Unpacked In Santa Cruz
"Unpacked in Santa Cruz" is a homegrown podcast hosted by Michael Howard that dives into the lives, stories, and salty moments of people who call this coastal community home—or have been shaped by it in some way. Whether it's a deep conversation with local surfers opening up about mental health, or a peek behind the curtain of someone who started a one-of-a-kind food spot right here in town, every episode brings something real.
You’ll hear from folks who found healing behind the lens, built businesses from scratch, or chased massive waves thanks to a lifetime spent around our local waters. These aren’t just interviews—they’re conversations that reflect the heart and soul of Santa Cruz. Raw, reflective, and rooted in community, Unpacked in Santa Cruz brings local voices to the surface.
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 60: Ted Lasso That Shit… Matt Kuhn and Frank Schonig Share What it Means To Be The Goldfish!
What does it truly mean to coach youth sports in today's hyper-competitive world? In this candid conversation, host Michael "Coach Powers" Howard sits down with Little League coaches Matt Kuhn and Frank Schonig to unpack the beautiful mess that is youth baseball in Santa Cruz County.
The trio begins by sharing their uniquely Santa Cruz upbringings – from Frank's "mountain boy" childhood with dirt bike tracks and paintball courses on 10 acres of redwoods to Matt's journey from Ben Lomond to Live Oak. Their stories capture a freedom and independence that shaped their coaching philosophies years later. Neither planned to become baseball coaches, but as Frank puts it, they were "the last assholes standing" when volunteers were needed. What started as a way to spend time with their sons evolved into something much deeper.
At the heart of their coaching approach is a revolutionary idea: winning matters, but it's not everything. "Culture is the behavior that is acceptable for the team," Matt explains as they discuss building environments where kids feel safe to fail. Frank, drawing from his firefighter background, teaches players to focus on "controllables" – attitude and effort – while developing the "goldfish mentality" to quickly move past mistakes. Together with their coaching pod, they've created a space where practices feel like birthday parties, complete with sing-alongs and dancing, yet still produce championship teams.
The coaches don't shy away from tough topics, confronting the ego that drives all coaches while acknowledging that success can be measured in different ways – not just by wins and losses, but by whether kids return the following season and leave games happy regardless of the score. Their mission extends beyond developing athletes to raising "good humans" who will strengthen their community.
For parents considering coaching, their message is clear: don't be intimidated by lack of experience. Everyone brings different strengths, and coaching doesn't have to be done alone. The rewards – seeing young people develop determination, grit, and meaningful connections – far outweigh the challenges.
Ready to rethink your approach to youth sports? Listen now and discover how three ordinary guys created extraordinary experiences for kids through baseball.
What's mostly fun about this is you guys don't know when I start. I already started. Welcome to the Unpacked in Santa Cruz podcast. I'm your host, michael Howard. This podcast is brought to you today by Santa Cruz Vibes magazine, also by Pointside Beach Jack. Go ahead and look those two flavors up on the interweb and you will find some things that are pretty cool. Anyways, I have the pleasure and privilege of sitting today with uh two men that I spent a lot of time with. It wasn't necessarily my intent, but over the course of the last couple years we spent a few days together and it's been a real privilege. But I'm I'm sitting in front of uh two of well, the manager, the manager, matt Kuhn Kuhn. Is that right?
Speaker 2:That's correct.
Speaker 1:Okay, I finally pronounced it right, not Kuhn. Half people think it's all right, and Frank Schoenig, yeah, that's correct, also Frank.
Speaker 3:That's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we have other names for each other when we're on the baseball field and I don't know that's entirely appropriate on these microphones, but you, I don't know that's entirely appropriate on these microphones, but you know we're we're. We're missing one though, stefan stop chickening out.
Speaker 3:Speaking of names, I was looking for your name in my phone recently and, uh, I couldn't find it cause it's under Mike Howard, not my coach. Power, coach, powers. I know Racking my head.
Speaker 1:I'm like what is his name? I just know coach powers, coach powers. I know it's like racking my head. I'm like I know what is his name. I'm like blanked out I just know Coach Powers. Oh yeah, I am Coach Powers to many young people that have no idea what my name is. I'm not. How did that? That was Stephen Coach.
Speaker 3:Stephen kept writing all the game plans and he'd be like warmup shown egg, this pitching powers and like we finally just rolled with it. Cause he thought it was powers, not Howard it sounds better, and now we call him coach powers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so I, I am officially coach powers, sounds so much. But you know this has been a conversation a long time coming for me. I know I wanted to do it last year and this last previous season. We had talked about it but really couldn't schedule time. Stephen and I was hoping to get the whole group in, but you know we're here though now, and so, for the audience, I just kind of want to start with who you guys are. Matt, we'll start with you. You know what's your name. Are you married, all that kind of stuff. What do you do for a living, matt?
Speaker 2:Right, my name is Matt Kuhn. I was born on Cayuga Street here in Santa Cruz. My placenta was buried in the tree in the backyard, still there to this day, moved up to Ben Lomond in my elementary school years, scott SLV Little League Parents got divorced when I was in high school, so I spent my remaining years down in Live Oak and I've been lucky enough to coach with Frank you, mike Powers, mike Block, steven for the past couple years, four or five years. So I'm here today as the boss.
Speaker 1:Yes, you are the big boss, I'm the manager. Big Cune, frank, how about you? I just want to start off with.
Speaker 2:I've never heard a man say my placenta.
Speaker 3:Maybe his mom's placenta, but we'll take that. Yeah, I'm Frank Schoenig. I live here. I've been in Live Oak for the last 10 years with my wife, melissa, and two boys, frankie and Parker, 12 and 9. Yes, 12 and 9. I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains between Soquel High School and Summit Road off San Jose, soquel. That was my dad's house where we spent most of our time, and then my mom and stepdad were in Campbell over the hill, so we were kind of back and forth. Yeah, my dad worked from home, had a hot rod, street rod business and a microchip business and we were full mountain boys on 10 acres in the Redwoods with everything except a baseball field. Yeah, that's kind of how it was. Did you play I did? 10 acres in the Redwoods with everything except a baseball field. Yeah, that's kind of how it was.
Speaker 1:Did you play?
Speaker 3:I did. I played through little league. Did you play down at cap Soquel or no, we played, cause it was a trip up there. So we were Santa Cruz County, but Los Gatos school district.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 3:I played Los Gatos, which you know. Growing up I was more of the extreme sport guy because my dad was a workaholic and very much into on the weekends. He just worked Monday through Friday at our house. We have a hot rod shop above our house and on the weekends it was either snowboarding, motorcycle riding or camping and wakeboarding. My dad was a water ski trick ski guy and so we pretty much which I'll get into later we love sports. My younger brother and I were pretty athletic, we'd like to think and we played a lot of team sports, but I think most of it was free childcare or cheap childcare. At that point At our house we had a dirt bike track, we had a paintball course, like we were very active in all of that stuff. But it was a 30 to 45 minute drive to get to any sort of organized sports over in Los Gatos, whether it was. You know. We played in JB basketball, we played Los Gatos little league, we played soccer over there. We did all that stuff but again, it was a chore.
Speaker 1:So what was it like? Why don't we continue on that path a little bit with you, frank, just growing up here in Santa Cruz? I mean, my audience knows much about the nuances of growing up here. You know you've specified yourself as a mountain boy. You know Matt got introduced to that a little midterm in his life. I don't know if you had the same experience. I've got feelings about that. Yeah, you've got feelings about it. But what was it like growing up here in Santa Cruz for you?
Speaker 3:I mean it was pretty awesome for all the reasons that I just said right there. You know what I mean. We spent probably two-thirds of the time with my dad in the mountains and the other third of the time with my mom down in downtown Campbell, so it was like we had suburbia and then we had the rule CO2 paintball filling station and we'd have full war games down on the hillside.
Speaker 3:And sometimes we'd yell things and neighbors would call the Santa Cruz County sheriffs and then the SWAT team would show up at our house because they thought there was a triple homicide. And it's just a bunch of 10-year-olds playing paintball. So I loved growing up here. We didn't venture too much to the Santa Cruz side just because we were always granted it was Santa Cruz County. But we ventured more on the other side of the hill just because that's where my mom was and we'd have to. You know, my parents got divorced when I was like four or five. My dad bought that house up there when I was one. So he's lived there for 39 years and his that will be his final resting place. He's made that abundantly clear that all the junk he has is going to be my problem and he's never leaving.
Speaker 1:The hot rods that were never finished.
Speaker 3:Dude, everything's a treasure.
Speaker 1:Um, you know our dads are very similar. That dude's, uh, everything's a treasure. Um, you know our dads are very similar. It took me three years to go through the garage at my triplex. Yeah, from you know, my dad was a master mechanic and like he's got three full kits.
