The Green Meanies

Open­ing Day, 1981 T‑ball sea­son. Yan­kees v. Red Sox. Top of the first inning.

Bob, the Yan­kees tall gan­g­ly head coach, knelt beside his lead-off hit­ter and son, Ste­vie, a wiry lit­tle kid with sandy hair and two miss­ing upper front teeth. Bob placed the ball on the tee and guid­ed Ste­vie into a bat­ting stance, feet spread apart, back elbow up, front elbow down.

In the field, Arnold, the Red Sox head coach, a short mus­cle­bound for­mer col­lege wrestler, stood on the pitcher’s mound behind his son, Arlo, a freck­le-faced red­head with two miss­ing bot­tom front teeth. Since the bat­ter hits the ball off a tee in T‑ball, the “pitch­er” doesn’t pitch, but he is the most impor­tant field­er because most “hits” trick­le off the tee into the infield a few feet beyond home plate. The pitcher’s job is to rush in, grab the ball, and throw it to first base.

“Fielder’s crouch,” Arnold said to Arlo. Arlo bent his knees and pound­ed his fist into his glove.

At the tee Bob stepped back from Ste­vie. “Give it a lev­el swing.”

Ste­vie launched a mighty twirl. Thunk! The bat struck the tee a foot below the ball. Near­ly decap­i­tat­ed, the tee fell over like a dead sol­dier and spilled the ball into foul ter­ri­to­ry. Bob hopped for­ward, col­lect­ed the ball, and reset the tee. “This time keep your eye on the ball all the way through the swing.”

Stevie’s sec­ond wind­mill grazed the top of the ball and flipped it off the tee to drib­ble five feet down the third base line where it rolled to a stop.

Both Arlo and Ste­vie froze, star­ing blankly at the dead ball.

“Go!” Arnold shout­ed, shov­ing Arlo. Arlo stum­bled for­ward, then charged the ball.

“Run!” Bob screamed at the top of his lungs. Ste­vie flinched, pan­icked, and took off toward third base.

Arlo scooped up the ball and wheeled toward third.

The third base­man, Rob­by, a drifty tow­head­ed kid, stood on third base at parade rest, grin­ning vapid­ly at a pigeon fly­ing over right field.

Arlo hurled the ball at Robby.

From the bleach­ers Robby’s mom bel­lowed, “Rob­by! Get in the game!”

Star­tled, Rob­by snapped to atten­tion and spot­ted Arlo’s fast­ball zoom­ing direct­ly toward his face just in time to raise his glove instinc­tive­ly in self-defense. Pop!

Bar­rel­ing up the third base line like his life depend­ed on it, Ste­vie ran through the bag at the same instant the ball hit Robby’s glove.

“Out!” Arlo yelled, pump­ing his fist in the air.

“Was not!” Ste­vie cried. “Safe by a mile!”

“Great catch, Rob­by!” Robby’s mom yelled.

Dazed, Rob­by stared at his glove, won­der­ing how the ball got there.

Coach Bob wan­dered out to the mound and joined Coach Arnold. “What just hap­pened?” Bob said.

“Your kid ran to third instead of first,” Arnold said. “My kid field­ed the ball and threw him out.”

“Actu­al­ly, Ste­vie beat the throw.”

“You kid­ding me? It doesn’t mat­ter if he beat the throw. He’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly out. He ran to third instead of first. He played the game backwards.”

“Your kid did, too,” Bob said defensively.

Arnold looked at Arlo and Rob­by and sighed. “Yeah, they did every­thing right except for the back­wards part. How the hell we gonna explain this to them?”

“It’s too com­pli­cat­ed,” Bob said. “Let’s start over. I’ll make Ste­vie run to first this time.”

“Deal,” Arnold said.

In 1981, Bob was my bar­ber. Dur­ing a hair­cut in his shop in the LA Bonaven­ture Hotel, I told him I’d signed up to coach my son’s T‑ball team. He emit­ted a low whis­tle. “Tough­est job I ever had.” He told me the Yan­kees-Red Sox open­ing day sto­ry. “Too many rules and not enough action,” he said. “I almost went crazy.”

Bob was right. Even with five dads help­ing me, we couldn’t keep the Phillies on track. Dur­ing drills kids wres­tled each oth­er, wan­dered off aim­less­ly, or sprawled in the grass and gazed at the clouds. Only con­stant vig­i­lance pre­vent­ed play­ers from prac­tice-swing­ing their met­al bats with­in range of anoth­er player’s head. The sud­den appear­ance of a fly­ing grasshop­per would bring a game to a com­plete halt, and if there was a patch of mud any­where on the field, the play­ers always found it before the coach­es did.

