Twenty six 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. Like all conventions, there are an array of prominent individuals in whatever the convention is about invited as speakers.
As the guests lined up to register with the hotel staff, the name of one of the speakers kept coming up in conversations. Usually with the same sentiment,
“John Scolinos is here? Oh man, this convention is going to be worth every penny I spent on the airfare and hotel room.”
So who is John Scolinos, you may ask. Well, Coach Scolinos was 78 years old college coaching who retired only a few years earlier. His career began in 1946 as head baseball coach at Pepperdine University until the early 1960s when he left to coach at California State Polytechnic University Pomona until he retired in 1991. The audience was eager to see the old coach speak as he shuffled to the stage, to an impressive standing ovation. Wearing dark polyester pants and a light blue shirt, as he stood at the podium with a string around his neck from which home plate hung. Yup, a full-sized, stark-white home plate.
After speaking for twenty-five minutes, not once did he mention the prop hanging around his neck. The esteemed retired coach then noticed the snickering among some of the coaches. Even those who knew old Coach Scolinos had to wonder exactly where he was going with this, or if he had simply forgotten about the home plate around his neck since he’d gotten on stage.
Finally, he stopped and looked around at the audience and stated,
“””You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my neck,”””‘
Many started laughing at the way asked, as if we didn’t know it was a first plate. Then he said as his voice got louder,
“”“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.”
As they all quoted down, he asked a question of the audience,
“””How many Little League coaches are out in the audience?”
In response a slew of hands went up, and then he asked them,
“Do you know how wide home plate is in Little League?”
After a pause, someone offered,
“Seventeen inches?”
The coach responded,
“””That’s right,, now How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth coaches in the house?”
Another long pause, until someone yelled out,
“Seventeen inches.”
Then the old coach responded,
“”“That’s right. Now, how many high school coaches do we have in the room?””
Hundreds of hands shot up, as a pattern in his questioning began to appear.
“”“How wide is home plate in high school baseball?””
In response the audience erupted with,
“””Seventeen inches,”
To with the coach began sounding more confident.
“”“You’re right! Now how of you college coaches know how wide is home plate in college?”
They yelled out in unison,
“”“Seventeen inches!”
Then he got to the Minor and major league coaches, and asked them the same question.
Again a resounding response,
“”“Seventeen inches!”””
Coach Scolinos was smiling with excitement as he confirmed their responses by yelling back at the audience,
“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!”
He looked around the audience, and stood there for a moment speechless. The raised the his and yelled,
“”“And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?”
There was a pause and no response,
The Old coach yelled again to the audience,
“”“They send him to Pocatello! 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.’””
He paused, as his voice lowered to a normal decibel and asked,
“”“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 back toward the crowd, a simple picture of a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows, and said,
“”“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!”””
The convention hall was silent, when he spoke up again, and pointed to the American flag he drew on top of the house, and said,
“””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?”””
There was silence as the coach again turned the plate around and drew another picture. When he turned it back around
To the audience, they were silent and they saw that he replaced the flag with a Cross he drew. Then he looked out and said matter of factly,
“””This is the problem in the Church also, 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 have allow it. 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.”””
It was an amazing thing, to see at a baseball convention where everyone expected to learn something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better practices. Instead, they were getting a different lesson. One that was needed more than the advice on baseball. This old coach with home plate strung around his neck, had given a lesson about life. Something they all needed to hear, something that opened a window to our the true responsibilities of leader. When we are in a position of leadership, we need to hold ourselves and others, accountable to that which we know in our hearts, mind, and souls is right.
Otherwise our families, our faith, and our society will continue to slide down an undesirable which was true then, but even more today. The coach went on to tell the audience,
“””If I am lucky, you will remember this one thing from this old coach today. “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 and closed hi speech with these words of wisdom.
“””We have dark days ahead!, and if we don’t begin to change things today, then one day it will be too late, because as leaders we failed to stay within those 17 inches of life..”
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A Note on coach John Scolinos. He went home to the Lord in 2009 at the
age of 91, but not before touching the lives of hundreds of players and
coaches around the country who gained much wisdom on baseball and life.
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I learned about this esteemed coach from an older neighbor friend I met a few years ago after I moved from Chico CA to Payette Idaho. He was walking his young german shepherd down the road in front of my house, when Bob noticed my two shepherds in the yard, and since I was new to Payette, he started up a conversation by introducing himself and welcoming me to the neighborhood.
Over the next couple years we had many conversations across the fence conversations as he walked his dog. I learned that Bob was a retired professional baseball player. Other than 1971 when he was called up by the Minnesota Twins, he spent his career in the minor leagues. Even though he spent one inglorious season with the twins, he did get to know Killebrew and through the years the two kept in touch in a friendly but cordial way. Well, when he moved up to Payette a year before me. Like me, Bob was totally surprised to learn that Harmon actually went to school here. His name is all over this small hick town of 6,000 people. Just pure chance that we both ended up here years after we retired from work. As for me, I was a fan of Killebrew as I was growing up in Duluth Minnesota.
Well ,one of the things I learned from Bob was that being a Southern California boy he ended up attending college and played ball at Cal Poly in Pomona CA. One day he told me about his college coach, named John Scolinos. Bob told me, among many other things, that the lessons he learned from his old coach went far beyond the playing field. He gives credit to coach Scalinos for the wisdom and inspiration that he has carried with him his whole life. Coach, as Bob still refers to him, changed his life from a careless lost soul who was heading down the wrong track as a youngster on his team. He credits the Coach for convincing him to get involved in church and to become a solver of problems instead of a creator of havoc.
I later looked up the coach and put this together as a second hand thank you to the Old Coach who gained much respect from other coaches and players who always looked forward to hearing him speak and teach on baseball and life. You know, no matter how good we are, we must always remember to stay within those seventeen inches. Which is the equivalence of walking the straight and narrow, because the narrow gate is the only way to avoid the pitfalls of life as we meander through this wayside rest we call the world. If we don’t, then the alternative is a highway to hell, where only misery and ultimate separation from GOD exists.
So remember. Whenever you can, to fix the problems in your way by staying within those 17 inches, instead of widening the plate in life.
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