Professional baseball players began in the minor leagues after being high school stars, heroes in their little world. They lived daily with the nightmare of being called into the manager’s offices and sympathetically told it was all over, their dreamed of career had ended. All their stardom was over, their baseball skills, the one thing so many of them had, were worthless.

During this nervous period each of those guys strained to recognize any sign that they would be brought in for that last nightmare chat with the manager.

One of the best-known signs that your short career was over was when you screwed up and it didn’t bother the coach. The coaches’ and managers’ lives are invested in the few really promising players.

Not every coach is a perfect diplomat. They tend to lose their tempers. It’s a pressure job.

But it’s easier for Ole Coach to keep his temper with the guys he figures he’s going to have to have that last, agonizing, career-ending talk with. And as that day approaches, he gets nicer and nicer to the poor bastard.

Your coach is much the same. In any area of life very few really make the difference.

As for those who just haven’t the talent but have their hearts in the right place, God bless ’em.

But when my Precious Few screw up, it’s hard for me to keep my temper.

I don’t get paid for this either and I have invested my life in the game you are playing, the fight you are fighting.

I can take a featherweight here bouncing around, but when a heavyweight starts floating out in Goofyland, that is as serious as it gets. I need our heavyweights to perform, and if I let you go Goofyland on me without rancor, it is NOT a compliment.

Goofyland here is reserved for those whose presence is not essential to my life’s work.

Another point from baseball. A coach depends on the good players to catch any of the other important team members when they do something Goofyland. That is one major characteristic of a good team.

Normally you catch each other in any Goofyland move.

But when the heavyweights fail me AND their teammates fail me, I really get upset.

So when one of our absolute stars went off into a Goofyland comment about how were we to answer “Where did this genocide come from?” and another heavyweight used the opportunity to make a chest-thumping declaration on this subject, I waited for team members to correct this gross example of tailgating.

Finally, I had to point out that this is, to put it mildly, tailgating. When your mission is to point out that a crime is being committed, you don’t mix the whole thing up with finding a villain.

Please don’t do this to Old Coach again.

Please don’t LET any BUGSER do this again.

Don’t let someone justify genocide, the usual second step of those who call us racist, before you go into your own Goofyland dramatics. That is hard on me, too. Criticize each other.

A good team also coaches itself. BUGS does a great job of that, which makes the Old Man happy.

When you fail to coach each other, it stands out like a Mommy Professor who is smart enough to zip his own pants.