Speaker 3:You know, yeah, we have a 3 000 square foot shop with about four to five conics boxes. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, you plug things into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's not fun. It involves a lot of rat shit. That's what that involves.
Speaker 3:But uh, yeah, getting back to the question, Um, I loved it. I wouldn't change anything in my childhood. Um, it wasn't until I graduated high school that I started coming over to Santa Cruz. More, my most influential teacher in my life you guys might know, uh, Russ Leal, over on 30th um, local surfer, was my uh, resource rsp resource teacher because I hated to read and retain things. And uh, he's the one that told me to get into the profession that I'm into now. He's the one that took me surfing for the first time. He's the one that knew teachers and, uh, yeah, the teachers at cabrillo that he felt could help me and help me grow, and and so he sent me over here right after that. And even that influential teacher of my life at Cabrillo, I ended up coaching her daughter and her granddaughter in T-ball with Live Oak. So my story kind of started when I was about 18 in Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1:How about for you, Matt?
Speaker 2:Let's see, so kind of got the mountain. We didn't call it the mountain back then. Back then slv was valley kooks. So insert whatever slurs you want to have. Now you fit up north, yeah so.
Speaker 2:So whoever rebranded slv as the mountains, I mean kudos to you, because that was not the attention that I got growing up as a kid my dad my dad worked at in the Mountain View, at Silicon Graphics, which is now Google, which is kind of random for reasons said unknown. So he was so tired from driving the hill every day that we didn't do anything on the weekends. It was here's a slingshot, here's your bike, here's some pine cones, Get some blackberries, that kind of stuff. So it probably wasn't until like junior high. My next door neighbor is Chris Thomas, so his son, Steve Thomas, is a pro longboarder, friends with Jay and all those guys. So I started trading, babysitting for surfing on the weekends. So basically every weekend we'd be dom patrolling every single spot. I had really bad asthma. So I'll never forget the first time he took me out to the point On my boogie board. I had an asthma attack like halfway on the paddle.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh goddammit, now we have to leave, but those were like the days where it's like there's no surf line, so it's like you drive and check every single spot twice and then go back to the first spot. You checked.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, it wasn't super busy. As a kid I played little league, um, it wasn't like now where you had coaches that cared, or private lessons. It was very much like the old guard or it was like coaches get pitches, yell at you. So I kind of transitioned from like the little league days to surfing. This is my, like my, favorite thing. My grandma, pat rest in peace. She said it broke my heart when you quit playing little league. I don't know if she went to more than one or two games. Living in southern california, but I think surfing kind of filled in. I had a really good uh surf coach named mr umstead on the surf team at slv. His son, matt umstead, um, also surfed and I think that's where I really got my first sense of like what a coach would be like Teach you how to treat your friends, teach you how to pay gas money, give you the freedom. So that's kind of where I had my first coaching experience. But most of my childhood was very much just slingshots and backyard.
Speaker 2:Doing, mountain stuff Doing mountain, not as cool as Frank's mountain Killing shit and picking shit. We're going on a much lower level. You know building little forts and stuff like that, but, like I said when I moved down to Santa Cruz, you know, first of all you're like the cool kid because now you have an empty house in Santa Cruz, because your dad's gone all the time.
Speaker 1:And you're on Cayuga. No, now we're at 15th. Oh gotcha, we're now in Live Oak, santa Maria area.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean we learned pretty quickly. And we learned pretty quickly like we were the outsiders, just from a surfing perspective. But you know, I love going to San Cruz because you kind of find your spot right, like not everybody is going to be, you know, pro Mike Howard dominating sewer peak. You know, I don't even think I paddled out, I was already throwing bombs.
Speaker 1:There's the manager just throwing bombs. I learned how to have a lot of fun at.
Speaker 2:Capitola, privates, 38th. You know mostly Longboard. They didn't have fun boards back then. But overall it was a great childhood and we kind of had a group of eight buddies in high school that just all were together. That was our family Didn't have a lot of parental support but we were good kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the influence was just a little bit less. They were there, but a lot of freedom, a lot of freedom, a lot of freedom. Yeah, you know, and before we kind of segue into baseball, you know what's the thing that sticks out most in your mind about this kind of freedom? Because you know, I have an image of it. You know it involves a cruiser and I had the leg strength to make it to the lane and back. You know like.
Speaker 1:You know like it just kind of depended on who was willing to ride with you wherever to go venture on a surf adventure, right, but you know there's all these little paths and things that you can take. You know all the little spots where you can go jump. You know that, that, that if you know the secrets when you're a kid, you know there's stuff that you can do. You know on the way to whatever it is you're doing, you know you guys being, you know in the mountains and I think this is important for my audience to understand like the mountains are right there. You know so many people have an image of Santa Cruz as, like this beach community, it's like, yeah, except two miles that direction, you're in the mountains.
Speaker 3:That's my favorite part about this, right, everybody's. If you're topside and you're looking at the surf, the mountains are to your back. You don't see them, but every time you're in the ocean, every time you're riding in, you're looking at the mountains. Right, we have this gorgeous, luscious mountains. I mean I live right now like exactly 10 miles from my house to my dad's house where I grew up, and I mean he's balls deep in the mountains, yeah, yeah, and and and, not coming off the hill, and it's 15 minutes from my house. If there's no traffic in Soquel and a million construction going on for 13 years, it's it and a million construction going on for 13 years.
Speaker 1:It's not far, yeah yeah, but it's a real thing here. Like, if you live in South County, 41st Avenue is your cap. If you live on the West side, 41st Avenue is as far as you go. Midtown people are a little bit more amenable to that stuff, but there's these weird boundaries that just exist within the county about where you will and won't go.
Speaker 1:That's why I love based based on based on some weird metric that's just in your heart, of like, oh, that's too far, you know, but but yet it's only five minutes away that's what we need.
Speaker 3:We need a bumper sticker that just has the live oak symbol and says I go both ways.
Speaker 1:Frank's a firefighter Classic.
Speaker 3:But yeah, going on the little trails, I mean, that's what we had in the mountains too, no-transcript. Eventually it became riding the bike, but you learned all the back ways. You learned navigation by looking at big trees and I had it down to where I'd get off at the bus stop before me, go hang out with my buddy for a couple hours and then I'd have to literally go through the mountains, through people's backyards, all this stuff, and then sometimes you'd pop up and you'd be like, oh shit, I'm like three houses over, and then you dip back in, follow creeks, have fun like I wouldn't change it for anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really a topographically such a unique space to have that part in our hearts. You know like it just as urban as it seems in Santa Cruz. Now, it's really not and it's adventurous too.
Speaker 2:I remember up the hill from our house there was like an old Christian camp and when you're a kid they used to have magazines back then. So you don't know what you're going to find when you're out exploring.
Speaker 3:So I'll save that for a different day.
Speaker 1:There were some beverages and some materials and I was like wow, you know, you're 12, 13 years old, you might keep walking the christian kids were born at camp.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'll never forget that I've been in the woods and looked at a playboy with a glow stick I'm not above that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's hilarious. Okay, so so you guys both have two boys. Um, you know, there's the obvious answer of why you got into coaching and that that you wanted to be with your sons. But but you know, everybody has that first year of coaching and then there's the decision after that. You know what was the decision after that first year to continue to coach. We can start with you, frank.
Speaker 3:I'm going to back that up because a little it goes a little bit deeper for me, I guess. A little more background I yes, I'm a firefighter. Like Coach Powers mentioned, this is my 19th fire season but obviously played team sports growing up and right. When I hit 19 I became a life or I was a lifeguard. At 16 taught swim lessons. That was my first time coaching. Taught a ton of swim lessons till all my hair fell off from bleach and everything Then graduated.
Speaker 3:Then, simultaneously with going to the fire Academy, I became a personal trainer, then got heavily into coaching CrossFit and I was just a instructor for basically high school students and instructor for basically high school students and Los Gatos moms over the hill, um, and kind of found that I really enjoyed that and then kind of pushed that away about 10 years ago and just stuck real hard on the firefighter thing, just cause I had a family so I couldn't work seven days a week anymore and so I've always enjoyed coaching when it came to but that's fitness. I enjoyed coaching people how to work out and motivating them, finding what motivates them and just the whole mental part of doing hard things has always kind of gotten me off a little bit. But when it came to coaching my own kids, that I did not want to do because I'm not a baseball coach and I, it turns out I am a baseball coach but I didn't feel that I was a baseball coach. Just watch my first professional soccer game ever at the age of 40. I've coached my younger son in soccer. I just I didn't know how to do these things.
