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Asperger's Syndrome, autism, autism spectrum, baseball, coach, Culver City, Culver City National Little League, high school, high school softball, junior college, little league, manager, Santa Monica, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica Little League, school, softball, Venice, volunteer, World Series, youth baseball, youth softball, youth sports
This looks like the fields where I coached baseball and softball…
REMEMBERING MY TIME AS A SPORTS COACH AT THE (mostly) YOUTH LEVEL
One In A Series
I recently realized something regarding this blog…
Though I have posted a few pieces about my time coaching youth baseball and softball and mentioned those days in other posts,
Specifically the first time I was involved in such,
I haven’t written any real details about what was essentially a career of mine from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s.
For a period of over two decades,
I coached sports at the youth level;
Mostly with elementary-aged youngsters, and mostly in Santa Monica along with Culver City where I was a coach, manager, and umpire in the Santa Monica Little League and a coach and umpire in what was then called the Santa Monica Bobby Sox Softball League, where I got my start (Here’s the link to that story: http://www.socalsportschronicles.wordpress.com/2020/07/09/personal-sports-memories-how-i-became-a-sports-coach/) my being involved in those leagues during the early 1980s through the late 1990s before doing a two-year coaching stint in the Culver City National Little League in the early 2000s.
I also helped coach a season of high school junior varsity softball in the mid-1980s, when I was essentially still starting out as I was less than a year out of high school that year.
Though those little league and youth baseball and softball coaching gigs were strictly volunteer and unpaid,
I was able to get paychecks – albeit small ones – for some of my coaching experiences as I was on the staff of Santa Monica College’s softball team when they restarted their program in 1994, basically being more of a helper than a coach as keeping the score and assisting with practice was my main duties; I was trying to get my foot in the door of the sports coaching life there as well.
I also earned a paycheck for coaching 5th and 6th grade volleyball and basketball for a local private school for two years in the mid-to-late 1990s, as well as for being on the coaching staff of a softball team for a season at a small high school in the mid-2000s, coaching first base and doing various other duties.
It is safe to say that I had a career in coaching sports, spending roughly twenty years working with young people ranging from T-Ball to college age in mostly baseball and softball along with volleyball and basketball, teaching fundamentals along with coaching games.
It is also safe to say that for the most part, the memories and experiences I have of those days were fairly good.
Teams gathering at a place where I spent nearly twenty years as a player and a youth coach: Memorial Park in Santa Monica. Photo courtesy of santamonicanext.org
HOWEVER:
I recently had a realization of the mindset I had during the time I was involved in that endeavor,
An epiphany that I never truly had until reaching middle-aged status, which is this…
I’m convinced that my entire life coaching in little league, youth softball, and school teams in softball, volleyball and basketball, along with my time teaching elementary school physical education, had its roots in a childhood fantasy stemming from my being on the autism spectrum.
Let me explain this as best as I can…
In 1979, when I was a twelve year old kid involved with little league – I was on the Santa Monica Sunset Little League’s Major Division Dodgers that spring – and an absolute fanatic who was obsessed about all things baseball,
A television movie called The Kid From Left Field, a remake from a 1953 film that starred then-child superstar Gary Coleman, who was at the peak of his fame with him starring in the TV series Diff’rent Strokes, as an 11-year old manager of the San Diego Padres who takes that major league club to the World Series, was shown on NBC that fall, right after I had begun the 7th grade and my junior high school career.
I know it was a complete fantasy of a movie, but watching that flick triggered a similar fantasy stemming from my being on the spectrum – Asperger’s Syndrome to be precise – of my being able to manage a baseball team as well.
Which is why when I was asked to help coach a girls’ youth softball team in Santa Monica a little over two years later at the age of not yet fifteen, after the season was over, with the experience generally being a good one,
The autistic side of me proclaimed that I ought to begin a real career in coaching and managing baseball and softball, my too young age not mattering.
Looking back on it all, I realized something important…
Trying to be a coach at that young an age, when I was barely beginning high school, was a mistake as after that experience with that Santa Monica team at age 14 I should have waited until I was, at the bare minimum, 18 years old to try to get something going in that line of work.
In fact, upon further thought it would have been even better to have waited until I was at least 21 or 22 to begin getting seriously involved with coaching youth sports, and perhaps even later than that;
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that it was sort-of idiotic for me, living in a fantasy world for trying to be a manager and coach of sports teams at too young an age.
It’s something that, to be perfectly honest, I sort of regret now as while I thought I was having fun, I realize that I was, at least to some people, a nuisance.
In short, I should have waited.
I should have refrained from being involved in that world until I was at the very least at the end of my college life.
I think I would have been taken more seriously and have been more successful if I had done so.
For all those who saw me as a kind of nuisance, or some other negative description, back then,
I would like to apologize here and now in this post, on this blog, in front of the entire internet community, and in front of the whole world.
While it’s not an excuse,
My being on the spectrum with Asperger’s, which was unknown at that time as it wouldn’t officially be recognized as a legitimate disability until the mid-90s and not widely known until well into the 2000s, rendered me as unable to see what at least some people saw regarding my legitimacy in working with kids in when due to my being a high functioning autistic, I was more or less a kid myself.
All these decades later, I hope I can be forgiven for my actions which stemmed from my condition.
And I’ve sometimes wished that I could go back in time and waited to pursue a life in sports coaching and working with youngsters.
I suppose that’s all I have to say about it.
Marine Park in Santa Monica, where I played Colt League Baseball in 1983 and 1984 and where I did quite a bit of coaching, which included my brother’s five-pitch intermediate team in 1991 and a senior league girls’ softball team in 1995. Photo courtesy of tumblr.com