I had another great coach in my youth: Big Jim Ritacco. He coached my summer baseball team for four years. He went by Big Jim and his son, Little Jim, was a friend and teammate who lived four houses away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big Jim was big, really big, and drove\na tanker rig for Chevron or Mobil and always seemed to wear some\nshirt or cap with a Chevron or Mobil logo. He must have organized the\nteam and a few other fathers pitched in to help. Our home field was\nthe hard pan diamond at Mt Pleasant. I played second base and\npitched. I was the lead off batter and hit left handed but threw\nright handed. If truth be told, I never cared for baseball as a\nplayer. Too much standing around and the uniforms were uncool. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember very little about my\nbaseball career except I was pretty good and our team was pretty bad.\nI think we had one winning season and other teams routinely kicked\nour ass with football-like scores of 35-3 or 21-0. This was long\nbefore the 10-rule mercy rule. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of that losing really mattered\nbecause it never mattered to Big Jim. He never yelled. He never got\ndown on his players. He never let us get down on teammates. He never\nworked the officials. He never swore. Everyone played whether the\ngame was on the line or not (it usually wasn’t) and that included a\ngirl on our team who was so weak and uncoordinated she could not\nswing a bat completely around or throw to first base if she fielded a\ngrounder playing second base. Big Jim stuck her in right field and\ntreated her like a daughter. I’ll never forget one opposing player\nripping a shot over her head. It kept rolling, rolling and rolling,\nall the way to the school, about a thousand feet away. She retrieved\nthe ball and then threw it toward the infield…it went 30 yards or\nso and she jogged to it, picked up, and threw it again. This went on\nfor what seemed like forever until I, playing second base, trotted\nout to meet her, picked up the ball, and winged it to the catcher. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After we retired the side, Big Jim took\nthe center fielder under his arm on the bench and told him he was\nsupposed to be her cutoff man and he had let his teammate down. He\ntold him to apologize to her. He did. This was the mid 70s. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big Jim clapped and encouraged, he\ncracked jokes. After every game, he bought us all ice cream at Dairy\nQueen, A & W or some other joint, and paid for it himself with a\nfat roll from his pocket. He was one of the most supremely kind men I\never met and later remembered his coaching style (along with Doug\nBansch’s) when I got into coaching football, basketball and tennis at\nvarious elementary, junior high and high schools. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My baseball career ended in junior high\nand I lost contact with Big Jim. That is, until one day, toward the\nend of my ninth grade year, I was hanging with Little Jim at his\nhouse when Big Jim showed. He told me he was umpiring baseball for\nkids and wanted to know if I was interested in becoming an umpire for\nthe upcoming summer season. It paid 13 or 14 bucks a game. I said I\nwas interested. He tossed me a rule book, told me to read it, and\nthat I had to take a written test over the basic rules and\nprocedures. If I passed, he’d take me up to the diamond, guide me\nthrough the process, then I would be on my own, a single teenager, in\neffect, supervising adults. I had to buy my own equipment and\nuniform, but the gig came with a patch. A patch! \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that was how I became a baseball\numpire for four summers. It was the only official job I ever held\ngrowing up. Other Pioneers were slinging fast food or working retail;\nI was calling balls and strikes three or four times a week and some\ntournament games on weekends. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could easily write a book about those\numpiring days, but two high (low) lights will suffice here: 1) I had\nto eject a coach who was profanely berating his own kid, who happened\nto be pitching at the time. The coach also happened to be my former\ngrade school principal! ; 2) I walked off the field in the fourth or\nfifth inning when parents in the stands, from both teams, all\nobviously drunk, were insulting one another and threatening to fight.\nI asked both coaches to get their sides under control or I was\nleaving. I think I even told the coach of the home team that he would\nbe forfeiting the game because of an obscure provision in the rule\nbook, something about public safety. (I knew the rule book!). Both\ncoaches failed in settling down the mob and I went over to the head\nscorekeeper, signed the book as a forfeit, walked to my Dasher, and\ndrove away. I called Big Jim when I got home and I swear he was\nprepared to drive up to Mt. Pleasant and kick someone’s drunken ass. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consider this dynamic. I was a teenager\nin charge of adults, highly competitive adults, and in charge of them\nin a public arena where everyone was watching and their kids’ pride\nwas at stake, not to mention an American male’s ego and sense of self\nworth. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nIt was a unique way for a kid to study the adult human condition\nwhile also interacting with it in split second moments that required\ninstant, informed judgments. In retrospect, I think it might have\nbeen superb preparation for becoming a writer or at least how not to\nsuck as an adult. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had another great coach in my youth: Big Jim Ritacco. He coached my summer baseball team for four years. He went by Big Jim and his son, Little Jim, was a friend and teammate who lived four houses away. Big Jim was big, really big, and drove a tanker rig for Chevron or Mobil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,942],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-city","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5870,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions\/5870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}