Speaker 3:But when you get in these situations, like I mentioned before, sometimes sports are daycare for some families. Some kids are extremely into this and this is when they're playing travel baseball. They do little league on their weekends off, whatever it is. But I did not want to do that and I think, kind of like Matt, I was the last asshole standing there when everybody else stepped back and credit. My wife loves baseball. She grew up playing travel softball. My father-in-law was always her coach. That's her thing. She coached our sons older sons' first t-ball team, okay, and then drug me into it because, like you mentioned, I worked two days on and four days off, excuse me, so I wasn't always able to be there for all these practices. But my wife coached our son's team and I helped out and then it kind of just transitioned into. I met all my homies and couldn't stop.
Speaker 3:And then I don't know where we're at in your question anymore. No, we're good, I'm just going to keep going.
Speaker 1:It was a lucky accident. It was a lucky accident, you know, in the sense that it's not something you were looking at, it's just something you found yourself in, totally.
Speaker 3:And it was. I mean, this is like one of my mottos for life that I tell people all the time but shit happens and it always works out. I apply that to myself daily with it's a good thing, a bad thing or whatever. I'm stressed about making money working overtime doing this, and now my wife has me coaching T-ball, when I don't know shit about baseball other than I like to drink beer while I watch the Giants play things like that and then it kind of just snowballed into, you know, making friends and me making adult friends, my kids making good friends and just the whole vibe and the lifestyle and all of that. It just was kind of ran out of control, but in a good way, yeah, In a good way, Matt, for you.
Speaker 1:What was the uh, what was the thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think the. So I moved to Southern California for college and eventually moved to Austin, texas for five years. For coming back here and I was like I need to meet some surfers. So I decided to volunteer for Surfrider Foundation. So there's this whole feel of doing a volunteer job and showing up. It's kind of scary. Why would I want to waste my time volunteering? So I spent five years volunteering there and then I did five years volunteering with the Santa Cruz chapter of Surfrider and once Case and my son got to an age where he's playing baseball or sports, this felt like another transition into a volunteer job.
Speaker 2:So the first year our friend Noah invited me to coach on a team that was farm. I didn't really know anything about baseball. I made the all-star team once at SLV but I was not a naturally athletic kid. I ultimately have a bad taste in my mouth from baseball, from coaches yelling at me. It just felt like a scary, yucky kind of thing. So maybe in the back of my mind I was like, oh, I could do better than that.
Speaker 2:But I think coaching is selfish. The back of my mind I was like, oh, I could, I could do better than that. Um, but I think you know coaching is selfish, like it. Yes, you're the last asshole standing and yes, it's like you're taking time out of your day, but, um, the amount of like joy you get from being a part of you know my son's life. You know frankie and him have been friends for eight years through jujitsu. Like the extra time I've gotten to spend in these last five years coaching with them is like purely selfish. I mean I feel like I get so much out of that that, um, I mean you ask any coach like, oh, this is the year I'm gonna not coach and just watch from the bleachers.
Speaker 2:It's almost impossible right like so I think that it kind of snowballed and then during COVID, you know, our coaching staff kind of all potted up and, um, we have such like a good environment where it's fun, like we care so much about the kids that, yes, there's days where it's like a grind, like I got the practice plan ready, we have to go do this, we're tired, we have stuff to do, but I've never left like a practice feeling like bummed. I'm always feel excited to see the kids. Like everything else kind of melts away once you get to practice. But, um, the first year I was a manager four years ago.
Speaker 2:I remember I was like so nervous like had this whole speech prepared and I was like shaking and my clipboard and you know they're. I guess it was like five years ago, so they're probably like seven or eight, and it's like they don't care, they just want to move their bodies and have fun. But, um, I think, yeah, that's why I keep doing. It is just that, you know, even when, uh, our kid, when my son aged out, you know, four months ago, I was like I was so excited to announce my retirement after signing my five-year zero dollar little league deal yeah, as a manager, it costs money yeah and then you know, and then we we get on a waves team and I know that manager and he says I have any coaches, so now we're doing that next level.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's been. It's overall it's been awesome.
Speaker 1:And yeah, and so just for the audience, I you may have noticed a nuance, you know, between Frank and Matt. You know, frank, frank is very forthright, matt's very smooth and he's in sales and you wouldn't know it. But you know, in retrospect, the first meeting three years ago in February about hey, can you help me with my roster and how to think about this, was just a foreshadowing to the reality that he was pulling me in the next year.
Speaker 2:I told him.
Speaker 1:I told him I'm never coming back to baseball. I'm not going to do it. Don't ask me. Sure Shit the next year. You know I'm in.
Speaker 3:He bought you a windbreaker, dude, you have no choice.
Speaker 1:Well, that was this year.
Speaker 3:That was the final year I got a hat, the first year.
Speaker 1:Well, the first year I was on the field but you know I was kind of behind the scenes, that the first moments.
Speaker 1:But you know I bring it up mostly because it's it's nuanced, plus a testimony to the long mindedness you have of taking care of people and you know, helping them understand who they are and allowing the space of the process, because I look at we'll begin to get into this this little pot of coaches that we've had the last couple years. It allowed me the space to love baseball again, to really because, at least in my heart, I look at my time in youth sports as probably the most poignant points of service to the community. You know the, the gosh I don't know how many kids it is now. You know I'm I'm getting well into the hundreds you know of of hundreds of kids that I've coached. The impact that you have in their lives as a coach is that there's just no denying its power and its presence in your life. You know I still run into my kids, you know, most of which are at least 32 and younger at this point, but they still call me coach. You know there's there's just there's nothing like it. You know that that these guys look to you because you brought something to them and brought a place.
Speaker 1:You know, again, I was a far more aggressive coach than you guys might have been, but you know that feeling of having an impact in a child's life may not otherwise have the same resources, whether you know it's because of you know where their parents are at or not at. You know, or money or whatever else, those little tiny things that we can do to. You know. It's because of you know where their parents are at or not at. You know, or money or whatever else, those little tiny things that we can do to you know, buy an ice cream here and there, just the little stuff that just adds a touch that you get to see them. You know, and you know, especially with baseball, you spend so much time together and much of it's pretty boring.
Speaker 1:You know moments, and just that it flourishes is what's boring. You know moments, uh, and just that it flourishes is what's amazing. You know, cause it isn't like this sport that's dynamic. You know it has windows of of dynamism, but but it's it's not not like the most favorite sport to watch by most, by, by most parents. You know it's, it's a slow crawl and uh, anyways, you know, let let's talk a little bit about our pod. You know, um, you know again for the audience you you've heard me share about this that you know that there's this deep love that I've found again for coaching. You know, for the young people that we get to touch. This particular coaching group is unique in the lexicon of coaches that I've been able to coach with. I got to, for the first time, just be a coach and not a manager, and so that was very new for me. You know, last year you saw me trying to acclimate a little bit of like. You know there's a lot of data going through my mind and I don't want to overstep.
Speaker 3:Standing in left field with Grandpa Bill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but how to fit in with a particular expertise. It was the first time that I was just allowed to be myself which is basically a good pitching coach, I guess for little leaguers, added to I'm just good with kids. There's the real factor and I love them and I want to see them succeed, that privilege of doing it that way, not having to be in control of things. It was unique for me, after 25 years of doing this, of just being able to be myself in a space. That was really fun. But who I'm talking to right now?
Speaker 1:You two have been together for quite some time. What was the dynamic for you guys that you were looking for when you started seeing what might be able to happen? You know, to what did happen, which which we had two really great winning seasons. You know one was with the team that shouldn't have won. You know like, let's be frank, we just over like love one and and I and I'm like, well, that was lucky. You know, this year was like wow, love one again. There was a little bit more talent, but it's not like we weren't shitting the bed at the end of the season.
Speaker 3:But, like before, shit happens and it always works out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah you know, it's just like. You know, steven and I were in the back going like, yeah, these guys don't got it, but somehow this temperature that you bring to this team, matt, was really refreshing. It was like I don't think I've ever seen this. I mean, you know enough about baseball, but you don't know baseball, baseball.
Speaker 2:I know YouTube video baseball.
Speaker 1:And it's like, oh man, we're losing the grip on the team. But this attitude that you bring as a manager was something I had never seen before, because you were really managing a lot of personalities, and that was just the coaching staff, let alone the 11 and 12-year-olds.
Speaker 2:We should tell the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll start stories.
Speaker 2:No, I mean I think that ultimately it boils down to culture, right? I mean we ask the kids, like what is culture? Right, if you ask somebody that they might pause for a minute. But like, culture is the behavior that is acceptable for the team, right? So, um, ultimately you know it's based on, you know, love and respect. But you don't start there, right, you have to build trust. So we have to build trust to the players, we have to build trust in the coaching staff, but I mean it always starts there, like the culture of the team.
