An excellent article to read from beginning to end.
Twenty years ago,
in Nashville , Tennessee , during the first week of January, 1996, more than
4,000 baseball coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the 52nd annual
ABCA's convention.
While I waited in
line to register with the hotel staff, I heard other more veteran coaches
rumbling about the lineup of speakers scheduled to present during the
weekend. One name, in particular, kept
resurfacing, always with the same sentiment — “John Scolinos is here? Oh, man,
worth every penny of my airfare.”
Who is John
Scolinos, I wondered. No matter; I was
just happy to be there.
In 1996, Coach
Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a college coaching career
that began in 1948. He shuffled to the
stage to an impressive standing ovation, wearing dark polyester pants, a light
blue shirt, and a string around his neck from which home plate hung — a
full-sized, stark-white home plate.
Seriously, I wondered, who is this guy?
After speaking
for twenty-five minutes, not once mentioning the prop hanging around his neck,
Coach Scolinos appeared to notice the snickering among some of the
coaches. Even those who knew Coach
Scolinos had to wonder exactly where he was going with this, or if he had
simply forgotten about home plate since he’d gotten on stage. Then, finally . . “You’re probably all
wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my neck,” he said, his voice
growing irascible. I laughed along with
the others, acknowledging the possibility.
“I may be old, but I’m not crazy.
The reason
I stand before you today is to share with you baseball
people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned about home plate in my
78 years.”
Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little
League coaches were in the room. “Do you
know how wide home plate is in Little League?”
After a pause,
someone offered, “Seventeen inches?”, more of a
question than answer.
“That’s
right,” he said. “How about in Babe
Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth coaches in the
house?” Another long pause.
“Seventeen
inches?” a guess from another reluctant coach.
“That’s
right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many
high school coaches do we have in the room?”
Hundreds of hands shot up, as the pattern began to appear. “How wide is home plate in high school
baseball?”
“Seventeen
inches,” they said, sounding more confident.
“You’re
right!” Scolinos barked. “And you
college coaches, how wide is home plate in college?”
“Seventeen
inches!” we said, in unison.
"Any Minor
league coaches here? How wide is home
plate in pro ball?
"Seventeen inches!"
"RIGHT!!" . . And in the Major League, how wide is home
plate??
"Seventeen inches!"
“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his
voice bellowing off the walls. “And what
do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen
inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello !” he hollered,
drawing raucous laughter. “What they
don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch
target? We’ll make it eighteen inches or
nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty
inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can
make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.'”
Pause. “Coaches… what do we do when your best player
shows up late to practice? or when our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy
shows up unshaven? What if he gets
caught drinking? Do we hold him
accountable? Or do we change the rules
to fit him? Do we widen home plate?
"
The chuckles
gradually faded as four thousand coaches grew quiet, the fog lifting as the old
coach’s message began to unfold. He
turned the plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to draw
something. When he turned it toward the
crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and
two windows. “This is the problem in our
homes today. With our marriages, with
the way we parent our kids. With our
discipline.
We don’t teach
accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet
standards. We just widen the plate!”
Pause. Then, to the point at the top of the house he
added a small American flag. “This is
the problem in our schools today. The
quality of our education is going downhill fast and teachers have been stripped
of the tools they need to be successful, and to educate and discipline our
young people. We are allowing others to
widen home plate! Where is that getting
us?”
Silence. He replaced the flag with a Cross. “And this is the problem in the Church, where
powerful people in positions of authority have taken advantage of young
children, only to have such an atrocity swept under the rug for years. Our church leaders are widening home plate
for themselves! And we allow it.”
“And the same is
true with our government. Our so called
representatives make rules for us that don’t apply to themselves. They take
bribes from lobbyists and foreign countries.
They no longer serve us. And we
allow them to widen home plate! We see our country falling into a dark abyss
while we just watch.”
I was
amazed. At a baseball convention where I
expected to learn something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better
practices, I had learned something far more valuable.
From an old man
with home plate strung around his neck, I had learned something about life,
about myself, about my own weaknesses and about my responsibilities as a
leader. I had to hold myself and others
accountable to that which I knew to be right, lest our families, our faith, and
our society continue down an undesirable path.
“If I am lucky,”
Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one thing from this old coach
today. It is this: "If we fail to
hold ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be right; if
we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards, if we are
unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when they do not meet the
standard; and if our schools & churches & our government fail to hold
themselves accountable to those they serve, there is but one thing to look
forward to …”
With that, he
held home plate in front of his chest, turned it around, and revealed its dark
black backside, “…We have dark days ahead!.”
NOTE . . Coach
Scolinos died in 2009 at the age of 91, but not before touching the lives of
hundreds of players and coaches,including mine.
Meeting him at my first ABCA convention kept me returning year after
year, looking for similar wisdom and inspiration from other coaches. He is the best clinic speaker the ABCA has
ever known because he was so much more than a baseball coach. His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your
players—no matter how good they are—your own children, your churches, your
government, and most of all, keep yourself at seventeen inches."
And this, my
friends is what our country has become and what is wrong with it today, and now
go out there and fix it!
"DON'T
WIDEN THE PLATE!!"
