Road Trip Blog #11 (Pipebomb)

I can't even pretend this is going to be humorous or inspiring or anything. This is just going to be a rant mostly about what's been going on lately. As a matter of fact I'm going to basically steal the outline of one of CM Punk's promos. If you don't watching WWE wrestling that last sentence will go over your head. The last thing I ended on was being in the Greenville area in South Carolina.

We had four camps in a row this week and now today, Friday, is our off day. We went and picked up Sean where I left off. He had a wedding to go to and we had to do some camps without him. I work in a station where we usually have three guys and sometimes four. Well our third coach went to another station to help out with Sean gone. I thought that was cool it was something different and allowed both me and the other coach to do some more talking.

The week before our first operations director said that Coach Eric deserved the employee of the week trophy because he had done a great job at my station and he single handedly ran the signups tent. He does do a great job and he deserved the award, but I made sure that last week I stepped up and helped Eric out more at the signup tent which I only did on occasions. I was there every camp. I also was the guy who got the trailer, with all of our equipment, started and packed up after camps were over. We usually have Coach Matt do it because he knows where everything goes but I know he shouldn't have to do it every time. I had been watching how he packed things up and so I decided to do it instead. During my station I also kept the time for changing of drills and stations.

There's really no point in going on with this but to say that the other coach at my station was the guy who won the employee of the week award and was the one who "stepped up." Boy oh boy was that a slap in the face. By step up I guess that means setting up two posts on a day where I carried every single thing for my station on an early morning camp, throwing on the field and turning double plays while I was handing out t-shirts to kids, but most importantly being the one to explain one extra drill that the kids never do right.

Here's the part where I copy from the CM Punk promo... Here's the truth about the Ripken camps. It doesn't matter if you're the best coach out there, it doesn't matter if the kids really learn anything, it doesn't matter that you teach any sort of discipline to the kids fighting and disrespecting everyone, heck it doesn't even matter what the age of the kids is. We will babysit kids 3 years old for 3 hours so the parents can go off and get a nap or take a hot bath. The truth is whomever is the loudest instructor out there and gets the kids the most wound up during their station is the guy who they want out there the most. They want a guy who the kids want to play tag with and not necessarily teach them anything about baseball. One of the four main pillars is to keep it simple. I think I am one of the few coaches out here that actually want to change the kids habits and make them better. I actually create metaphors and similes to simplify it for them. I actually stop them when they do things wrong and will watch them for more than one time to do it right. I guess that stuff doesn't really matter though.

We have some fine coaches here that have experience teaching young kids but they are being held back. They are being told to wind up these children and then watch them go off instead of calming them down and having them listen to instructions. These are the coaches getting fed up and getting frustrated because they are getting overlooked. If the application said we were babysitting kids at a free camp in random small towns I believe a lot of us wouldn't have wasted the time filling out an application. If we were told that we would be coaching unwilling and uninterested kids the basis fundamentals of baseball we might have sat and pondered if this was worth our time. I guess I should have known better and I even stated this through the first couple weeks that the jobs are never as fun and as glorious as the people hiring you lead you to believe. I just let it go for the longest time and thought I was getting paid to travel, babysit some kids, play a little catch, and have to deal with some attitudes. It has finally gotten to my boiling point though.

When we have coaches going out every night, and from the times I've been around it, acting like immature college students getting blacked out drunk and not knowing how to handle themselves among people, or their money, and those are the ones becoming our instructors of the week I really start to wonder if the title goes to the best coach or the best wing man out on the town. I rarely drink and when I do I go out in a small group of mature guys and I like to hang out some new places, with decent food, and have a real conversation while watching a sports game or two. I never think I should be going out with my boss because 1. it's weird 2. I have to watch my tongue because I'm afraid I might offend someone who has any sort of power on who might hire me after this job is done and over with. The fact that my supposed superiors are around my age doesn't make me respect them more it makes me wonder how they got their job because I know I can do what they do and I have done it to a certain extent. It also bothers me when the new instructor is younger than me but still in charge. The fact that our schedules are told to us the day of and our hotels lately haven't been very nice shows me that this whole tour has been put together very half-assed. I put together schedules a year in advanced only a year ago and we can't book hotels a few months in advance to make sure we aren't stuck with the second rate ones? It just ticks me off.

I had to write about it because after living with these guys for six weeks and finding very few that think and spend like I do I was very likely going to mouth off to one of them and say something harsh and offensive to the point it could affect my job or even lead to a fist fight. I almost got into it with one of the guys who rides in my car because he wouldn't give me the keys to our car unless I said "soda" because I call it pop. I am from the Midwest and that is how we say it. I basically mouthed the words "fuck off" and walked away at that point. It really does take more strength to not fight and turn the cheek than to fight someone whether is physically or verbally.
April 19th, 2013 at 11:16pm