Speaker 2:That was my main focus. I had a great. I mean, how lucky am I to have you powers for pitching Frank? For, like, the mindfulness the moment is in all the athletic stuff. I mean we did agility training. Frank knows how to catch. We had mike block, who's kind of like the true north star. Right, he's gonna take the high road. If we're getting caught up in a game or the season or or politics, mike's always kind of our true north um. And then we had steven right, who is just he's just baseball.
Speaker 2:He's just baseball, you know, he always tells me you can't teach a wolf not to hunt. Like he is so good with the kids, so good at teaching the kids, he commands the kids. So for me it kind of gave me a chance to step back and just focus on the culture of the team. Right, it's like we want to raise kids that want to put in the work and are respectful and nice humans. We're trying to change their lives and make them better people. But back to when I first brought you in. I'll never forget I brought Powers in because I was nervous. Mike has all the little experience. He knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak. He knows certain tactics that I might not be comfortable with. So it's better for me to outsource that for my own heart. Um, and it was, it was like one practice and mike was with the kid. Um, and all of a sudden I look up and the kids just screaming and crying and I'm like oh boy it was very early on, in on
Speaker 1:this this is two seasons ago. Yeah, this was not last season. So I, I know better now so I run off. I'm like crying uncontrollably.
Speaker 2:I had to talk to his mom after and I'm like what did you do, mike? He's like, I just told him I loved him and believed in him and he lost his shit and he lost it. So, um, yeah, so I think that the reason it works is all those things I just mentioned, but also, um, I don't have a big ego, I don't want to take credit. So, like you know, I am a competitive person, secretly, you know, I I am that.
Speaker 2:But, um, I think that I didn't ever want to get in the way of Frank's expertise or your expertise or Stephen's expertise or Mike's expertise, so I just really wanted the culture of the team to be uplifting towards each other, working hard, having joy and making memories right and not being the kids that are blaming and complaining. You know, like, not the shortcut kids. Like we want to be the kids that are blaming and complaining. You know, like, not the shortcut kids. Like we want to be the kids that are going to grind. Like, if you can teach them, the grind is the win and the scoreboard doesn't determine if you're better or worse than the other team and you can be happy and find those moments. You know, that's why we always did like post-game Instead of us all standing and talking, we'd ask them how the game went.
Speaker 2:And they us all standing and talking and we'd ask them how the game went and they'd all share. I mean, there's a couple games that were so bad that steve's like I can't do this. This game, matt. I'm like that's fair. But I mean 95 of the games win or lose. Our kids were happy and, um, I think that's just a reflection of how much we all cared about them and made an environment where they felt safe to to take chances and play the hearts out and not be afraid to fail.
Speaker 1:Did Did you have anything you wanted to add to that, Frank?
Speaker 3:Yeah, just going back to the pod and just kind of a plug to all of your listeners and audiences, that I mean, if you are nervous and thinking about coaching, know that it's not you Like I.
Speaker 3:That's. What I was most nervous about is like I can't manage a team, I'm not going to make the lineups, I don't know where to plug people in the best or this or that. I don't know any of that but turns out. You don't have to know that, because I'm good with teaching progressions to kids and coming up with drills and having mindfulness and a positive mindset, positive attitude, and then sprinkling in all the things that I like to sprinkle in with my kids, uh, about how to raise them and how to raise good humans and to teach that to these other kids. Because if I teach my kids to be good humans and everybody I coach, we or we coach, we teach to be good humans, our community is just going to get better, Right, which is what's the big thing for me. Um, so if you're scared of coaching, you're not doing it alone. We all have our niches and we kind of nobody knows what they're doing when they start.
Speaker 2:Nobody knows what we're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if there's any kids listening to this, and you guys are running and the coaches are all standing there. We're just talking about how we don't know what the fuck we're doing.
Speaker 3:There's nothing profound but um, yeah, just I kind of completely lost my train of thought, not kinda, but um, what I really going back to our pod again just what I really enjoyed about all of us and us getting a couple years together and everything, though is we kind of all know our role. We all can see. When all of us and us getting a couple of years together and everything, though, is we kind of all know our role, we all can see when one of us needs help, like I can see when I'm looking at Steven when I already know the bad call because he's going to break his neck.
Speaker 3:To look at me because he wants to run out onto the field and strangle an umpire and I'm like nope, and I know exactly what to say to him to settle him down, which is generally like we're going to take the high road. All of our kids are watching, all of the parents are watching. Who cares? However, it works out, you know, and like when the kids are starting to crash and we look at Matt and in the third inning he pulls out $187 worth of candy.
Speaker 2:What about the first 20? What do I provide the first 20? We start with oranges, oh sorry.
Speaker 3:Sorry, we start with fruit and water and fruit, and then it slowly progresses to more mainline sugar, and so we can get through our six innings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I told Matt the secret, which was orange slices.
Speaker 2:I got that from you. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, orange slices.
Speaker 3:But I added you have the can. Well, you're sweeter than I am, you know it's okay, but we always what I liked is that we were just a pretty like a family, right To where we didn't step on each other's toes. We more or less agreed on almost everything that we were going to do. We, for the most part, stayed in our lane and, you know, we were able to take what we want to instill in our kids, to instill into all the kids on the team. Right, like I'm very big on controllables and absolutes and I say this to the new firefighters at work or the old guys at work or anybody that's a friend or anything right, but and definitely the kids the only thing we can control in this world is our own attitude and our own effort towards anything Right and our absolutes. When we are together on the baseball field, we will absolutely respect the game, respect the umpires, respect each other and, more importantly, respect ourselves.
Speaker 3:Right, and definitely, some stuff feels good in the moment. Yeah, right, the easy wrong thing feels good in the moment. Right, the easy wrong thing feels great in the moment. But after the fact, the hard right thing is what I want them to, to know, which is why, like Matt did a great job at this and you know like when I talk about the goldfish or the, some people say they have no memory, some say 10 second memory, whatever it is when a kid makes a mistake, and a lot of times as coaches we're just during game time, we're just managing emotions right.
Speaker 3:These kids are so high and low with emotions and some of them are bulletproof. Some of them are one drop ball, they're out for the game, they can't pitch anymore, they can't play that position, they're not going to swing the bag or you know how, what, whatever their coping mechanism is. And it's for us to figure out in that moment and train on it. To pull them aside and, like Matt, with one of our kids would say Santa Mo's because it's his favorite place, or another kid I would yell goldfish, goldfish, and then that would just be like dude, wipe it out. You don't need. If you messed up one thing we still have five to six more innings. We have another 150 pitches.
Speaker 1:There's 150 other things coming.
Speaker 3:And we have 10 or 11 other kids on the team that are here to pick you up. None of us are going to be great. We're great because we're together. We're not great because of one individual. So that's kind of. What I enjoyed about our pod is that we all kind of saw that, without talking about it and having a specific sit down about it, that we all allowed each other to it was natural. Natural and to parent these kids in the way that we want to parent them, like Mr Happy Matt over here, with asking them what their favorite ice cream is and keeping it jovial and pumping them through a candy. That's kind of what he does at home.
Speaker 2:It's like you know, and the candy.
Speaker 3:That's kind of what he does at home. It's like you know, and it works. That's his parenting style. Mine is over talking and teaching about progressions. Right, I'm big on crawl, walk run. We got to teach you this before we can teach you this, before we can teach you that. You know, you're the old salty bastard Been there done that and he knows it and he remembers it.
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly, and then you know, steven and mike, like everybody, was just yeah, solid, yeah, and the thing you know, matt, you touched on something and I want to have, you know, hopefully a fairly honest conversation about it and I don't think I'm breaking any seal by by. You know, conversation I had with Steven about this early in the season, you know, because there's this resonant feeling, I think, from every coach that that stands on a field that thinks to themselves like I'm doing this for the kids and, um, I had the fortunate opportunity about three years in to have a mentor for me that called me out on that thing and he said there's not a single coach on this field that's here for the kids. You're here to win because you want to win. You want to win through kids Like this is all ego and as someone who has, you know, really dedicated their life to the betterment of others, who has really served others to the point of harm to themselves, that was a blow to me to hear that spoken out loud.
Speaker 1:Look straight in the eye, you know, and some guys looking at me just going don't act like you don't want to win, like stop it. You know, and these fuckers over here that going don't act like you don't want to win, like, stop it. You know. And these fuckers over here that are saying they're good guys, they're not, they're the most evil because they don't know. And I do want to venture into this prospect of reality. You know that when we get to competitive sports, there's a danger that lies in there and that is ego. And the way it's interpreted, especially when it's interpreted in the form of like, oh no, I'm here for the children and like, yeah, you know, for me it just falls flat.