I didn’t go total­ly crazy, though, and I got to spend a lot of time with my son, so I vol­un­teered to coach K‑division soc­cer in the fall. Like T‑ball, a mud pud­dle or a stink bug could stop a game cold, but oth­er­wise coach­ing soc­cer was a lot eas­i­er. Not as many rules, and no dead time. You throw the ball on the ground. The kids mob it and scrum up and down the field with no idea what they’re doing. If the ball coin­ci­den­tal­ly rolls into the goal dur­ing a game, the par­ents and kids go wild.

I coached my kids’ teams for sev­er­al years after that. All their teams were good, but the best team rel­a­tive to its lev­el I ever coached was my daugh­ter Devon’s 1986 K‑division soc­cer team, the Green Meanies.

The first day of prac­tice, I asked the kids what name they want­ed to give the team. This is not always a good idea. The Bloody Mag­gots, for exam­ple, but this time it worked out well. Our uni­forms were green. Devon said green rhymed with mean, and that sparked the name. The team Mom, Cindy, made a dark green team ban­ner cen­tered with the big round head of a blond-haired kid, his face con­tort­ed, his teeth bared.

The name and ban­ner soon became infa­mous with­in the K‑division. Youth sports leagues strive to achieve bal­ance among com­pet­ing teams by using skill rat­ings to select ros­ters of approx­i­mate­ly even tal­ent, but five-year-olds have no track record, so place­ment in the K‑division is ran­dom. Ran­dom place­ment usu­al­ly works out okay at that age any­way, but that was not the case with the Meanies.

That team was loaded. Five of them, includ­ing Devon, would grow up to become high school soc­cer all-stars, and even the less­er tal­ents on the team were good lit­tle ath­letes. Most of them had been play­ing soc­cer in their back­yards since they were tod­dlers. In the first prac­tice, they passed the ball, drib­bled with con­trol, and shot accu­rate­ly with both feet. I didn’t have to teach them anything.

In the sea­son open­er, they faced the Red Drag­ons. Jor­dan scored a goal for the Mean­ies on the kick-off. Thir­ty sec­onds lat­er, Chris scored. Then Mar­cus hurled the ball into the goal from mid-field on an out-of-bounds throw-in. Devon scored. Jor­dan again. Then Tay­lor. Rob­by. Chris again.

Green Mean­ies 8 – Red Drag­ons 0. And that was only the first quarter.

The rules of the K‑division are designed to make every kid feel like a win­ner. There are no goalies to make it eas­i­er to score. Coach­es roam the field to pro­vide instruc­tion and praise. There is no score board, and no one keeps score. Except, of course, the par­ents, who have neon score­boards inside their heads.

Dur­ing the first quar­ter break, the Drag­ons’ coach jumped me. “Back off, man! You’re run­ning up the score!”

“I didn’t mean to run it up, ” I sput­tered. “It all hap­pened so fast.”

He rolled his eyes.

Ok, sports­man­ship first, I thought. I held three of the super­stars back near our goal to start the sec­ond quar­ter. The oth­er two super­stars prompt­ly scored. I pulled them back, too, where­upon Mar­cus pow­er-kicked a goal the entire length of the field. “Don’t aim for the goal,” I told the phe­noms. “Just pass the ball to the Mean­ies up front.” On an aver­age team the Mean­ies up front might have gone the whole sea­son with­out scor­ing a goal, but with per­fect pass­es from the back field, each scored mul­ti­ple goals in that first game. Near the end of the third quar­ter, my inter­nal neon score­board blew a fuse. Some­where around goal 20 I lost count. Mean­while, with the five super­stars play­ing back, the Drag­ons couldn’t advance the ball past mid­field. They goose-egged the game.

That first game set the tone for the Mean­ies’ sea­son. They mowed down every team they faced, scor­ing more than ten goals in every game while nev­er giv­ing up a sin­gle oppos­ing goal, and that was with me doing every­thing I could to hold them down.

At the end of the sea­son, I didn’t have to make up pos­i­tive stuff in my speech­es when I pre­sent­ed them with tro­phies. I couldn’t praise them enough. They were all great play­ers and great kids.

The Green Mean­ies ruled the K‑division forty years ago. They’re all grown now, and I don’t know where they are or what became of them.

Except for one Meanie.

Half-time, last game of the South Pasade­na K‑division 2024 sea­son. I stood beside Logan, grand­son num­ber two and star of the Teal Rap­tors. He drained his water bot­tle and looked up at me. “We nev­er lose,” he said in a pur­pose­ful­ly deep voice with a grave­ly seri­ous expres­sion on his face.

“You ever hear of the Green Mean­ies,” I asked him.

He nod­ded. “Mom told me.”

“They were real­ly good,” I said.

“We’re real­ly good, too,” he said.

Logan ran back on the field and scored two goals in the sec­ond half.

No one keeps score in the K‑division, but I hap­pen to know the mighty Teal Rap­tors won that game and every game they played that sea­son. This should be no sur­prise to any­one. After all, the Rap­tors were mere­ly uphold­ing a win­ning tra­di­tion hand­ed down to them from the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. Coach Devon, you see, was a proud Green Meanie.