Free One Shot at Forever by Chris Ballard

as a personal affront.
    A full half of the piece, however, was devoted to Macon’s first-year coach, whom Cook depicted as a quirky, candid, fun-loving “bachelor in his mid-twenties” who “got the baseball job by forfeit.” Sweet was quoted as saying, “I wasn’t too excited about doing [the job] at first, but it’s been a very enjoyable season.” When asked about his coaching acumen, Sweet deferred to the boys’ talent. As for his own priorities, said Sweet, “I’m still an English teacher first.”
    This may have been true, but baseball coach was becoming an awfully close second.
    In one game after another, Macon prevailed. The boys crushed Niantic 10–0, Moweaqua 9–2, and prevailed 4–2 over archrival Mt. Zion, a team the Ironmen hadn’t beaten in years. Sweet’s boys were bordering on dominant.
    By now, the team had fallen into a loose rhythm, egged on by Sweet, who not only spent a good chunk of practice joking with the boys but nearly all of it on the field. At first, the players weren’t quite sure what to make of it; coaches were supposed to stand on the side, with a whistle, chewing them out. But here was Sweet, taking his cuts, running in the outfield, and throwing batting practice most every day. And what a BP pitcher he was. Heneberry remembers it as, “like having a pitching machine.” Even though some of the balls were torn up, with the stitching loose and the cover flapping, Sweet had tremendous control. If you needed confidence, he could groove one. If you had trouble with outside pitches, he put one fastball after another on the outside corner. And if you got too cocky, as Heneberry says, “He could gun you down.”
    Sweet pitched because he enjoyed it but also for strategic reasons. Whereas most teams in the area employed their starting pitchers to throw batting practice, Sweet tried to dissuade his from doing so. “What’s the point of that,” he said to Heneberry and Shartzer. “Why would I want you to learn to throw the ball so guys can hit it?”
    So instead it was Sweet up on the mound, throwing sometimes an hour a day, possessed of a seemingly rubber arm. The fielders got practice in live game situations; the hitters got to face pitching from someone who’d competed at the semipro level; and Sweet got to play ball. “It was amazing,” says Heneberry, “how much better we got.”
    There was only one cardinal sin during practice: getting too serious. “Gentlemen,” Sweet said whenever this occurred, “we are here after school because we are no longer in school. This is the fun part.” If that didn’t work, he had other means. Once, when he sensed the kids getting too testy, he went into his windup and, upon swiveling, turned and mooned the boys.
    Day by day, the players became more accustomed to both Sweet’s unconventional approach and his seemingly limitless confidence in them. During games, they took off running whenever they wanted, often with great success. They bunted when they saw an opportunity and pitched out when it seemed prudent. Instead of deputizing a parent to be the first base coach, or bringing in an assistant, Sweet named Heneberry to the job. He did this in part because Heneberry was a part-time player but also because he knew the responsibility would boost the boy’s confidence, which Sweet saw as the ultimate goal of much that he did. During games, no matter how bad Tomlinson, Shartzer, or Heneberry looked on the mound, Sweet left them in. “You’ll work through it,” he said. Or, if they appeared tight, he pulled them aside between innings and asked them why they played baseball. If the boys looked back at him blankly, he smiled and said, “Because it’s fun!” And then, without discussing strategy, he walked away.
    Shartzer in particular was warming to Sweet’s methods. If the new coach had come in