Speaker 1:And I think, especially with our group of coaches this year who, I think, in the grand landscape of landscape of many of the teams that we saw, it really was our temperature right, it really did appear that we were very much there for the kids, especially with the acumen of the coaching staff.
Speaker 1:We were a good group of coaches. That being said, it burst Steven's bubble a little bit, that way of like hey, we're actually all here to win. If you can't get honest with yourself about that and that thing, you're going to inherently take it out on the kids. You know, because you're trying to stuff it. And like it's okay, like there's nothing wrong with being here just for you, because it is why you're here, like nobody would sign up for coaching if it wasn't for themselves. And you know it sounds so selfish, but you know, at the end of the day I think as long as you position your heart right, you know, towards that reality, it ends up working out pretty well. I mean, it certainly has for me in my life just to understand that I actually feel really fulfilled by doing this and especially fulfilled by winning.
Speaker 3:You know, and uh well, I mean, winning's always the objective, right, yeah, always. But for me at least, that's our mission, that's a mission.
Speaker 2:I'm in the fire world which is objectives and priorities.
Speaker 3:So my objective is to kick ass every single time. My favorite objective is when another coach loses a shit because our kids are crushing it. That's like my silent wind. I think that's hilarious and really fills my black soul. But the priorities, right, are to not lose your shit, make sure the kids have fun, make sure they learn something, make sure they respect the game. You know all of the above, so I think it's okay to obviously want both, which I think is the same thing you're saying right.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think not live in a delusional reality that that's not the natural connecting element that is almost everybody's showing up for. You know it's like. You know you have your 12 kids on the field, you have the, you know, have 24 or more family members in the stands. Then you have a coaching staff. They're family members and everybody's there for one reason we want to see our kids win.
Speaker 2:That's the first thing you ask someone on the drive home how did the game go?
Speaker 2:They tell you if they won or lost, but that's literally the first, it's binary, it's not how did the game go, it's did you win or lose. So I think that, um, for me I mean, I was really, yes, you want to win every game and I think that that's like a big mistake that we, I've made or we've made is like when you're in a game you get so caught up in the moment right like you have this plan, we're going to pitch three, these three pitchers, because we need to develop these three pitchers for post season all of a sudden you're playing you know scotts valley, you're up six, five, like no, we're gonna leave our best guy in, and then those two other pitchers, uh, don't get to pitch. So I think that, um, that that just really is just like it's not a developmental league in a lot of minds of a lot of coaches. When you're in that moment, um, as much as we tell the kids, right like, our mission is to win the game, the purpose is to get better as a team.
Speaker 2:My whole thing was just like when there's so much pressure on winning in the scoreboard that kids are leaving sad, half the kids shouldn't have to go home sad. If you lost a game, you should be. Just tip your cap. They did a great job. I don't think there's enough of good sportsmanship on the losing end, which I think that that was always something we really hammered home is lose with dignity, win with humility. I forget what we said, but something around those lines, so I think that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Sharing your pizza after you lost yeah, it's like we always told them like hey, like Live Oak's the smallest little league in the county, like these are all your friends.
Speaker 2:You're going to grow up with these people your whole life. They're not the enemy right. Like just because we're playing them on the field, like, hey, they beat us, tip your cap. You know what I mean and I think, but when there's so much value on the win, or where you bat in the lineup, or if you play shortstop, or if you're a pitcher, like I kind of learned early on, like I made a conscious effort to to tell our team that, like your value is not based on how good of a baseball player you are. Your value is not based on where you are in life. Your value is because you're human, and I mean that. So, like just kind of the lexicon of like winning and losing, like if there's not all this pressure, like we have to win this game, if you're going to teach them like just have joy, go out there, have fun. We work hard and practice. Go out there and have fun, not there. Like I said, they were still happy 97, they're probably happy after every game even after we got smoked.
Speaker 2:I was like we can't be happy right now guys but there's, you know, yeah, but they were still happy if you're like.
Speaker 3:So it's like well, yeah, I mean, there's a snack shack who's not gonna be, you know, but it's like I don't remember every win or loss right, like I don't in five years.
Speaker 2:I don't remember specific games, I mean maybe a few, um, but like I remember, like the fun practice we have listening to our favorite sing-along songs and all those moments you have with the kids where you get to know them and learn about their life. But yeah, winning. It's crazy how much winning is like. That's the first thing anyone asks or mentions when you ask them how they came in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it was. You know, I think especially this year I got to see it a little bit more because I was a little bit more open to it. You know, I think especially this year I got to see it a little bit more because I was a little bit more open to it. You know, watching our kids dance while the you know the music was playing like what's this? Are you actually enjoying practice?
Speaker 1:Like what's happening, you know, but it wasn't like a what's this negative thing? It's like oh, oh, this. You know that this can happen too in this competitive atmosphere and you know I have a very particular coaching philosophy. You know that I operate from and you know for any team it's, you know, this thing is about competition. But to identify what a team is, it's who you're competing with. You know, once you collect, the group you're competing with against will show up. They will show up in different uniforms, different numbers. Like you, learn how to be with each other and compete. You know, alongside of each other and help each other sharpen.
Speaker 1:Oh, the enemy will come. You know they're going to see the thing collected and want to beat it. So you never have to imagine. You know whether the war is coming or not. You know because you're preparing for it. You know, then that's that part of the preparation is understanding that there's going to be adversity. Don't create it with each other, but help each other through that.
Speaker 1:You know this is what practice is about, and I don't think it gets talked enough about as it pertains to competition those common realities that there's a brotherhood that needs to happen in the process because there's going to be losers and winners every game. They are your brothers. They will make mistakes. Blaming them for their mistakes is the biggest mistake, because that's meant to be the cultures, especially with baseball. It's a culture of failure. It's talked about a lot but it's very rarely demonstrated Like. It's so rare that you know that, because I didn't necessarily create that culture when I was managing, you know, as I was trying to get to that.
Speaker 1:You know this is part of the magic of you being you, matt, is that you really provided a safe space for kids to fail and and and live in their failure for a little bit but then also walk out of it. Yeah, and, and you know, you guys all know who my favorite player is. You know on on the team. You know he was the worst kid but he showed up for the right reasons and and his success at the end of the year won us the most important ball games and I don't think any of the other kids knew that. That's why we won. You know they thought it was because the good kids getting those things like oh no, that kid just started hitting and that happened the year before too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like, like, we focused on the right thing and that was the year before too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, about two years in a row. Yeah, you know, like we focused on the right thing and that was the least amongst us and he just kept showing up day in, day out and just doing the grind and it just wasn't good, you know. But he was excellent in the moment. You know when the moment arrived and any culture that can allow that kind of success, you know, in a situation where it doesn't lean towards that, you know whether it's the physicality of the kid or you know just how they look amongst the rest of the players. I mean, to me that's the most, that's the most successful kid.
Speaker 1:You know I've gotten to coach in the last decade, you know, is those two or three games where it's like, oh, this stuff still works, like it's beautiful and so like, in light of that, you know, with you, maybe knowing a little bit more about my coaching philosophy, what's the thing that scares the two of you the most about competition as it pertains to the kids and then as it pertains to the coaches that are coaching them through competition like, what are the things that stick out to you the most? That that that brings an element of fear to your heart about yourself, you know, as a human, uh, you know, I think frank out of the two of you is going to be the the more connected to to this culture of competitiveness. The two wolves on the team, you know, stephen and I. You know we know ourselves quite a bit, so we stuff it down pretty hard. You know I can talk about the one time I was in the dugout this year.
Speaker 2:Let's not talk about that.
Speaker 1:But the big walkaway was that boy. There's sure a whole layer of failure that I feel, because the kids didn't demonstrate what I had been teaching them and how personal it was. Like it wasn't about them. It was like, am I a horrible coach? You know, the shit's pretty easy. You were just doing it yesterday. You know like what's the disconnect?
Speaker 3:They were doing it yesterday. You weren't doing it yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but just this reality of like. I didn't realize how much I had superimposed this 55-year-old mind onto 11 and 12-year-olds and that connected my failure or success to whether or not they performed about like who cares, failure or success to whether or not they performed about like who cares. Right, you like that? I mean, I consciously feel like who cares, but like my subconscious was completely tied up and I got my arms crossed in the corner of the dugout just going what the fuck am I looking at here? Like, like, dude, like did you hear a single thing we've talked about in the last month, you know? And the thing you were doing yesterday, you, you know, like it wasn't, it wasn't hard yesterday, what made it hard today? But I felt like that was a failure on my part. So it was a really good view into my heart about how much I, you know, hang my, hang my hat on whether someone else succeeds or not, and maybe that's not the safest place. So it was.
