GREAT COACHES: BORN, NOT MADE

The best piece about baseball I've read this spring is included in Coach (Warner Books), a compilation of essays edited by Andrew Blauner. David Maraniss, a Washington Post associate editor, is the author of the excellent When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi and the upcoming Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero. Maraniss, who's best known in the Beltway for his fawning biography of Bill Clinton, is, at least by my reckoning, more suited to the study of sports than of politics.

Maraniss grew up in Madison, Wis., during the 1950s and '60s. He was apparently a decent athlete and played in various baseball leagues for many years while rabidly following the fortunes of the Milwaukee Braves. His recollection of those adolescent games gave me a chuckle while attending the practices of my son Booker's little league team, the Jr. Orioles, thinking about how dramatically times have changed in more than a generation.

He writes: "I can't remember a single time that I or any of my teammates got a ride to a game from our parents. This was before the era of minivans and SUVs, but it was also before the era of soccer moms and dads? Parents, in any case, were not part of our summer world?I was very close to my dad [but] I never wanted him to watch, never expected him to watch." Maraniss also says, "Great coaches, of course, do more than teach technique; they impart in their young charges invaluable lessons of life. Or so it is said. I can speak only indirectly because I never had a great athletic coach."

Slate's Timothy Noah, who admits to having been a "skinny-but-uncoordinated kid," took a dim view of the views expressed in Coach in a Jan. 6 "Chatterbox" entry. Noah was considerably less charitable towards the men who spend considerable time and energy trying to organize a winning team.

He writes: "There is surely no American archetype more preposterously overpraised at this cultural moment than the Coach. He has become a vessel of redemption, a wise old pappy who could tell us a thing or two about this thing we call life if only we'd bother to listen. The Coach is the voice of dedication and grit, of giving 110 percent, of never saying no to your dreams. His subject is the playing field, but his message is universal."

That's harsh, and perhaps more of an indication of Noah's lack of interest in sports than a fair indictment of coaches. There are a lot of "American archetypes" who are more deserving of scorn: fatuous Hollywood entertainers/pundits, celebrity historians and born-again truth-tellers like John Dean are just the first examples that come to mind. I played little league for five years in Huntington, and, like Maraniss, walked to games with friends and can count on one hand the number of times my parents were in attendance.

Dad was usually working. My mother claimed she didn't want to make me nervous, although I suspect that after years of child-rearing she was just bored with the entire experience. My four older brothers occasionally were in the rickety stands, but mostly just to razz me; they certainly didn't hang on every pitch like the over-caffeinated parents of today.

Although a lot of coaches that I played (or sat on the bench) for were lunkheads who berated and ridiculed the kids, there was one fellow I remember to this day, some 40 years after the fact. His name was Mario, well-liked in the town for his friendly demeanor at the local Bohack's, where he was a manager of some sort. Even if he didn't impart any "universal messages," I can't think of a single not-familial authority figure of my youth who was more of a gentleman.

He certainly wanted to win games-and our team did finish in first place that year-but not at the expense of ignoring the less-gifted players on the squad. Mario was the kind of guy who'd make sure everyone played and often told his own son, a terrific athlete, to take a seat even when the game was on the line.

He must've been a pretty good father, since Anthony never complained about coming out of the game and instead gave encouragement to his inferior substitute. Maybe he wasn't a "voice of dedication and grit"; but treating young boys with respect while attempting to teach them the fundamentals of baseball-and remembering their names in the off-season at his supermarket-seems to me deserving of praise.

Like a lot of mothers and fathers these days, I'm present at all of my son's games, but aside from giving Booker encouragement before the game or maybe a little practice on the drag bunt, I stay on the sidelines. It's advisable to keep away from the inevitable screaming parents who heap abuse on the umpire-who earns about $25 a game and, given the wide gulf in height of pre-teenage boys, has the thankless task of determining a strike zone. Sometimes, I'm so wrapped up in conversation with my buddy Alex, a Vietnam vet and former steelworker who tells fabulous stories about the late-50s Baltimore Colts and growing up in this city's Little Italy, that we both miss an at-bat of our sons.

Alex, not surprisingly, is an Orioles fan, and as one might expect, is disgusted with the club's owner, Peter Angelos, an avaricious trial lawyer who has all the bluster of George Steinbrenner but none of the commitment of fielding a competitive team. The Orioles, once a franchise that commanded respect in the American League, are currently an embarrassment, and I'm betting they finish behind the youthful Devil Rays in the A.L. East this season.

Alex is a good sport listening to me talk about the Red Sox's chances in '06-which are pretty decent, especially if Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling and Coco Crisp perform up to expectations-although it seems everyone is predicting the Yanks will go wire-to-wire in the division based on their formidable offense.

I'm still not getting this logic.

The Yanks added Johnny Damon, a great lead-off hitter-and, uh, who else to their aging roster? Alex Rodriguez gets my nod for a repeat Most Valuable Player award, but Jorge Posada's 34-going-on-54, and it'll surprise me if Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi and Hideki Matsui match their stats from last year. My money says the Bosox, White Sox and A's win their divisions in the A.L, with the Mets, Cards and Dodgers in the N.L. A's over the Mets in the World Series.

For the record, I'm looking forward to when Barry Bonds passes Babe Ruth for second place in career homers, if only for the angst it'll cause among sportswriters. As Buster Olney wrote in a Times op-ed on April 1, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig's blue-ribbon steroid investigation-headed by George Mitchell, the impossibly overrated former senator and statesman-is too little, too late.

Bonds, according to the millions of words written about him, is a real scumbag off the field and obviously used potions and notions and snake oil to bulk up. Given the certainty, however, that so many of his fellow ballplayers also indulged (and likely won't be judged), you can smell a witch hunt from coast to coast.

Who needs it?

Everyone in baseball-the owners, the players, the union, the media-blew it on the steroids front. So why not call it a day and move on?