My kids baseball team is 1-0 so far this season, thrashing our opponent 14-3 last Saturday.

If you’ve never coached before, you should give it a shot.  I did, and it changed my life…

I remember back in 2006 when I was very bummed-out, perhaps even depressed, and a friend of mine called me and simply said, “Meet me at Leaside Memorial Arena on Saturday at 10am.”  I asked him why, and for what, but he just said, “meet me,” so I did.

I arrived at the arena and received a text message saying, “inside…front row,” and I found my buddy standing right up against the glass, taking in all the action.

He handed me a coffee, and we chatted about life, and over the next hour, we watched eight and nine-year-old kids play a game of hockey.

I love hockey, as do all red-blooded Canadians.  But I never thought I’d enjoy watching kids play hockey.  It’s obviously not the same thing as the NHL, but you know what?  If you love a sport, you’ll love it at any level, and that’s what I learned.  The game was fascinating!  There were no advertisements on the ice, and those on the boards were for local businesses.  There was no commentary and/or announcer, no product give-aways, and no commercial breaks.  The cheers after goals were scored by the kids were genuine, as were the smiles on their faces – hardly seen through their masks.

After the first game, we watched another.  This time it was 10-11 year old kids, and the game was similar, yet different.  They were a little faster, and the disparity between the good ones and bad ones wasn’t as pronounced.

We watched three games that Saturday afternoon, drank a lot of coffee, ate a Fun Dip for the first time in two decades, and shared a lot about our lives.  I left that day feeling a lot better, and it helped get me out of a funk.

The next year, in 2007, I started something that I plan to (and hope to!) continue for the rest of my life.  I started coaching kids baseball.

This season marks my sixth season overall, and it all started in McSorley’s Saloon on Bayview Avenue when another friend of mine and I were joking around about how we’d be the worst baseball coaches in the world, and somewhere in between peanuts and pitchers of beer, we decided to coach baseball.

As luck would have it, there were six pee-wee teams, and all six had coaches.  But the bantam league would LOVE to have us!  I found out why, weeks later, when I met our 16 and 17 year old boys for the first time.

I was 26 years old at the time, and I was out of touch with “kids today.”  Man, a LOT had changed in a decade!

My friend Greg suggested we give them a “survey” with questions like “Who is your favorite baseball team” and “Who is your favorite player.”  I thought they were a little old for that, but we gave it to them anyways.  They made a mockery of the document, especially the question “What do you hope to accomplish this year at baseball?”  I won’t even tell you some of their answers…

Greg and I were both new to coaching, but we took to it pretty quickly.  We played good cop, bad cop, with Greg being the happy-go-lucky, glass-half-full coach, and me being the heavy, all the time, every game.

I didn’t know it at the time, but in 2007, one of the kids would give me a label that would stick to this day; something that might stick for many, many years.

Outside of real estate, this blog, and into my very personal life, a lot of my friends call me by the nickname “Pipes.”

I remember arriving at the baseball diamond one day in 2007, and our starting catcher, Sean Caley, yelled, “Yo, whuddup, PIPES!”  I thought nothing of it at the time, since kids’ lingo changes daily and I can never keep up, but throughout the rest of the game, kid kept calling me “Pipes.”  I can’t understand half the terms they use, and when somebody says, “That’s my skeeez, baby,” I need to have it explained that “skeez” refers to one’s persona/hobby/being.

The next game, after I had been called “Pipes” a few dozen times but never really acknowledged it, a kid named Matt Fulton was getting on my nerves and fired back at me, “Geez, chill out, GUNS.”  Instinctively, I turned around and yelled, “It’s PIPES!  Not guns, Pipes!”  I have no clue what prompted me to do that, other than the fact that Matt could have said anything at that point and I’d have yelled at him, but before I could take it back – all the kids were laughing and clapping.  “Piiiiiiipes!!!!”  The nickname was mine for good.  Sean later explained that the nickname stemmed from my push-up demonstration one morning where, apparently, I ripped off my sweater and started repping out, arms blazing, showing the kids how it was done.  Yeah, sounds like something I’d probably do…

In our first three years together, Greg and I won three championships.

I now partner with my buddy Tucker, and we’ve lost the championship two years in a row, but I think this year’s squad has the making of a dynasty!

What’s even more amazing is that two of my current co-coaches are former players.  And what’s even more amazing than that, is one of these co-coaches is a kid I detested while he was playing on my team.

Ah yes, Peter Forte.  Perhaps the most disrespecftul, entitled, brazen kid I ever coached, who always spoke out of turn, and never listened to authority.  The kind of kid who, when you asked him if he knew why you volunteer your time to coach, would reply, “Well, I guess you just like little boys.”  But a couple years later, I saw Peter at the gym after he was back from univiersity, and he asked if I needed help coaching.  He had really matured as a person, and turned out to be intelligent, sincere, and very hard-working.

For the last two seasons, and into 2012, Peter has been my “pitching coach,” and he’s helped me twice a week without fail.  He’s an unbelievably talented kid – the kind of guy you’re going to say “I knew him once” years down the road.  He did a cover of Carly Rae Jespen’s “Call Me Maybe” where he edited together hundreds of hours of video of university students all over Canada lip-synching to the video.  Check it out HERE If you have time – you won’t be disappointed.

