A Science Guy’s Almanac. Coaching Memories (continued) - Baseball

A Science Guy’s Almanac. Year 2. September 26, 2016

Coaching Memories (continued) - Baseball

I coached football, baseball, track & field, and soccer during my twenty-three years at Monte Vista High in Spring Valley, California. Today, the focus is “America’s pastime”—baseball.

I played baseball from Little League through college at San Diego State University. Depending on the year, I was an average to superior player in most aspects of the game.

My best baseball season as a player was my final year in Pony League when I was finishing 8th grade. I hit something like .440 with five home runs. I pitched a no-hitter and a perfect game.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I did very well in the school track meet in 8^th grade. 8^th grade was the apex of my personal athletic career.

This preface has nothing to do with coaching. It provides background information for. . . Actually, it’s probably unnecessary. But, since I’ve already written it, it’s staying.

I accepted the JV Baseball head-coaching job because it sounded like fun. That's me in the header photo pointing to the outfield. Hmmm. I don't remember ever looking that thin . . .

We had tryouts. The players looked okay. The season began.

• Within days, my best two players were promoted to varsity. Things went downhill fast after that. We ended up with a single “W” in our record. We played people close, but we lacked both hitting and pitching to hold a lead.
• One of my players was a flashy shortstop. He’d been an All-Star in Pony League. He had excellent range, but his throws to first were always made side arm or lower.
• I explained that, while he might get people out at the JV level, he’d never succeed on the varsity because it took his throws too long to get to first base. He never changed. He never played varsity. I suspect his dad had coached him all the way up to high school and allowed him to mimic Gary Templeton. “Tempy” did throw side arm often—but he had a very strong arm.

I felt the sorriest for my “only” pitcher. I’m pretty sure the varsity coach left him down with me because I had no other viable options. He’s the only JV pitcher that year that pitched more than three innings in any game. My “other” pitchers had given up so many runs by their third inning of work it was a merciful act on my part to remove them from the mound.

I didn’t coach baseball again for seven or eight years.

One January morning before school, the principal came to me and said he’d heard I’d coached baseball before. He asked if I wanted to give the varsity baseball job a try.

It seems that the head coach from the previous two seasons had been selling off school equipment in the off-season and pocketing the money. I decided to give it a try. 

I met the team for the first time during their final winter league game. We started practice a week after that.

Pundits were predicting the Monarchs to "successful" in the Grossmont League. I had a pretty good pitcher and one of the leading hitters in the league returning. Several other players showed good potential. As you can see in the article from The Daily Californian above, I was optimistic.

Things went along fine until we played our first league game. We were up by three going into the bottom of the last inning. They loaded the bases with two outs. The last runner was the result of a horrific play by our third baseman—our “best” hitter.

• Long story short, our number two pitcher hung a pitch. The hitter drilled it over a 15-foot tall chain link fence into the tennis courts that bordered the baseball field.
• We did not win a league game after that loss. The All-League pitcher ended up with an ERA over four. The leading hitter finished the season hitting under .220.
• At least once a week, other biology teachers and I sat around and re-arranged my lineup for the game the next day. To not avail.

Final anecdote.

I’m coaching third base in a tournament game. Standing in front of me is a senior who was playing varsity for the first time. It’s a close game. I signal the batter to squeeze bunt.

Since the runner on third can’t see the signs because of the angles involved, we had a verbal cue. If I said, “Head’s up, number 15” (or whatever the runner’s jersey number was) to the runner, that meant we were bunting and he was to take off for home plate at the pitcher’s first move. If I said, “Heads-up, Gibson,” (using the player’s last name) that meant nothing. I used this version a lot. By the way, Gibson wasn’t the last name of the runner on third in this story.

The pitch is thrown. The batter lays down a perfect bunt. They throw the batter out a first. The runner is standing on 3rd base. He had not made any move toward home plate.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I hit a double and took third on the overthrow,” he answered.

It was that kind of year.

It was also the last year I coached any sport at any school.

Do you think there might be a correlation 

between those two statements?

