Notes from the Coach

Da Coach
(Doesn't he look young? How many years ago was that picture taken, anyway?)

Just a few words........ Hi everyone. I guess there are few things I should say about this site. First off, we have never presented ourselves as a great team or anything special on the field. AWA Enterprises was a team of family and old friends that, for the most part, played together for 26 years. That in itself is special to us, but as for greatness, well, you be the judge. We have eight league championships playing on the "C" and "D" levels of the San Jose softball scene over that span. Not bad, but nothing special. And in the high-powered world of tournament softball, where only the truly serious are successful, we came away with the first place trophy a whopping two times. Not exactly domination. Now there are teams out there that dominate their leagues and tournaments week in and week out, year in and year out. This tells me one thing -- they need to be playing tougher competition. But feasting on lesser foes seems to be the M.O. for a lot of teams these days. We would gripe a little, call it as we saw it, and then just lived with it. Make no mistake, winning is a big part of competing. We liked to win. We played hard to win. We hated losing. And sometimes we weren't cordial about it. But in the end, we were always just a bunch of guys like most everyone else, with more important things in our lives than our weekly diversion. For me personally, playing and competing with my buddies was the most fun. And that made those times when the team won really satisfying. There was this guy by the name of Roger Hamm, a supposed stud on the "A" circuit, who visited our guestbook a while back, and he left a scathing review of our website, telling us that we were not worthy of this fame and recognition since we were just a lowly "D" team with lowly "D" players. Mr Hamm, who cruised in on a Saturday night -- I suppose because he couldn't get a date -- accused the humble webmaster (myself) of being an egomaniac and that I should get a life. He didn't get it. You see, we're just having fun here, folks. We have a website because we can do it. We're not selling anything. We have nothing to promote. And our presence on the web has hooked us up with other teams across the nation that have the same idea. Check out our Links section. There are some really good softball sites that offer the same spirit of fun and the handle of technology that we do. In fact, most of them have a much better idea of how to use the latest technology than we do. You should check 'em out. Statistics are a big part of this site. Yeah, we keep stats. Offensive. Defensive. Pitching. What can I say? Stats are fun. But stats are what they are. They measure what has happened, how much, and in our case, often how badly. They don't mean anything else. We compare statistics only in the context of ourselves and the teams we played against. Playing at Twin Creeks in Sunnyvale, we were in an environment that promoted offense. USSSA pitching rules are used, the balls were harder than ever, and those new alloy bats........all I can say is wow! In the old days, we had to choose between those old thin broom handle wood bats and the new-fangled aluminum bats that would quickly dent. The quality of the balls we used were often so bad that they would go out of round and into mush about the third or fourth inning. If you didn't get that home run blast early in the game, you weren't going to get it. Late in the game, outfielders would cheat in, and hard ground balls often didn't have enough steam to get through the holes. These days, balls shoot through the infield like oversized bullets. All that added offense sure made for a fun game, but once upon a time a 6-4 final score was fairly common. During the last decade, the score was more likely to be 6-4 after only one inning! A .500 hitter in 1975 was considered a pretty good hitter. A .500 hitter today is only average. So to put a value on stats is a waste of time. The game has changed, players have changed, equipment has changed, and scorekeepers have their own way of keeping score. As master of the Holy Scorebook, I usually felt that a hard groundball that was booted by the third baseman was an error, and always was an error. I've played on teams where that wasn't the case. A lot of people feel that in the world of slow pitch softball, there are only hits and outs. And that's fine. Again, we were not out to compare our stats against anyone else. Just ourselves. Besides, as a wise person once said, there are three kinds of untruths -- lies, damn lies, and statistics. When I talk about this team being special, it's in the context of having played together for all these years. That's not an easy accomplishment, with clashing personalities, inflated egos, and just a lack of commitment often tearing teams apart. I know, because I've played on lots of teams, most of which disbanded after a couple of seasons. Did I say most? How about all of them? It's just a very unusual thing to have what we had with AWA softball for 26 years. We had bad times, gloriously good times, and -- always -- very memorable times. There were lots of laughs, gallons of beer, and a feeling that AWA was always a family. We lost our good friend and teammate Neil Christie in April of 2002 from complications related to AIDS. Neil was our first manager, a player for 21 seasons, and my friend for over 30 years. He'd been sick since the mid-1980s, but he continued to play when he could. He loved the game that much, and loved playing with the team as much as anything. We were always cognizant of being protective, of course, and a good supply of rubber gloves was always in stock in our ever-present medicine box. But there was never an issue with having Neil with us as long as he could. Neil was active politically in the gay community, so his passing became newsworthy for the local press. One reporter interviewed me, and as I imagine she was just being topical, the point of the interview was to find out how I and my teammates felt about having someone who was gay on the team. I tried to explain it to her, and I'm sure my answer wasn't really satisfactory for her story, but his being gay was not an issue. Neil wasn't just a gay softball player playing on some softball team. He was our friend. He was our brother. And that's all that mattered to any of us. We always had a saying that once an Ah-Wah, always an Ah-Wah. And that really is true. Even though the team no longer takes the field, the bonds and close friendships will always thrive. In that respect, the AWA Enterprises Softball Club really was special. And it means a lot to me that I was able to span the whole 26 years with all the guys who played with me. We had a great time.