"The Final Inning - My View From The Stands" (2/8)

Bryce would never play recreation ball again. It was travel ball from here on out.

Over the next few years, the Northwest travel ball coaches would hold tryouts. The days leading up to the tryouts were always torture for me because I knew that Bryce probably wouldn’t make the cut if they had a decent number of kids trying out. Thankfully, the 9U tryouts only attracted about 11 players… about the amount they wanted on their roster. Same thing the following year for the 10U tryouts. Each year, I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God for the general lack of interest.

Both his 9U and 10U summer seasons, Bryce batted near the bottom of the order and seemed to strike-out more times than not. I can remember after a couple of the games, I’d sheepishly walk up to Coach Joe and apologize for Bryce’s poor performance at the plate.

“He’s a better hitter than he’s showing. He will break out of it eventually.” I’d lie. But those seasons came and went but Bryce never really improved a whole lot. Sigh… 😖

If there was one thing that Bryce did have going for him, he played a pretty good center field. The fact that he was small and left-handed told me that the outfield was probably going to be his permanent home should he continue on with his baseball career. You don’t see left-handed catchers or perimeter infielders and he was too small to play first base. He didn’t want to pitch and I was good with that. So… I knew he’d be an outfielder by default.

So from the get go, I’d hit him fly balls in our backyard. Hundreds and hundreds of fly balls. Many times, he’d ask me to hit him fly balls and even when I didn’t feel like doing it… I’d drag my sorry rear-end out in the back yard with a bat and a bucket of balls… and hit them to him. I never wanted him to be able to blame me for not being willing to help him improve when he asked for it.

This would eventually pay big dividends.

Those that know me or know my history… know that I have been a coach… just about nonstop since I was 18 years old… back in 1977. Coaching has been a huge part of my life. I’ve coached baseball, fast-pitch softball, slow pitch softball, basketball, flag football, tackle football… I’ve coached boys, girls, men, women… you name it and I’ve probably coached it.

I coached all of my girls in various sports as they grew up. I coached Maelynne first in 1987 and Alaina last 20 years later in 2007. And all of the girls in the years between.

When we moved to Ohio in 2008, with Bryce’s athletic career at its infancy stages, I had decided that I was through coaching. I had hung up my whistle and clipboard. I was just going to be a dad for once and enjoy watching my boy compete. All I needed to bring to his games was a lawn chair and my trophy wife. 😍

And that’s what I did those first few years. Bryce’s coaches, Joe and Mark, had no idea that their number nine hitter’s dad had been a long-time coach. Heck, for all they knew… and judging by the way Bryce played… I probably knew very little about the game. 😬

I remember the tryouts for the 11U team for one specific reason. It was toward the tail end of tryouts and Coach Joe was pitching to the batters while everyone was fanned out around the field, shagging the balls that were hit. Bryce was in the infield between first and second base when someone hit a little pop-up up near the first base line. Nobody was in a position to catch it when out of nowhere, Bryce came flying toward the ball in a full layout and caught the ball in the tip of his glove before his body came crashing to the ground. It truly was an amazing catch.

The kids were hooting and hollering… and Coach Joe seemed stunned. He stared down at Bryce for a few seconds and then declared. “Kid, you just made the team!”

He probably would have made the team anyway but that catch and the response he got must have fired him up because the layout catch sort of became his trademark through the rest of his baseball career. Every season from that point on, Bryce would make a handful of spectacular catches in the outfield. It was so fun to watch but I always held my breath when he’d go airborne because I could just picture him getting injured giving up his body like that to make a catch.

That 11U team in 2012 was a darn good team. Because it was primarily a community all-star team, most of these kids had played together since day one with the 8U group. Kids like Jared Szekely, Joseph McGuire, Josh Blankenship and Clay Crawford were very talented and they started to really come into their own as baseball players. Bryce wasn’t at their level but that season, he started to show some signs of improvement.

Bryce had also started to become close friends with some of these kids… particularly Joe and Jared. They started hanging out a lot and spending the night at each other’s houses just about every weekend. Somewhere around this time, I stole the title of “The Three Amigos” and applied it to this trio. The moniker stuck. They are still close friends and have that label to this day.

This was also the year that I was “outed” as a coach. By this time, I had gotten to know the coaches a bit better and had hit fly balls to the outfielders in some pregame warm-ups… stuff like that.

One game, Coach Mark couldn’t attend and Coach Joe asked me to coach first base. Simple task. Had coached the bases a million times during my lifetime. So I just did what I’d always do… encourage the batters, high five them when they got a hit or a walk, talk to my baserunners, remind them about how many outs there were, instruct them on their lead-off and their secondary lead… stuff like that.

The very next game, Coach Joe walked up to me as I sat in my lawn chair and said, “All the kids want Mr. Munson to coach first base again. Would you mind doing it again tonight?”

No problem. I coached first base again that night… and every game after that for the rest of the season. I was officially one of the coaches that season… and all of the seasons to follow. I was able to sit in the shadows for three seasons but that ended the summer of 2012.

To be continued…