FAMILY TIES : He Wanted to Keep Time From Slipping Away : Weary of Coaching Son From Afar, Trager Switched to Laguna Beach

Tommy Trager was in attendance for one of the most cherished moments of his father’s coaching career.

It was the 1981 CIF Southern Section 2-A championship game at Anaheim Stadium. Tom Trager coached Corona del Mar High School to a 3-2 win over Santa Fe. Tommy Trager, then in the seventh grade, was the Sea Kings’ batboy.

“The big thing was that I got him out of school early that day,” Tom recalled.

In the years that followed, Tom Trager learned what other parents meant when they said: “They grow up so fast.”

“I can remember vividly when he was a freshman,” Tom said. “And now he’s a senior.”

It was the fear that time was slipping away that prompted Trager to resign after 15 years as coach at Corona del Mar in 1983 so that he could watch his son play baseball at Laguna Beach High.

“I was coaching other people’s kids while my own kid was playing baseball, and I didn’t get to see him play,” he said.

The transition from coach to spectator-father wasn’t easy. Trager found himself doing the same things as a parent that used to irritate him as a coach. He couldn’t resist the temptation to get close enough to his son to shout instructions from the stands.

“That would be something that I would be upset at another parent for doing, and yet I was guilty of it,” Trager said. “But then again, I’m not a typewriter salesman. I don’t work at the gas station. I have some experience in baseball.”

So, when the opportunity to step back on the other side of the fence presented itself, Trager jumped at it. He decided to walk on as coach at Laguna Beach this season and share his son’s last year of high school.

The decision raised a few administrative eyebrows at Corona del Mar, where Trager is in his 18th year of teaching. The Sea Kings, like Laguna Beach, are in the Sea View League, meaning that Trager would be coaching against the school he coached at for 15 years.

When asked if he will continue coaching at Laguna Beach after his son graduates, Trager smiled and said, “No comment.

“I think that most people know that the reason I’m here is Tommy.”

Trager said he has no regrets, but the new job has taught him a few things about player-coach relationships.

“It’s different,” he said. “At Corona del Mar, I was a coach. I didn’t care if they liked me or not. I’m sure a lot of them didn’t, but I think most of them respected me. But here, it’s different in that some of these kids come over to the house. I knew them even before they were high school baseball players. It’s not all that bad, but it’s different than how I’ve tried to do it in the past.”

Tommy Trager, the Artists’ catcher, is off to a good start this season. He’s hitting .378 (14 for 37) and is 7 for 14 in league play. He remembers a time, three seasons ago, when his father was an absentee coach.

“If I did something wrong, I was glad he wasn’t there,” Tommy said. “But as a freshman, I ended up hitting the ball pretty well. I’d always have to come home and tell him all about my game. We’d talk about what pitch I hit and what pitch I didn’t hit. I’d tell him I did something and it was because of this, and he’d say, ‘No, it sounds like it was because of that. And I’d say, ‘No, you weren’t there. It was because of this.’

“What was probably the toughest thing, rather than his not being at the games, was listening to a coach tell me how I should do something when I had grown up all those years listening to (my Dad’s) way of doing it. That was really tough for me. By the time I was that old, I knew the way he was telling me was the way I had always done it, the way I thought was right. I’d get angry . . . frustrated.”

This season, the Tragers are learning how to handle two relationships--father-son and player-coach--simultaneously. That isn’t always easy. Tom Trager admits that he sometimes goes out of his way to prove to his son’s teammates that nepotism has no place on the Laguna Beach lineup card.

Tommy: “He’s always trying to be the bad guy. He definitely tries to make a point with me.”

Tom: “Yeah, I’ve gotten on him hard enough to where the players have rallied around him .”

Tommy: “I understand that. I know what he’s trying to do.”

Tom: “When he’s doing something wrong, I get more excited about it with him than I do with other people. I have less patience with him. I’ve never said that he should be a fantastic ballplayer, but I want him to get the most out of the ability that he has.”