Alex A Gaynes - Turning Baseball Upside Down: Memoirs, Truths & Myths From Coaching Baseball 55 Years

Memoirs, Truths &
Myths from Coaching
Baseball 55 Years

A LEX A. GAYNES

Copyright 2022 by Alex A. Gaynes

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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or manner, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Created in the United States of America

ISBN:Softcover 979-8-88622-024-7

eBook979-8-88622-025-4

Republished by: PageTurner Press and Media LLC

Publication Date: 02/23/2022

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Phone: 1-888-447-9651

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Turning Baseball Upside Down

Alex A. Gaynes

TURNING

BASEBALL

Upside Down

Memoirs, Truths & Myths From Coaching Baseball Years

ALEX GAYNES

Contents

F

1. The More You S pend,
   The More You Endanger Your Play er6
2. You Must Have A Plan
   (Even A Crappy Plan Is Better Than None At All )44
3. Why Do Kids See m To
   Play Better And Harder For You ?66
4. Just When You T hink
   You Have It All Figured Out, You Don t83
5. You Are The Coach Stand By Your Guns,
   Remember What Got You Ther e91
6. American Legion Base ball
   Has A Special Place In My Heart

foreword

Alex Gaynes is not your typical baseball coach. A lawyer by trade, he coaches baseball every summer despite the searing temperatures of Tucson which eclipse 100 degrees almost every day. He is unique as he shows up for games with open toed sandals and a massive 52-ounce mug of Diet Coke.

In this day and age of coaches calling virtually all pitches on the high school and college levels, Alex simply refuses to do it. He wants the catcher and pitcher to work together and instructs both on how they can exploit weaknesses of hitters during games when they come into the dugout.

His teams are allowed to play the game of baseball by making mistakes early in the season. If a runner tries to take an extra base and is thrown out, Alex will not give that player a dirty look or scold him. Instead, he will pat him on the back and tell him what great hustle he showed. This strategy allows his players to take the extra base without fear and serves them well in tournaments.

I have been editor of Collegiate Baseball newspaper for many years and had the pleasure of interviewing the top head coaches in high school and college baseball over the years, including Hall of Famers such as Rod Dedeaux of USC, Skip Bertman of LSU, Mike Martin of Florida St. and Augie Garrido of Texas, just to name a few.

The common denominator with these elite coaches was that they constantly got the most out of their players. Alex Gaynes has done the same, and this book explains how he did it for so many years with a system that cant be beat.

He also has been a servant/coach for all these years, and his players love this man. Many tell him that playing for his teams were the best days of their lives. Enjoy this book and relish the concepts he teaches.

Lou Pavlovich, Jr., Editor/Publisher

Collegiate Baseball Newspaper.

Prologue

This is a story about life and baseball, or maybe about baseball and life by a confessed baseball coaching lifer whose every attempt to retire has failed.

So I decided to write about it. After all, its like my wife tells me, just tell stories. So thats what I have done.

The problem is, that every time we talk, we are reminded that there is another story to tell. At lunch today with sons Josh and Carl (who both played for me, though not always willingly) we were reminded of the Legion season that Josh caught a full season of double headers unbeknownst to us with a cracked bone in his ankle.

While eating I received a text from son, Rusty (who like Josh, also coached with me) coaches an MSBL team in Phoenix. He is having a terrible season, and has entertained thoughts of retiring. I sent him a draft of this manuscript today, and received this text while eating lunch:

Ive been ready to quit coaching after this season. After reading chapter 1, I am not ever quitting!

Thanks, Rusty. I hope you like this.

Introduction

Coaching Sandals barred in eight states and mug.

I am a baseball dinosaur and something of a Maverick. My philosophy is quite different than most, as you will soon see.

The National Office of American Legion baseball has enforced a couple Alex Gaynes rules because I came to the West Regional tournament one year with ONLY 10 players (we had 9 for our State tournament, which we won, so we thought we were loaded). Because of me they changed the rule to require a team to have at least 12 players. Why? Ill never know.

When I was scolded about having only 10 players, I asked the organizers whether they had changed the baseball rules, since you only need 9 to play. They said no, and basically threatened us to do well. I told them if we didnt do well, we wouldnt come to any more regionals. I think weve been to 9 since.

I didnt understand their griping. I guess, Im just one of those old time guys who would rather have nine or ten guys who actually play, than have a loaded bench of POs (pitchers only). Of course, this means that you have to play your players, and my goodness, they may need to play multiple positions.

One year our catcher was drafted and signed away from us. I needed a catcher, so my two ace pitchers, Kyle and Joey agreed to alternate between pitching and catching. Thats the way it worked on our Legion teams.

We never had dissension on our teams. Everybody was too busy playing!

My sandals were banished from our local American Legion Baseball league a number of years ago. Luckily Im still allowed to keep score in the third base coaching box, though many people dont really like it, (which is, I guess, one of the reasons I do it).

Somehow Ive been allowed to coach-for 55 years now-and have not been drummed out of the core...yet.

In all those years, I did not made a dime (far from it) from coaching (though I did receive the princely total sum of $1,300 (total) recently for helping coach the JV baseball team at a local high school 25 miles from my office- 3 hours per day, 6 days per week for months on end.

Ive never gone out and recruited the best players from our Tucson community, never promised a player that he would become a major leaguer or college player if he played on one of my teams (though I have had a part in coaching at least 12 guys who made it to the major leagues, literally thousands of others who didnt and hundreds who have played college baseball), and never lost my amateur status by charging people to take advantage of my coaching prowess. Caveat to parents: if someone tells you that you need to spend a lot of money to play or your kid wont make it to the majors, run from them as quickly as possible.

My former players coach at every level of baseball, including at least 33 who are currently coaching in little leagues and for club teams in Tucson (goes to show you I must not have turned them off from baseball too badly), many are current college players, many are minor league players, three in the majors, and a whole host of them are great citizens.