The Last Days of the Dodgers (Epilogue)

All good things must come to an end.

So it is with JP's Dodgers after our 10-year run together as a youth baseball team.  In what quite literally feels like the blink of an eye, the boys - my boys - went from coach pitch, Wookie league baseball as 4 and 5 year olds to the Prep league on the big, regulation baseball field at Warner Park to Middle School baseball for David Lipscomb, Harding, University School, J.T. Moore, and Montgomery Bell Academy.

And I find myself sitting at a quiet Portland Brew early Saturday morning, drinking coffee, wondering how it all went by so quickly. 

I officially pulled the plug on the Dodgers earlier this week when it became apparent to me that without a lot of scrambling and adding players I had never coached, it wouldn't be possible to put together a Dodgers' team to play in the West Nashville Sports League or, possibly, in tournaments on weekends.  I've known this day was coming for a while.  Still, it doesn't make it any easier for me to contemplate a life that's not in many ways - spring and fall, anyway - centered around JP's Dodgers.

A part of me recognizes it's time for the boys to move on, individually and as a group.  For their development, it's time for them to be coached by someone else.  Someone - hopefully - with more experience than I have playing the game and with more experience coaching older boys.  Teenagers.  It's also time for my boys to play with other, more skilled players and against other, more skilled players.  

Yes,  it's time for my boys, the ones who really love baseball, to play tournament, or travel, baseball.  

It's also time for me let go of the group and my place in it as the leader.  I think that's the hardest things of all for me, saying goodbye to these boys and their families, in the sense that I won't be sending encouraging e-mails to the parents before and during the season.  I won't wake up at night thinking about lineups for the next day's game.  I won't be interacting with the boys, one-on-one and as a group, at practice.  I won't be watching them improve, close up, from season to season and, sometimes, from week to week.  I won't be coaching during games with men who have become my close and dear friends, Chris Taylor, Will Wright, Tom Hayden, and Randy Kleinstick.

I also think - no, I know - that it's time to turn my focus to Joe's baseball team, the Diamondbacks.  I've been involved, of course, since we disbanded the Junior Dodgers when the pandemic arrived two years ago and Joe began playing for Oliver Davis.  Oliver and I have become close friends and, for all intents and purposes, I've been his assistant head coach.  The Don Zimmer to his Joe Torre, if you will, mostly because I've already traveled the road he is on, so to speak.

Still, the last couple of years, if there was a scheduling conflict between the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks, I generally missed Joe's game because I was the head coach of JP's team.  It didn't happen a lot but there were times when I missed Joe's practices or games.  It was okay because I knew Joe was in good hands with Oliver, who is young, energetic, and, honestly, the best youth coach in any sport I've ever been around.  

I want to give Joe and his teammates the time and attention I gave to JP and the Dodgers.  It's been refreshing, and fun, to help Oliver organize and run preseason workouts at D-bats in West Nashville for the Diamondbacks on Sundays in January and February.  The myriad of after work or late night calls that Oliver and I have had, and continue to have, as we discuss the nuances of 9 - 10 year old baseball are reminiscent of the same telephone calls I had in years past with Chris, Randy, and Will.  That's comforting, to me.  

It's easier, in a way, to say goodbye to the Dodgers, knowing that I have the Diamondbacks, the boys and their families, on the other side, ready to begin our journey together over the next few years.   

I've often thought that I wanted to write a book about my experience coaching JP and the Dodgers = for the past 10 years, a memoir, I guess.  Maybe, someday, I will.  I wanted to call it The Last Days of the Dodgers.  That title stuck in my mind a year or so ago, as I began to feel that things were winding down with this group.  Or, maybe, I'll write a long form essay.  That might work, as well.

What a run it was!  The best times of my life - hands down - have been spent with JP and his teammates, at practices and games, on baseball fields across middle Tennessee.  I'll never forget those days and nights together.  The memories will last a lifetime and beyond.

Dodgers forever.