This is a very short story about author’s 8th-grade baseball coach, Coach Fitz, who taught them the lessons on the game of life. It’s not about winning the game only but more about persevere against adversity. The coach made the students do sliding drills all evening after losing a game. By forcing them to wear the same unwashed uniform until they finally won a game, the coach impressed upon them the lessons of life. But it’s getting harder for Coach Fritz to apply the same teaching and lessons to the kids nowadays as the rich parents demanded the private school coach to cut their kids breaks and privileges that work against the Coach’s teaching in responsibility, discipline, and lifting of the courage and strength to meet the life challenges. Coach Fritz found it to be his purpose in life to not give up on the kids but win for the kids. He carried it out through his emotion and tough punishments, bordering abusive. The turning point for the author was when a baseball broke his nose as he tried to catch a baseball after losing his concentration trying to listen to what Coach might have been scolding him of his skipped practice due to a family ski trip.

The story made me wonder how our kids’ future are being ruined or spoiled by the parents and how many teachers nowadays truly care enough to risk losing their careers to bring out the best of the students. I also remember a few of the teachers in my early life who were doing the same thing as Coach Fritz does and yet I felt they were simply abusing their power. It’s hard to appreciate the teachers when you’re young. Only when you grow up and accomplish something that set you above others that you begin to appreciate the gifts you have received from your teachers, if you haven’t already attributed 100% to your own doing.