I had hung up my spikes. I joined a group of old men playing baseball in the Ponce de Leon baseball league in the DC metro area. We played every Sunday morning at Yorktown High School’s baseball field. I’d never played high school baseball, never having made the transition from 60-foot bases to 90-foot bases. The league was 48 and over, but the average age was in the late 50s. I played for several years, until we moved to Asheville, NC and I’m now playing in the Tri-Cities League over in Greeneville, TN.

During all of this, I started coaching Little League at my wife’s prompting. I’d played men’s softball and been a player-manager for a number of coed “beer league” softball teams. I knew some things about hitting, but not much else. I had a 14-year background as a Scoutmaster, so the mentoring part came easy. I purchased books and practice plans, went to a pitching conference and eventually joined the ABCA.

After my first few seasons, in which I coached every game to win, I realized that I was doing that part wrong. Every team made the playoffs and then we’d have a round-robin to determine seeding for the playoffs. Only those games at the end mattered. So, I stopped caring about the games that didn’t matter and focused on teaching my players how to be better, letting them work on that regardless of the outcome, and helping them learn to love the game.

Along the way, I’ve developed some tools and learned some lessons from players, coaches, umpires, coaching conferences, vendors, and, probably most importantly, from Driveline.

This is my attempt to share that knowledge, so we can all make the youth game better and have fun doing it.