The Red Room: My Baseball Memoirs

By Tom Guzick

High school baseball isnt just all fun and games. From selecting team members and organizing practices to all the drama of game day both on and off the field, having success in high school sports takes commitment, preparation, and hard work. And for the student-athletes to have success, it takes a dedicated coach to lead them forward.

In The Red Room, author and coach Tom Guzick provides a behind-thescenes look at his thirty-one-year career coaching high school baseball, and he shows how his inspirational job of coaching has evolved over the years. Focusing on his time as the coach for the Pottsville Area High School JV baseball team and chronicling the journey along the way, Coach Guzick takes you into the coaching room and through practices, travels, and games so you can see what it takes to help student-athletes both grow and mature on the field, in the classroom, and in life.

High school sports is as much about winning the game as it is about winning at life and being successful with the tools learned. Coach Guzicks chronicle of six hundred games, three hundred bus trips, and more than twelve hundred practice sessions will help student-athletes, coaches, and sports fans recognize all the dedication and hard work that go into hitting a home run.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532014338

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Tom Guzick.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1434-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1433-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016921417

iUniverse rev. date: 02/08/2017

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1 A Career Begins

2 The Early Years

3 Selecting a Team

4 Typical Year

5 The Year That Wasn’t

6 Short Stories

7 Statistics

8 Is This the End?

Conclusion

For my wife, Cathy, who helped celebrate the good times and had to endure the hard times.

25998.png

A special thanks to my daughter, Amanda Mueller. Without you, this book could not have been completed.

26005.png

Thank you, Nick Kutsmeda, for helping me cross the t’s and dot the i’s.

26007.png

In Memory

Howard Bud Fernsler

Pennsylvania’s greatest hitting coach and a good friend

PREFACE

While teaching at Pottsville Area High School, many people told me that I should write a book when I retired. I guess they knew that after thirty-four years of teaching and thirty-one years of coaching, I would have many different experiences. Well, here it is. I hope the book is informative, entertaining, and inspirational, but most of all, I hope you enjoy.

INTRODUCTION

The Red Room deals with many of my experiences from my days coaching the Pottsville Area High School JV baseball team. Though not in any particular order, The Red Room includes a behind-the-scenes look at how we go about picking a team, events that take place during the seasons, and individual stories that have taken place over the years. I’ve also added some motivational stories from Skip Bertman, longtime coach and AD at LSU, as well as inspirational quotes that have helped me throughout the years. The Red Room takes you through a journey of coaching, mentoring, and motivating young adults, and the experiences that have lasted me a lifetime.

GOD AND THE SPIDER

During World War II, a US marine was separated from his unit on a Pacific island. The fighting had been intense, and in the smoke and cross fire, he had lost touch with his comrades.

Alone in the jungle, he could hear enemy soldiers coming in his direction. Scrambling for cover, he found his way up a high ridge to several small caves in the rock. Quickly, he climbed inside one of the caves. Although safe for a moment, he realized that once the enemy soldiers looking for him swept up the ridge, they would search all the caves and he would be killed.

As he waited, he prayed, Lord, if it be Your will, protect me. Whatever Your will, though, I love You and trust You. Amen.

After praying, he lay quietly listening to the enemy begin to draw close. He thought, Well, I guess the Lord isn’t going to help me out of this one. Then he saw a spider begin to build a web over the front of the cave.

As he watched, listening to the enemy searching for him all the while, the spider layered strand after strand of web across the opening of the cave.

Ha, he thought. What I need is a brick wall, and what the Lord has sent me is a spiderweb. God does have a sense of humor.

As the enemy drew closer, he watched from the darkness of his hideout and could see them searching one cave after another. As they came to his, he got ready to make his last stand. To his amazement, however, after glancing in the direction of his cave, they moved on. Suddenly, he realized that the spiderweb was over the entrance, and his cave looked as if no one had entered for quite a while. Lord, forgive me, prayed the young man. I had forgotten that in You a spiderweb is as strong as a brick wall.

We all face times of trouble. When we do, it is so easy to forget the victories that God works in our lives, sometimes in the most surprising ways. As the great leader Nehemiah reminded the people of Israel when they faced the task of rebuilding Jerusalem, In God we will have success! (Nehemiah 2:20).

Remember: Whatever is happening in your life, with God, a mere spider’s web can become a brick wall of protection. Believe He is with you always. Just speak His name through Jesus, His son, and you will see His great power and love for you.

—source unknown

1

A CAREER BEGINS

In 1985, the Pottsville Area High School baseball team reached the PIAA Eastern semifinals behind the pitching and hitting of future MLB star Chris Nabholz. Following the exciting season, one of the coaches decided to call it quits, and a position opened on the staff. The position would be a JV spot working alongside Howard Bud Fernsler.

I did not think of applying for the opening, even though I taught at PAHS and was a former player. I was not that good of a player, having only played JV ball and one year of varsity, where I was not a starter, nor did I get much playing time. In fact, my only baseball claim to fame was a JV game against our rival, Blue Mountain, my sophomore year. As a catcher, I threw out a runner at second and a runner at third and tagged the potential tying run out at home on a block of the plate to end the game in a 4–3 victory. My coaches at the time were John Carestia and Bud Fernsler.

Now the opportunity would present itself to coach alongside Bud Fernsler. Bud taught the freshman science course along with a meteorology course at the high school. Bud was a very popular teacher and coach and would become a very good friend.

After graduating from East Stroudsburg State College, now East Stroudsburg University, and a few years of substituting, I eventually landed a job at PAHS working alongside Bud. Teaching the same freshman subject as Bud, I was in constant contact with him over the years. I would begin to see Bud as a mentor. In school, he would tell students of my defining moment in that JV game as if it were the World Series.

As I mentioned earlier, a position opened up on the coaching staff, and for some reason, no one was applying for the position. Was it the pay? Was it the time? Was it the other JV coach? Yes, yes, and absolutely not.

Most coaches will tell you it doesn’t matter about the pay; we do it for the love of the game. My first year’s pay turned out to be $0.03 per hour. This included practices, meeting, bus trips, games, and scouting.

Time was also a contributing factor. We had practice every day for two hours after teaching all day. On days of home games, school would end at two thirty. You were required to be at the field by three for pregame practice. Games started at four thirty (JV games take forever). Usually you were home by eight, seven thirty if you were lucky. How about away games? The bus would leave school at a quarter to three. We would arrive in time for pregame practice before a four-thirty start. Did I mention JV games take forever? Then we had a long bus ride back to the school. When you got to the school, you did not get to go right home. This is pre–cell phone time. Prior to cell phones, players had to use the school phone, and as a coach, you waited