Next Almanac: Coaching memories continued – Track and Field

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A Science Guy’s Almanac. Coaching Freshman Football – The 2nd half

L-R. Top Row: Rookie Teacher, Kazooing Santa Pig, The Mummy, Basal Cell Carcinoma Eye.
Middle Row: Pig Farmer, Portrait by Cindy Lin, Portrait by Carol Mak, Baseball Coaching.
Bottom Row: Detective with Squints. Pig Collection. First Publication.

A Science Guy’s Almanac. Year 2. September 12, 2016

Coaching Freshman Football – The 2^nd half

I never had a desire to be a varsity head coach. I ended up in that role for baseball and boys soccer. Those are stories for future blogs. My first head coaching assignment was Head Freshmen Football Coach. That was the last year I coached football.

Before you get the wrong impression, it wasn’t the coaching experience that led to my leaving football coaching. In the summer of 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, an overhaul of the property tax system. The result of that vote was significantly less money to local schools from local tax money.

Prior to 1978, when a full-time teacher coached a sanctioned sport as one of the positions approved by the district, (s)he got a teaching period for the coaching assignment.

• An aside: I put (s)he in automatically. However, in the 1970s there were very few women coaches. There were very few girls’ sports teams: swimming and tennis are the only two I remember. The direct correlation between the small number of sports and the equally small number of coaches was uncanny.

Prop 13 passed in June of 1978. The next day, a special school board meeting rescinded all coaching periods. Most of the coaches in the school district stopped coaching—some temporarily, others for good. While I never coached football or track again, I did coach baseball and soccer.

Being head frosh coach wasn’t that much different than being an assistant frosh coach. Oh, I was now responsible for calling the offensive plays, minimizing locker room antics, and a couple of other things, but for the most part, once the season got rolling, coaching was just coaching.

Monte Vista’s football program had a storied history—one horror story after another. In the first 15 years, no varsity football team made the playoffs. I doubt if there were more than 3 or 4 winning seasons during that run. For perspective: My freshman year, 1964-65, we won one game. That made the headlines in the 1965 yearbook. 

In 1966, the varsity team won the first league game in Monte Vista's history. Prior to that momentous event, we were zero-39 in league play. The 1966 team had some serious studs--two All-CIF first-teamers and one 2nd teamer. They made me, as the quarterback, look VERY good.

The 1977 frosh team ended up winning the freshmen league title. We were 5-3 overall. I refused to get thrown in the showers after our last win because I had to coach the varsity defense only a couple of hours later.

While I didn’t know I’d never coach football again, I’m glad I did what I did during our last frosh practice.

I was 27-years-old at this time. In my last tackle football game, I’d ruptured the disk between my L5 and sacrum. That problem had been “fixed” by fusing my L5 vertebra to my sacrum.

I’d told the team when we started the season that if we finished the year with a .500 or better record, I would suit up for the final practice. Seem like a good idea in September. As of the last practice, the worse record we could have had was 4-4, so the idea did motivate the troops.

On Wednesday, I went to Doc Headtke, the resident equipment curmudgeon/faux parent/great helper to coaches. I asked for a set of equipment.

• “Why?”
• “I’m going to suit up tomorrow and practice with the kids.”
• “You’re what?”
• “I told them if we ended at .500 or better, I’d suit up the last practice. They will. I’m going to keep my word.”
• He shook his head but helped me find the best of the remaining equipment.

The next day, I suited up and headed down the access road to where the frosh practiced in the outfield of the varsity baseball field. I fended off the question “When are you going in?” uncounted times while we practiced special teams—who/how, the offensive game plan, and the defensive game plan.

“Okay,” I announced. “I’ll be the tailback for fifteen plays. I’ll start on the first team offense against the first team defense. The coaches will sub people in on both sides of the ball every play. They’ll do their best to make sure you all get a chance.”

That was greeted by a mixture of groans and cheers.

The first ten plays went off smoothly. Around play number thirteen, if felt like more and more defensive people were making contact with me. They were. The other coaches were adding more players to the defense each play beginning with the tenth play.

