Don't know this guy. But coaches have a way of scarring you for life.
Sophomore year playing baseball. The elementary school was over behind the fence down the first base line. I'm batting and hit a twisting foul ball that clears the fence and is headed way over on the elementary school roof. I know there's a skylight over the lunch room so I stand there in the batter's box admiring the foul and wondering if I'm going to get the satisfaction of a crash through the skylight. And then I hear this noise.
Sounds like a cross between a freight train and a momma grizzly. I look toward the dugout and here comes my coach looking like George Brett after the pine tar incident. Face red, eyes bulging, veins popping. He's thrashing his arms and charging at me, tobacco spit spraying from his mouth.
This is an in-school game so the stands are full which adds to the humiliation that's about to commence.
He's thundering toward me and I make out what he's saying... "Don't you haaaaaave any gottDAAAAAM priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide?"
Deer in the headlights. Pride? What's that? Do I have any? Where did I put it? So I stand there looking slack jawed at this rage monster boiling toward me. He gets nose to nose and bellows "We run foul balls out here, son, we don't stand there like we just hit the game winning gottdam home run."
In a moment of weakness, I tried to defend myself. "That ball wasn't coming back into play..."
Epic rage. I have no idea what words he was trying to form other than "ass" and "bench" and "GOTdamn" I didn't even get to finish the at-bat. I didn't see the field for about ten games and when I went in, I was so afraid of doing something wrong that I was watching him and got picked off second.
I noticed something later, though. Earnest -- our all conference first baseman -- never ran out a foul ball. Neither did Fig or Chris or JC or Donny who were seniors. Neither did Hutch or Dobs or Jarvis or Eddie who were juniors. Only the freshmen and sophs were expected to run out fouls.
For what it's worth I ran out every foul ball from then on. Even in softball. For 20+ years I ran them. I got pride.
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