Coach Schatzeder He Was a Good Coach

This guy we called him Schatz, or Coach. Anything else he hated being called. He was our high school PE instructor. He resembled that actor Daniel Day-Lewis from Gangs of New York. This one time Coach embarrassed me at the beginning of class in front of everyone including this buxom blonde named Lisa Schatz (no relation), making me stand while everyone else sat and then demanding an intelligent explanation for why I wasn’t wearing my gym clothes. He told me I don’t know was a lazy answer. He sent me back to the locker room as if my gym clothes which were at home in the dryer would magically reappear there at school and since I was going through a phase I mumbled take it easy bro, and as I stomped away he looked up from his clipboard and said hey! But I continued walking so he followed me pretty much the entire length of the basketball court just so he could tap me on the shoulder and say Hey—

I am not your bro.

Coach he was a former major league pitcher and he always made sure to remind us of that. That’s probably why we never did shit in PE class (as long as you showed up properly dressed, you got your A). He was the winning pitcher for the Minnesota Twins in Game 6 of the 1987 World Series. He claimed that group was better than the ’91 squad.

We could tell Coach missed the good old days. Every story he ever told had a moral and every moral somehow related back to his Minnesota teammates. Well it’s like Kirby used to say, he’d say. Or: That reminds me of the time Gaetti [insert any debaucherous act here].

During our so-called softball unit he would show us his World Series ring, forcing us to crowd around and touch it for power. Then all of us we would line up and take turns swinging away at the 82 MPH sliders he would throw (he threw baseballs, not softballs of course). That’s all we did for about a month. Batting practice. And no one could ever hit that nasty pitch of his.

No one until me, that is. You know those claw vending machine games at video arcades that pisses people off but in an obsessively fun way? That’s me up there to bat one day about halfway through our softball unit, when Coach Schatz has pitched a perfect game through two weeks, fanning literally 300 straight. People are whispering tips into my ear and I’m 100% sure I’m going to strike out yet again but I just want to try one more time, because Schatz is getting so damn cocky about striking out a bunch of fifteen-year-olds and it’s really pissing me off but in an obsessively fun way.

Who’s next, Coach asks, yawning a bit, walking circles around the mound, and then he sees me dragging the aluminum bat with me towards the batter’s box. Coach he smiles.

Oh look, it’s my bro, Coach says. Let’s see if my bro has what it takes to get a hit off me!

But I walk into the lefthander’s batter’s box instead of the righthander’s which makes the crowd buzz a little and I stand really upright like I’m Ken Griffey, Jr. and I’m twirling the bat way over my head like I’m John Kruk. Coach is a lefty, too. Some goths in the back are snickering at this unlikely lefty-lefty matchup.

The first pitch Coach throws looks like it’s headed for my ear, so I flinch, but then it somehow ends up in the dirt, nearly smashing my right ankle. Most days I would give him a pleading look, but today I’m glowering in Coach’s direction. His mustache it twitches like a dragonfly’s wing.

Except for the snickering goths, everyone is silent.

And so Coach he throws another, and I’m swinging the bat before the windup even and it’s supposed to be a devastating 12-6 curveball but I golf that shit out of there, I clobber it over his head way over there in right-center field as it blots out the sun, temporarily causing an eclipse, creating a giant shadow over the infield that cools our sticky skin. We’re just hitting balls, I know that, but I’m running around the bases, remembering this forever. I’m Carlton Fisk, willing it out of the park. I’m Kirk Gibson, pumping a fist, yeeeeah.

I pick up the pace once crossing third and I point at Coach and tell him that I’m not his bro and he simply folds his arms, tapping one foot repeatedly, although a month later he will give me an A in that class instead of the C+ I was supposed to get for never dressing and/or walking the mile on many occasions instead of running it. Everyone mobs me at home plate and Lisa Schatz is there too and she’s jumping up and down a lot, flapping those tig ol’ bitties, congratulating me.

HARRRRRRRRRRRRRR. The crowd goes wild.

The reason I’m sharing this story is because today I saw Coach in the frozen foods aisle of a grocery store in my home town. There he was, still looking like Daniel Day-Lewis, putting chicken taquitos in his cart. I wasn’t sure if he’d remember me or that hit I’d gotten off of him all those years ago so I just pretended to be fascinated by the nutritional information on a box of Eggos, but then he lightly kicked me on my calf and winked and said, “How ya doin’, slugger?”