Speaker 1:It was a really hard lesson for me to walk away with in the middle of the season. Like, whew, you got some work to do, mike. Like what the fuck was that that you were, your emotions were contingent on a 12-year-old and what their pitching motion was and how long their stride was. Like, are you an idiot? He's 12. You know, like, but but like, and I had to answer yeah, I'm an idiot for thinking that. You know, I had to be honest with myself. So you know, there's the example for me of kind of this thing. You know of the kind of pressure that's underlying. You know, when the adults walk in the room trying to get their identity from children, you know there's the weird one. You know what is that pressure like for you guys?
Speaker 3:For for for me it's pretty. I mean, it's pretty much what I do it in my double life. Right In my other job I show up to a chaotic situation where everything's failing usually and I have to show up, solve the problem and do it cool, common, collective and professionally Right. So that's the same way that I have been practicing that for basically 20 years. That's the same way I do it in the dugout, which you know, is why I'm Steven's Yang, ying and Yang and kind of yours to where you got to lead by example.
Speaker 3:I don't want to be the coach, the one coach, where that kid never wants to play baseball again because I lost my shit over a game or this or that. Going back to the community where we live, where I want to live the rest of my life, hopefully, I want to make this community as strong as possible and the way to do that is to bring up our youth having these good morals and values and somebody leading by example. So my philosophy on that and my philosophy, what I'm, what I'm scared about trying to circle back to your question I forgot about four minutes ago is what makes me nervous is that when coaches can't see, can't put their own feelings aside and I know this, I'm kind of fucking up this whole question.
Speaker 1:No, you're hitting it right on the money.
Speaker 3:But is to just lead by example, right, let them know it's okay If we have a failure. Cool. Like I say all the time, I don't care if you drop the ball. I could care less if you drop the ball. What I do care about is how fast you hustle to get that ball and finish the play right, which translates into life. You're going to get kicked down, pick your ass back up and do what it takes to get to where you want to be for yourself, for your family, for your parents, you know, whatever it is right. That's these values that I want to teach into these kids.
Speaker 3:When coaches we've seen these coaches right when they yell at the kids and they, you know, say like what, you couldn't see that, or like you had one job right. My coaching philosophy is those kids hear that it's affected our team Just listening to other coaches scream and yell at their kids. So I do it a little different. I try to make that all joke, you know, try to make that jovial. So I say this stuff all the time and I've been doing it more with this travel ball team because they're a little bit older and you tell them all the time you have one job.
Speaker 3:No, you know what I tell them every time they're, every time they're walking out to the plate. No, but you know what I tell them? Every time they're walking out to the plate I have a different thing, that I mess with each of them differently and I go, hey, do something cool, All I care is do something cool. Or they have a great hit and I'm on first base and I yelled at them. I go thank you for doing what I taught you.
Speaker 3:And like with a big fat smile on my face and they think it's like the funniest thing in the world, right, and the one that they claim they're going to get a shirt made for it. But I just say, hey, just do better. I never say it when they fuck up or drop a ball or anything, but when they make a great catch it's just like hey, can you just do better next time, please, right, and it just to bring that like lightheartedness around it and they love it, they thrive on it they think it's like the funniest thing in the world, but it's just so.
Speaker 1:You just made the best play ever. I need you to do, yeah, just better.
Speaker 3:and like I try to make it a point like mike, mike, and then they look at me when they're walking to the plane. I'm like, just do better than you did last at bat and last at bat was like a triple, you know what I mean like just anything to keep them happy. Let them know this is a sport, right? And again, I don't care if you fuck up. All that does is make our practice plan for Monday. I didn't know what I was going to do Monday, but clearly we're going to work on leading off.
Speaker 3:We're going to work on pop flies and we're going to have some BP, because those are all the things we need to work on Right, and I don't ever want to see a kid leave a game, or my biggest fear is a kid leaving a game and telling his parents you know, coach Frank was an asshole, or coach Frank made me feel bad, or this or that, or coach Matt or powers or whoever it is, and it's like I want them leaving happy, just like I know all of you guys do. It's like there's no. There's no. They're not practicing what they fucked up on in the game at home they're. That's their time to reset. Go home Like I don't want a kid to. It's not their job.
Speaker 3:I don't want him to like ruin their entire day or their weekend. And there's always that one kid on the team where he throws a bat or he cries or this or that, and that's generally it's like cool, I found my project, that's my guy, that's my guy, that's my kid, that is who I'm going to work with, that's who we're going to talk about, that's the kid that I'm going to talk to for five minutes before practice and just ask him how he's doing or what he did. And I'm, as you mentioned before, I'm pretty big on the mindfulness part and the routine and the habit, and you know that goes down to a Saturday morning game hey, so-and-so, what'd you do last night? I played Fortnite till midnight. Okay, cool, noted.
Speaker 3:Hey, what'd you do last night? Oh, my family went out and got pizza. Cool, what time did you go to bed? I went to bed at like nine o'clock it was. You know, I did a hot tub with my dad and then I went to bed. Okay, cool, noted. And those are the little things that we interject, like we do all the time after a game. Okay, tell me something that happened good in the game. Like, hey, you know what I saw? Guys, I saw people that went to bed early, that had a healthy breakfast, healthy dinner, and you know they really performed out here, right?
Speaker 2:So let's keep that tapping on there very gesturally use my hands quite a bit.
Speaker 3:But you know and those are just the little things that I subliminally can say that word try to like yeah, put into them, like hey, let's make sure we have those healthy breakfasts, you know. Or like build a routine. Hey, you had that killer hit Mike. Whatever you ate last night for dinner and I know you had something healthy, right, because I remember it from two hours before let's eat that again. Dude, that is your food for you, Matt.
Speaker 2:Question was sorry for you? Matt question. What sorry? Uh scared of whatever it was, what?
Speaker 1:scares you about, about this the competitive aspect.
Speaker 1:You know both as an adult and then really how the adults bring that thing to the kids and the kids, the kids. I think this is an important nuance to really speak to. Especially in baseball, the dugout can be a really rough spot. There are a lot of things spoken in those dugouts. I have certainly had my targets this last two years. It was always what I focused on when I was managing. It's like you're managing a dugout, not a bunch of players, like it's in and you know, it's like the bunkhouse in Yellowstone. It was like there's nothing good happening in the bunkhouse ever, like there's never that moment. So like, how do you manage the chaos? You know of this reality that everybody knows everybody wants a win. Yeah, you know, and that is the observable outcome of success. Yeah, you know that it's such a I. I think it's uniquely american where it's american you know, that that success is measured.
Speaker 1:It's measured by wins. You know that success is measured. It's measured by wins, not by culture. You know we get to talk about culture after we win. You don't get to talk about it if you don't win.
Speaker 2:There's something wrong with that, I think, that being I kind of lucked out where I read somewhere online or something that like clear and open communication with the parents as a manager is like one of your biggest jobs. So not only did like we set the culture on the team, we set the culture with the parents too, right? So if you feel this pressure cooker and all the parents are screaming and yelling and wanting that win so bad that I mean you can really feel the weight of that in the dugout, right, I mean you can feel it. So we do the things we talked about, right, where it's like, yeah, our mission, we're not a participation trophy team, we're here to win the game. That's our mission is to win this game, but that's not our purpose, right. So I explain I'll ask the parents that the parents that, like, that's not the purpose of this team.
Speaker 2:And you know the first couple seasons I coached or managed, we didn't have winning records, right, we didn't win a single game in internal playoffs and those were just as fun as the seasons that we made it to toc's and made run and you know all that stuff. So I think that, um, again, if you create like a space of like, open, transparent, like, if there's not that pressure on the team. If everyone knows what the common agenda is and that's for these kids to get better and have fun, then I feel like some of that is negated. I mean, with that being said, I mean I think I've seen every kid cry except for one in the past two years or three years and I always hug them and tell them hey, I cried this week twice this week Like alone, shamefully in my room, like a man, I'm Matt, I'm league age 40.
Speaker 2:That's still one of my favorite comments, but so like so and I hug that player and I say, hey, it's okay to cry, man. Like that means you care a lot and like I'm glad you care a lot. Like I don't want the kids that don't care.
Speaker 2:Like I want the kids that care. But let's just care about the next, about let's compare, about how can you be a better team? Like you, crying over here for a long period of time is not going to help our team. So it's like I'm not saying, hey, don't feel that. Like I love that you feel that. But I think ultimately every parent feels like if their team wins the playoffs or their kid bats 400 in game changer, then that means you're a good parent.