The aformentioned Sean Caley has been named “batting coach” for 2012, but it’s just an excuse to stay out of trouble…..I hope…

We play every Saturday morning, and usually 1-2 week-nights, which is tough to balance when I work seven days per week, but most of my clients understand.

I probably wouldn’t put baseball ahead of hockey and golf as my favorite sports to play, but when it comes to coaching, I find baseball to be the best balance of sport and camaraderie.  It’s not as intense as hockey, which is often far too intense for a bunch of kids that aren’t going to the NHL.  Far too many parents live vicariously through their teenage sons; pushing them too hard to play a game that removes a lot of the fun they should otherwise experience.  Baseball is a pretty relaxed game, and the kids get to be social.

I honestly can’t tell you how much fun we have in the dugout, at practice, and basically anywhere in between.  I’m not your typical coach.  I tell the kids, “I’m not some dad who shows up to practice wearing dress pants and a sweater tied neatly over the shoulders of another sweater.”  I have no problem talking to these teenagers like they’re exactly that: teenagers.

Coaching 15, 16, and 17-year-old kids isn’t just about baseball.  It’s about life too.

At the start of every year, I tell the rookies – those that are 14-15, that they’re entering the toughest phase of life, and the phase that for me personally, was absolutely brutal.

In the past six years, I’ve dealt with all kinds of issues.

I’ve had kids talk to me about drugs, sex (lots of it…), booze, partying, school grades, university, and their futures.

I’ve had one kid come to me with a pregnancy scare.

I had one kid call me when he was kicked out by his parents.

I’ve kept in touch with a lot of the kids, and last weekend ago, I hired two of them to come to my condo and load 200 bags of garden soil into the elevator and out onto my terrace.

I’ve had beers with a few of the kids, now that some of them are 21-22 years old, and I’ve helped some kids apply to school, get jobs, and figure out their lives.

A few of them slip through the cracks.  There are some kids you just can’t get through to.

This one kid back in 2008 was destined for failure.  He showed up at my practice chewing tobacco, and I told him never to do that in front of me again.  The next practice, he deliberately spit tobacco juice down onto my cleat, and I slapped him in the mouth – tobacco flying everywhere.  He said, “Ha – you’re F**** now, Pipes!  I can tell my parents you slapped me and you’ll be in deep!”  I calmly replied, “Right, or, I could knock on your door tonight, sit down at the kitchen table with your parents, and explain to them how you chew tobacco, smoke cigarettes, and drink in the McDonald’s parking lot every Saturday night in between smoking blunts.”  He got all sheepish and said, “Pipes….please….please don’t call my folks.”

He dropped out of high school, and went from Pet Smart to Jack Astor’s.  I could never get through to him.

Another kid made my bad-books when he surmised, “The world is different today because kids today fight back!”  I asked, “Against what?”  And he said, “Against our parents – against authority.”  I asked him why he needed to fight back against parents that work sixty hours per week to provide him with a mansion in Leaside and a room filled with video games, and he said, “Man, whatever.  F*** THAT!”  He just kept saying “whatever,” which is a synonym, of course, for “I’m losing this argument.”

There are always some surprises.  One of my favorite kids – a kid that as a 14-year-old, raced on his bike five blocks to catch me in my car to say, “Coach, I wanted to shake your hand and thank you for a great season!”  A couple of kids said they saw him at a strip club in London, sitting in pervert’s row, with both ears pierced, and long shaggy hair.  I can’t put that image together with the image of that polite, thoughtful kid from four years ago.

I know that kids are kids, and they’ll always think like kids, act like kids, and disappoint us with their comments and actions, but I also think that I’m not (yet) too old for them to group me with their parents, teachers, and other authority figures they despise.  I can get through to these kids and give them some guidance, whether they take it all the way or not.

I’ve seen some real talent over the years too!

In 2008, Scott Hayden struck out 89 batters in 40 innings.  Think about that – do the math.  Even if you’re not a baseball enthusiast, you’d acknowledge that striking out 2 1/4 of every 3 batters, every inning, all season, is something magical.

Scotty Leathem had a .765 batting average in 2007.  That’s a record that will never be broken!  Neither will Eric Mercer’s six homeruns in one season.  The next highest is three…

This year, “Spartacus” wants to break Tommy Lee’s 2009 record of 33 stolen bases in 15 games.  Every kid on our team has a nickname; just ask Leo The Barber, although he doesn’t know why we gave him that nickname….yet…

I would encourage any of you, if you can spare the time, to get involved with youth sports.

As I said – it’s not just about the sports (although I do stress that ‘having fun’ is a by-product of winning, therefore winning is everything), as these kids are living in a far more complicated world than we ever did.  I can’t fathom being a 15-year-old kid  in 2012, and I had a hard enough time in 1995!

And if you’re ever at Bayview & Eglinton on a Saturday morning between 10am – 12pm, come by and say hello.

Our team is called “Bosley Real Estate,” to nobody’s surprise…