On the last play, I called for a sweep. The quarterback pitched the ball to me. I started out around the right end. I didn’t make it to the line of scrimmage. All forty-plus players were on the field for that play. I suspect at least forty of them ended up on the pile on top of me.

In retrospect, I’m very lucky that I didn’t reinjure my back that day. I’m glad I did it, and I’d probably do it again . . . if I was 27!

Next Almanac: Coaching memories continued

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Summer Reprise Series #10: Thoughts After My Longest Edit… Ever!

THIS IS THE LAST OF THE REPRISE SERIES.

Summer Reprise Series #10: Thoughts After My Longest Edit… Ever!

First published November 17, 2015

I began working on my “final” edit of The 5th Page on September 28, 2015. I sent the edited manuscript back to Sherry Frazier, my publicist, on the day I completed the edit: November 3, 2015.

I worked on the manuscript at least three hours every Monday through Friday of that time. Some weekend work and some l-o-n-g days were included. It was not a fun time. It was a necessary time, but it, too, was not enough. The text in this font near the end of this post provides additional explanation of the red sentence above.

What did I learn from this experience?

1.    Make your characters come alive early in the process. I waited until after I thought I’d finished the manuscript before allowing readers insight into several of my main characters. I will not do that again.

2.   Decide if you’re going to present your story in strict chronological order early in the process. I waited until I was two weeks into the “final” edit to make that decision. As a result, it took me approximately fifteen hours to print, cut chunks from the printed text, and sequence those chunks. And even after I thought I had accomplished that task, I found chunks I had to move after the first move.

3.   Establish a timeline and add to it as you go. I waited until I went to the strict chronological plotline to do that. I found I had not allowed enough time for some sequences of events to occur—and I mean physically not enough time for airplane flights, car trips, etc.

4.   Include enough verbiage on your timeline to recognize what plot point it represents. I used letters to “number” my chunks. I dutifully placed those letters on my timeline and my revised timeline. But, when I started my last sequencing I had to continually refer to the cut out chunks of text to know what was happening at that labeled point.

At 174,000 words, this is far and away the longest book I’ve ever written. Part of my problem was that I treated this novel as a short story in my preparation. That will not happen again.

Original Bottom Line

Time spent on early planning, character development, and sequencing of events will save you a LOT of time in the end.

New thoughts.

After the original posting of this blog, I did more editing. First I had several readers indicate where they felt the story was fine as is, where the story was too wordy, and where the story was deficient.

I took all that input and went back to the “already edited” manuscript. After considering the input and finding additional places that needed help, I edited again. In addition to the “fixes,” I did a thorough grammar, extra words, etc., check as well. This edit ended up as a manuscript of about 181,000 words.

I was almost ready to send it away for prepublication review. I will use Kirkus before I put the book out with query letters or as an entry in KindleDirect or as a self-published entity.

I sent the manuscript via PDF to an office supply store in the city where my proofreader lived. They printed the 700+ pages at their end, and the proofreader picked it up at their store. I saved significant money in postage.

I got the print copy back about a month later. I went through the handwritten markings page by page, generally accepting all the proofing recommendations. In addition, I made the decision to remove parts of the book that were not essential to moving the plot forward. Some readers liked them. They were unhappy with my decision. Other readers applauded the move because “the story doesn’t drag in places now.”

Obviously, I’ve sided with the latter group of readers. I did, however, keep all the edited out text in one file. After all, you never know.

The 5^th Page is still a long book. The final, final edit is 682 pages set to print in a 6x9 format. At 175,500 words, it’s still a big book, but that final count includes front and back matter. The story is around 173K.

I’ll keep you in the loop as I go through the rest of the process. I’m following the advice of super publicist, Sherry Frazier.

New Bottom Lines

1. There is no hard and fast due date for a manuscript unless you have a publisher’s deadline to meet.
2. Time is neither friend nor foe.
3. Time is a tool that authors need to use to their best advantage.
4. That might mean move faster, but it will often mean SLOW DOWN.