Speaker 2:You know, like if Timmy hits a double, like Frank did something right today, you know, or Frankie, I should say, but it's like I think that so the competition piece, like yes, I want to win, but I have had times where it's like something bad happens in the game and I throw my hat or something or I get pissed, and there's like the two people in the dugout with us, right, that are in the field and I'm like, hey, man, that's my bad, like I shouldn't be this caught up in it and I lost my cool there, right. So I think that you know like, is it more fun to win? Yes, but also, um, you learn a lot from the losses and as long as those kids are coming back to play every year, like those first couple of years of losing seasons, every kid came back, minus a couple of kids that just you know baseball really wasn't a sport that was safe for them. But that's like the ultimate metric. I feel like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I agree that that that is and has been certainly part of my culture is my job is to get my kids to play next year. You know, because the fall off like you're in middle of the fall off right now, right from from little league to pony, you know it's 50 from pony to high school, 50 like it just it just starts getting more dramatic. You know with which, with each year, and I think baseball, more than any other sport has that it's just, it's horrific. You know, because there's like 1.5 million kids playing baseball right now in little league. You know there's going to be 800 drafted. You know, in in five years, like it's crazy.
Speaker 1:You know, know the drop off that comes with this kind of sport. You know, and embracing failure is the mantra, but like it's so not taught. You know, like what failure actually looks like, how you can grow from it, and you know when you're in a sport of failure, you know where failure is, the process and then overcoming failure is just hard. You know, I don't know how else to put it. You know, certainly, what I communicated to my you know my parents coming through that, look, I'm a little bit more driving than your average coach. Like I have, my expectations are very high from every kid. You know I would sit with them and you know here's what you come with, here's your skillset. What do you want for yourself? Can I talk to you about what I want for my team? So I was able to draw a little bit more maps because I'd been doing it for so long, you know, but that culture of expectation you know, driven into it, that that was probably.
Speaker 1:I don't think it was performative at the time. I think it worked with the generation of kids that we were coaching with. But a lot of that's really been removed and now sits in this kind of existential world. We're not sure what we're really talking about, but I don't really have an ego. And everybody's good Like no, no, your kid sucks and everybody's not good. No, I'm not giving him a trophy for sucking. There's no trophy for that. There's common realities.
Speaker 1:When we do get in competitive atmospheres and especially in this town, it's so loosey-goosey at times with the same vernacular that we use, you know being, use, you know being coaches. I, you know it drives me nuts a little bit, but uh, you know. All that being said, you know, in in this particular conversation, that that there was one more question that was popping out to me, that that, that I, that I, oh yeah, oh yeah. For you, for both of you, and I think you've alluded to most of in these last two seasons was it was a collective. You know that we each had our own metrics and so it caught more kids. You know they each found a way into the metric, whatever coach it was, to find places where they could perform and have multiple successes, because they're getting adoration from multiple adults, not just their family.
Speaker 1:For you, matt, when you think about it through that lens, what is the metric of success that lives in your heart as it pertains to you? Sports? You know, like it's like. I think these questions are super important to answer. You know, for anybody who's deciding to go into coaching, and it's okay for success to be, I just want the kids to play, you know, and kids should play like that, I mean, it's it's low ball, but at least it's honest, you know, as opposed to someone who's dishonest, who wants to win, but oh, we're just letting the kids play. It's like, well, you're not going to win, just let the kids play. Like you have to teach them to play. Yeah, you know it, you're almost giving yourself an excuse to not coach. You know if you're giving opposing messages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think, success for me. I mean, I look, I wanted every practice to feel like a birthday party. I'm not going to lie, die with a Smile. The Lion Sleeps. Tonight we had a lot of songs that the kids sung and danced to.
Speaker 2:I think that again, it's just a space where you turn into a family, like I told them these are going to be your brothers for the next four months, right, to be your brothers for the next four months, right? So I mean, the only thing, the main thing, like that would redline is if you're doing anything that would put down someone who might not be as good as you, or someone does something like I just wanted to be a space where you know they live in a house or an apartment or you're in after-school care or you have parents picking you up right at three o'clock, like this is a spot spot, that this is sacred, right. Like we're coming here, let's have a good time, but we're also doing something really hard and really you fail all the time. So it's like if you can make an environment, that it's a team sport, but man, when you fail, it's an individual sport.
Speaker 1:Baseball is not a team sport, but you know what I mean. There's nothing team sport about baseball, which is what makes it so unique. Yeah, I think team sport about baseball which is what makes it so unique.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a bunch of tennis players on a field, no-transcript a great time, and frankie wants to run more sprints at the end of a two-hour practice and he's like I don't want to go home then. Then we did our job right. We met the memories those kids made together.
Speaker 2:Frank's over here, shaking his head, his own kid we're like frankie, it's been two hours, we're not so that for me that's the win. Like yes, like you know how you run the race is whatever that saying is, but like, um, I could really care less. Like I, I'm glad we won, I'm glad that they worked really hard and they had success, but I had just as much fun the other seasons when we didn't win.
Speaker 3:For me it's kind of a excuse me, to echo Matt. The success for me is we'll use the middle school example. Right, we have all sorts of kids, all different backgrounds, all different heights my son by far being the smallest one and bigger mats right, when they come together being a team and it's just them getting sorry. I'm like all messed up right now. Them uh, someone's getting picked on at middle school, someone's getting picked on in the surf lineup, someone's doing this or that. It's that they can see that we're all community, that they.
Speaker 3:They have so many friends, like my older son right now, between going to the local baseball gym to playing little league, to playing travel ball. He didn't. The school he goes to is and case in one, two. Two is k through eighth and as soon as they hit fifth grade they wanted to go to the local middle school.
Speaker 3:Because they know so many people and have so many friends and just for them to just be taught through team sports whether you know baseball, soccer, whatever it is to just be good humans and treat people how you want to be treated, which is what we preach on the baseball field or any team that I've coached is just, it's about developmental right now, as much as it is about that sport but about how they're going to carry themselves in life. Right, we all can think about the coaches we've had growing up that were assholes or you know, the good guys, the bad guys, all of the above, and I just want them to take what we are trying to teach them. If they're not getting that at home, or if they are getting at home, just getting a different perspective, maybe they don't want to listen to it from their parents or whoever it is to hear it from somebody else.
Speaker 3:Maybe they don't hear it at all don't want to listen to it from their parents or whoever it is, to hear it from somebody else, we don't hear it at all. Someone that's non-biased, and then if we can just teach that, we get that kind of tribe mentality, that community mentality from each team and it carries them through. You know this town that we live in.
Speaker 1:That's success for me yeah so so I have a final question, well, actually final two questions. But you know about this particular thing. You know our common metric of success. You know what we're doing. You know when I think about a message I want to say to any adult who's deciding to coach a league sport. You know the level of intimidation. You know especially I mean most of it starts with with you five soccer. You know which is just hell, just cats. You know, just cats, cats running everywhere.
Speaker 3:Chasing a red light.
Speaker 1:You know, and you kind of get used to that and you know, maybe you'll venture into base, I think most, most adults don't like to coach t-ball, you know that that are going to be coaches, like soccer coaches in the long run.
Speaker 1:You know, like I, I didn't, you know, keep coaching soccer because I didn't have the acumen for it.
Speaker 1:But, um, you know, like my message to parents is like a simple understanding that's ignored, that there's this reality that my greatest successes weren't on the baseball field. It's what happened afterwards, realizing the impact that we could have. And you know I had, you know, another little venture called a church. You know where I could capture, you know, maybe again, some of the kids that don't come from as much resource, you know, just to provide a community that's safe for them. And you know that interplay was a really fun space for me because you know I could have team meetings at my, you know, the great big church with a great big theater and we'd watch movies and do all these things.
Speaker 1:But you know the problems don't exist at 12 necessarily, they exist later. And you know I, you know the whole thing for me wasn't a manipulation, it was a capture space of trying to help with the community the best way I can. So there was always a metric with me and, and you know I, I got some pretty good war stories back there like heavy ones. You know, pulling a 13 year old off of uh, who was a drug dealer when he was. I was coaching him, you know, at at 12, you know, off off the river, you know, cause he had run away from home and and you know dad was homeless and died like just stuff, like real, real shit.
Speaker 1:You know, and and you know was fortunate enough to have them integrated in my church community for for for a while. You know, but providing a space, cause you never know who you're touching, you know you never know whether you're the only man that's ever going to be in their life. That's solid. But if you don't expose yourself and you stay in your little tight communities just believing the smoke you're blowing up each other's ass is about the bubble you've created, about your kids and this thing, and not really looking at the whole community. This thing and not really looking at the whole community. You know I I, you know, just had a mindset. That was that way, you know, and coaching was just one aspect, you know, for you guys, you know what is it that that you're seeing? You know where, when you get into you know these spaces and you have these opportunities available. You know where you don't know. You know what is it that you guys would advise other people who are thinking about coaching to be aware of.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that you kind of nailed it with like you don't know what the kids are going through, right? So I think, first and foremost, like YouTube has every baseball practice plan drill, you can type in chat, chat, lgbt or Google Gemini.
