Coach Sleepless After Catching His Dream

I was finally back in my own bed after a solid month spent chasing a dream.

My muscles tightened in my sleep. Who do we play next? Who should pitch? Where will we take batting practice?

I woke up, cleared my head and relaxed. It seems some dreams won’t end, even when they are fulfilled.

The previous day, the 17- and 18-year-old Conejo Valley baseball team I coached had won the Big League World Series championship by defeating Venezuela, 10-9, at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

It’s over, I reminded myself. There are no more games to play.

I took time to get reacquainted with my wife and four kids, whom I’d sorely missed while traveling with the team for weeklong tournaments in Nipomo, La Mirada, Sacramento and, finally, the World Series.

It was a wonderful day. But as I unwound, I realized what I’ll miss most about coaching: the sheer fervor I felt every day I wore my Conejo Valley cap.

Coaching the team required absolute tunnel vision. Every moment of every day was structured around the next must-win ballgame.

Winning wasn’t everything, it was the only thing that kept the team alive. Two losses in any tournament and the team would cease to exist.

Such scorching intensity can’t be duplicated at home or at work here at The Times, where I’ve spent the past 13 years as a sportswriter. This was a sustained, intoxicating adrenaline rush.

Not that the players were wound tightly. In fact, the only thing louder than their bats was their laughter. They were all bleached-blond bravado, united in their quest of a lofty goal and a rollicking good time.

While they pursued a championship, they busily scaled the wall that separates childhood from adulthood. Their ages might have been 17 and 18, but their behavior was elastic, stretching from 8-year-old to 28-year-old, sometimes within minutes.

They’d devour tubs of milkshakes, hug stuffed animals bought in airports, call home and let Mom know how much they missed her.

Then they’d play cards until dawn, leer at women, and cuss and spit and scratch in all the wrong places.

On the field they kept a remarkably even keel. Off the field, they were human roller coasters, jumping off bridges in Fort Lauderdale, jamming hotel elevators in Sacramento.

Along with assistant coaches Mike Sheehan, Nat Johnson and Ed Kitchen, my job was to praise and admonish. We gave these guys a lot of freedom, and over time they learned to police one another. Nobody was going to rock a boat that had set sail for the promised land.

The players appreciated being treated as adults, and it carried over to their play. They knew it was their team and took it upon themselves to maximize its potential.

I reflected on something I had learned during 20 years of youth coaching: Tolerance, forgiveness and love get better results than anger, sarcasm and punishment.

If sports, in fact, builds character, it can’t be planned or forced. It’s simply an inevitable byproduct of an experience like the one we shared.

Without preaching from me or the assistants, the players developed distinct qualities while racking up 16 consecutive victories after losing the second tournament game--qualities that will serve them well throughout life.

They learned to focus only on what they could control--their own preparation, decisions and actions. Opposing teams, umpires, field and weather conditions, tournament officials--nothing beyond our control could derail us from accomplishing our goals.

Loyalty and trust were paramount. Individual foibles and quirks were shrugged off or embraced. Mutual respect and accountability developed naturally.

There was a noticeable absence of whining. We stayed the course through all kinds of adversity.

In Nipomo, we were one strike from elimination and came back to defeat Santa Barbara twice to win the sectional tournament.

In La Mirada, San Diego pitched a no-hitter against us, but we managed to win, 1-0. Against Garden Grove in the Southern California championship game, we trailed, 7-2, in the sixth inning before exploding for seven runs.

In Sacramento, the challenges came off the field. The shuttle bus scheduled to transport us from the airport to the hotel was 90 minutes late. We stood in 100-degree heat, fuming at our fate but never at one another.

The hotel was under construction, and jackhammers woke us at 7 a.m. on the morning of the Western Regional final after we’d practiced the previous night until midnight.

Three of our best players left the team for a week to play in the Area Code Games, but others filled in ably and we won the last two regional games and first World Series game without them.

The trio caught up with the team in Fort Lauderdale, pulling up to our ramshackle houseboat hotel floating in a murky marina straight out of a Jimmy Buffett song.

The players hugged and howled their signature singsong greeting: “What’s up, fool!”

We were whole again and believed nothing could stop us.

But baseball has a way of breaking your heart. Like a hungry wolf lurking in the shadows, a devastating defeat waits at the end of nearly every season. In every league, in every tournament, all teams but one--the champion--finish with a loss.

In Big League, hundreds of teams worldwide opened the season with the same dream as Conejo Valley. Thanks to the unwavering commitment of the players and coaches, some lucky breaks and odd twists of fate, we were the only one whose season ended in a delirious dog pile on national television.

Now, for that good night’s sleep.