Next blog: Updated thoughts on book covers

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#Teachers In Memory of Owen Miller - A tribute to teachers

A Science Guy’s Almanac #32. Year 2. September 6,  2016

This is a special post in tribute to teachers. It's up today because, when I started teaching, just after the last T-Rex died, school started the day after Labor Day.

For Owen Miller:

one of my truly best friends and my closest colleague

Nearly all high schools in America will have started by tomorrow. It seems appropriate to bring this message to all teachers.

What follows is the "eulogy" I was honored to give at the memorial service of Owen Leslie Miller. Owen and I worked as a team for 16 years. He had an incredibly creative mind. However, he wasn’t all that concerned about what happened to his ideas. He was content to share them. See the yellow highlighted line below for a specific example.

Those of you who know me, know that I don’t use notes when speaking. Today, I’m making an exception because I want to be sure I make it through this. If I choke up and/or cry, I offer no apologies.

It is my privilege and honor to speak to you today. When I heard Owen had died, and Kathie was trying to track me down to see if I could speak at this service, I went to the Southwest Airlines site to check airfares to Sacramento because I would have gone to Grass Valley in a heartbeat to be able to speak for Owen today.

I first met Owen in the Fall of 1972. I began to work as a Teacher’s Assistant at Monte Vista while I was finishing my teaching credential. While I wish I had a memory of the first meeting, sadly I do not. However, I’m sure it was like any other of Owen’s first meetings with people—within minutes you felt like an old friend of his. In all the years we spent together, almost 20,000 hours, I only remember being angry with one another one time.

I got hired to teach biology at Monte Vista the next school year. I taught with Owen for 16 years—until he retired. He and I did innumerable revisions and refinements of our curriculum. We spent hours together tweaking and fiddling. Until he retired, I never realized how much Owen and I were symbiotic. I’ve never worked with another teacher as dedicated as he was.

By the late 1970s elective courses for students were all the rage. Owen leaped at the chance to teach oceanography and marine biology. While he was working on curriculum, “we” decided to set up a marine aquarium in our room.

Our first task was the aquarium itself. Owen decided we needed at least a 100-gallon tank for the best possible environment. Saltwater tanks are notorious for having “issues” with animal waste, and the 100-gallon threshold was the largest we could imagine in our room.

The aquarium stand we had was military surplus. It was heavy-duty, with emphasis on both of those words. We measured the length and width of the shelf, headed to North Park, and placed our order for an all-glass, double bottom tank.

We got a call about two weeks later, hopped in Owen’s VW van, and went to pick up our treasure. Did you ever consider how big a 100-gallon container is? Let’s just say that, when you limit the size of the base of the tank, the height is very, very tall. It was impossible to reach the bottom of the tank without having a small child to lower into the thing.

Once we had the tank in place, after much discussion, and because Owen had a collector’s permit for sea life off the San Diego coast, we decided to refrigerate the water in our tank to the 64° average off Pt Loma. We would save money by collecting specimens and not having to buy them. Being the thrifty souls we were, we scrounged an old refrigerator and Rube Goldberg’ed a system of PVC pipe and old aquaria for the water to run through to cool it. It took two holes through the wall, two holes in the old fridge, and lots of PVC elbow joints, but we got the water to remain at about 67°.

When we finally got the thing set up, we needed water and creatures. At the time, the pier below Scripps Institute of Oceanography had a “filling station” where you could bring containers and fill them with filtered seawater for no cost. We loaded Owen’s VW bus with empty 5-gallon water bottles and headed for the pier. Five gallons of seawater is heavy. Ten glass five-gallon water bottles full of seawater are very, very heavy. We barely made it up the hill from the pier to the street with our cargo. Then we had to make a second trip to get close to enough water for the tank.

With the tank in place, and filters running, we headed out for our first collection trip. We decided to start with invertebrates to “pop” the tank (allow the nitrogen cycle to become established). You always lose animals during this phase, and invertebrates were much easier to catch than fish—I mean, how hard is it to outrun a snail?