Speaker 3:Just such a Google employee. Just a little plug right there. Used to work at looker guys, not a google um.
Speaker 2:So I think, yeah, I think it's like, if your heart's in the right place and you're lucky enough, like for me, like covid was, work from home was the only reason I could spend this much time coaching, right. So I think that again, it's a selfish thing and the fact that, like almost every day I go somewhere and, like you said, you see someone who you coach and they come up to you and give you a hug and say, coach Matt, or their parents, like Coach Matt, you were so great, like it's like a very rewarding thing in your community to impact all these other kids and you know, if you just really go into it, like I want to build trust with these kids, I want to get to know these kids. Every kid. You coach them different, right. Like some kids, like you said, need the touches. Some kids, you coach them different, right. Like some kids, like you said, need, need the touches. Some kids, you let them ride. Some kids, you know you can be a little sterner with them but, like um, I have kids that their families have told me that season was the most they've ever felt a part of anything in their whole life and I ultimately left with, like every message I leave the kids is like I will always have your back.
Speaker 2:And so I mean, there's a kid who was doing some dumb stuff this year and you know, at the field and I was like, hey, hey, come here, come here. He's like like you're very combative, like thought I was gonna yell at him, like everyone else has been yelling at him, and I was like, hey, I love you. I always got your back, gave him a hug and walked away. And so I think, as a coach, the the opportunity to to make a positive impact. Like don't be afraid about all the. You know, the plays and the practice plans, like that stuff is all very easy with YouTube and the internet. I didn't know how to run a practice five years ago, you know, but yeah, just if you want to make a positive impact and help, like Frank said, lift up the community. I think it's very rewarding and, like Frank said, lift up the community.
Speaker 3:I think, it's very rewarding. I kind of mentioned it earlier, but don't be afraid that you don't know what you're doing, right, Matt, and the way we run our life.
Speaker 1:I do all of Matt's household chores, you know like fix it, handyman stuff, not chores, not chores, sorry, sorry. The man stuff.
Speaker 3:Like fixing a door, the man parts Hanging a man parts in my house doing the handyman stuff is called chores, but doing the, you know you just got to have your yin and a yang. So don't be afraid, because you know, find a team that I am not a manager. I mentioned this. I am not a manager, I cannot do that. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:That terrifies me, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 3:That terrifies me. I don't want to. I don't send emails, I talk to text everything. I'm not that guy, I am the I can kit. You know, run at the drop of a hat, I can set up a practice, I can run drills, I can do all this stuff. You know Matt will go to YouTube but then he sends out thoughtful emails that are like before chat, GPT. It's like I can't do that shit. You know what I mean. So just to just like a team, right. The coaching staff is no different than a team. So just because you don't think that you're going to be a good coach, or you can't add value, or you can't be a good community member, that's bullshit. Right. You have something to add. If you want to be around your own kid, right, Because the most important thing is just be present His our kids.
Speaker 2:he didn't have a kid. Yeah, His kids are our kids.
Speaker 1:He knows but right it's, we're all on the same team. Yeah, 11 of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just for anybody that doesn't know, if they want to coach just 15 of them, yeah, just get out there and do it. You don't have to do it all alone, just Just like the team, the coaching squad is-.
Speaker 2:Baseball is a beautiful sport.
Speaker 3:The exact same thing, right, and then there's generally beers afterwards. It's not like the end of the world.
Speaker 1:Okay, last question. I think that we live in a very dystopian time and it's ironic because we live in the safest moment ever and you know, whatever kind of singularity principle that's living within all of us, you know this kind of uh, this kind of uh, deluded thought that I've got this. You know, as though you are powerful. You know, you know this thing that that we've got this. You know as though you are powerful. You know, you know this thing that that we've kind of become as people. You know, in the face of all that we're watching, you know, in and around us, whether it's geopolitical issues, economic issues, the issues that just live in our shitty little town at times, you know, you know, whatever the problems are for each one of you, what brings you the biggest hope when you wake up in the morning? You know that this, this, this can be a good day. Like what?
Speaker 1:What's the thing that gets you up in the morning other than the realities? Somebody's making breakfast, the laundry's got to get done, you know. You know there's stuff that you guys are in the meat of. You know I'm certainly looking in retrospect not having to do those things and you know, remembering how much time just existing. You know it was filled Like the schedule was set every day, you know when you got kids in the house. But there's a hope component. You know that. I think that lives in us and you know what guys, what do you guys have hope for in the future?
Speaker 3:That's a shit question.
Speaker 2:How do I answer that?
Speaker 3:That's too hard. You want me to go first? Yeah, please.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I think you know we all want, like you know, our family and friends to be happy and healthy and, you know, sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not. But I think that in the coaching realm or the kids realm like I just take case in baseball Like I've just seen, like a lot of this came. He met Frankie in jiu-jitsu when he was four, so he's 12 now. But like just seeing like a young person's, like determination and grit and resilience, and like everything you want to do as a parent is like take all the obstacles out of their way, right, like, oh, if Kaysen doesn't hit 300 this year and make the all-star team, maybe he won't play baseball, he'll feel defeated.
Speaker 2:But I think that, um, all the kids that you get to see in little league are just kids. You see in your friend group, like I mean, they have, they have it in there. Like it's hard with youtube shorts and the attention span and get you know seventh grade, like get up, get them up. But I think that I am hopeful, um, just to see that like they have it in them and it's not my job to make it easier for them and they're going to get there. So, yeah, that gives me hope, just to see those those kind of moments of perseverance, and I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, totally yeah my hope.
Speaker 3:What gets me out of bed is to just do a little bit better every day. That's kind of how I live my life Just do better than I did yesterday. Like I tell the kids, do better. Yesterday could have been a great day, but it's like I just want to wake up and I'm very deep into knee surgery and everything right now. So first thing I want to do is just get up and crush the morning routine Get the lunches, get the breakfast, do everything. No-transcript gets me up to raise good humans, surround myself around good humans, teach, you know, my kids to surround themselves around good humans and just be that example of the life that I've created. I'm hoping they're going to try to strive to create the same thing and the same relationships, the same friendships, and maybe someday the three of us can be sitting at one of our kids' houses with adults as grandparents or whatever, and having a beer in their driveway.
Speaker 2:We got to shout out Layla and Melissa. I did and Melissa, let's give the game changer moms.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, Scoreboard best booth. Face Game changer moms, Scoreboard best booth phase.
Speaker 1:I feel like I should say a curse word because I haven't cussed. I'm so proud of you, Matt.
Speaker 3:Thanks, that's what gets me out right. It's just that future, the future.
Speaker 1:Well, anybody who listens to the podcast, if you haven't figured it out yet, there's a level of gratefulness that I get to allow myself in these interviews. What has transpired for me in the last two years just watching all of you? You know this friendship group that you guys have, you know. I have to say I was very concerned about you millennials and the aloof behavior. Are we millennials? Yeah, you're a millennial, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, motherfuckers.
Speaker 1:You guys are fucking millennials, you know, but I don't know that I've ever really been around a better group of parents that are parenting together. And so the privilege of not just you know doing something in a space that I understand and you know, appearing to have some sort of success, you know, and you know, use that success, you know, to better a thing, you know, like baseball, but the reality of the better person that I've been able to learn to become just watching you guys and just you guys, just you're just being yourself, you know, and and in the process of being yourself, allowing me to be myself, you know, really for the first time in some ways, cause I don't have any guards up, you know, I don't have to be a pastor or in charge of a baseball team, you know, whatever those things are that want you guys to know how much I love, you, appreciate you. You know what a great moment it's been. You know we'll see what happens in the future.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you're hearing the rumors, but you know, we talked about compounds and properties, but I'm trying to get one so, Stephen and I, so I can set up cages for him and set up mounds. You know, for me, and like in a million years I would have never imagined, you know, being a pitching coach and it's like, you know, there's a gap and and just the mere thought of it like brings joy to my heart, Like that's weird to me, Like I never thought of myself that way. But anyways, that that, that that's happened because of you guys and and you guys allowing me in your space, of you guys, and you guys allowing me in your space, and so I just really appreciate you guys as humans. It's really weird to have a bunch of millennial friends.
Speaker 3:The water's warm, come on in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a suspicion. It's warm because you've been peeing.
Speaker 3:How many things you can miss out on if you hit the restroom.
Speaker 1:Anyways, well, I hope that all of you have a great rest your day uh again. Uh, yeah, have a great day. It's been a great chat and thank you a bunch for coming up and showing up.