We launched Owen’s small aluminum boat from Harbor Island and set sail for the inner shore of the Pt Loma peninsula. Although I don’t like boats of any type, we made it to shore without any boating issues or gastronomic events. It was easy pickings to collect a couple dozen Tegula funibralis, the local marine snail. We also nabbed a sea star and a sea anemone. What we did not consider were the tides in San Diego Bay.

By the time we were finished collecting the tide had risen significantly. While we landed the boat in ankle-deep water, we ended up launching the boat with me standing in the bay, with water up to my armpits, holding the boat while Owen clambered in and worked on starting the small engine. Afterward, I had to get a new driver’s license since this was way before laminated or plastic ones, and mine was thoroughly soaked from the launch.

Upon returning to Monte Vista in the dark, we unceremoniously dumped our sea creatures into the tank. On the following Monday, we checked the tank and discovered that one sea star has a BIG appetite. There were no living things left in the tank but the small fish we had put in a week earlier on a whim, the sea anemone, and the gluttonous sea star. The snail shells were all scattered randomly on the sandy bottom, each completely empty.

One of the proudest times in Owen’s and my teaching is when we developed a series of activities for students: Cranial Creations in Life Science.

While the activities all came from our years of collaboration, the story behind the idea for these types of exercises came while attending the NSTA Regional Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Owen and I had attended several sessions, including one on critical thinking. That particular session was long on theory and very short on application. Owen had also been intrigued by a demonstration of a Cartesian Diver he had observed.

About 4:30 the next morning I was awakened by a hoarse whisper from the bed next to mine in our hotel room.

"Chuck. Chuck. Are you awake?"

"I am now," was my groggy attempt at a snappy comeback.

"You know that diver in the bottle?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, I've been awake off-and-on all night trying to figure out why it works the way it does. It really bugs me. Why can't we do things that bug kids like that?

With that, Owen rolled over to go back to sleep. He was like that. Vent a problem, and go on. On the other hand, I tend to take a problem and move to solve it as quickly as possible.

So I hopped out of bed, grabbed my notebook, and told Owen that we were going to list activities we already did that would fall into the "bug kid" category and that we were going to think up some others as well. About an hour later, we had a list of thirty-plus exercises. We both agreed on his idea for the title, Cranial Creations, for our ideas, because 

1. Cranial Creations is alliterative, 
2. they encourage students to use their brain to think (cranial), and 
3. they encourage students to be creative.

For  5 years our book was the best-selling science title from “our” publisher.

One other essential aspect of the Owen Miller I knew was travel. At three different times, he and Mary went to Europe and bought vehicles to drive around while they spent the whole summer there. Always adept at savoir-faire, Owen was often asked by tourists if he knew where some statue or attraction was because he acted like a native just about wherever he was.

Part of his travel plan was kind of a lack of planning. Spur of the moment ideas were frequently acted upon. For example, once he placed his personal business card, which he insisted was a staple of European life, inside a bottle at tossed it in the ocean off the coast of England. Many months later, a blue-collar family that lived central England contacted him. They had retrieved the bottle while on holiday in Cornwall.

The following spring, Owen found a discount airfare from San Diego to London, contacted that family, and spent spring break with them, all within a two-week time span. I told you he knew no strangers!

Since I’m speaking of travel, you should know that Owen prided himself on his internal compass. “I always know which way I’m going” was his mantra whenever we went to a conference in another city. He would regale me with stories of his navigational prowess during his European jaunts. However, San Antonio, Texas threw his compass for a loop.

We were presenting our Cranial Creation ideas at a session. It was one of the first sessions of the conference, so we had most of two days to explore the city after our presentation. As we wandered around various parts of San Antonio, Owen consistently had this look of frustration on his face. Finally, he confided, “Chuck, I just don’t know where we are”—quite an admission. Chagrined, we finally found our way back to the hotel after much more meandering than we had planned.

I will end with a final travel-themed statement. In spite of the sorrow I feel about Owen’s passing, I leave you today with this good news:

I am confident that Owen’s internal compass was working just fine when he left this world. I guarantee you that he found his way to Jesus’ side in heaven.

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