Remembering a great coach

John Wooden said, "A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life." Jim Woodall was a great coach.

I’m sure it happens to everyone to varying degrees as we get older, but, in recent years, I’ve grown far more reflective. 

Losing my Mom 10 years ago, and pondering the countless ways she shaped the person I am, was where this began. My wife and me sharing our children’s various life milestones, especially as they’ve gotten older, is certainly another major impetus. 

Being a sentimental type who grew up in a very idyllic manner, whether or not I realized it at the time, is at the heart of this, especially as the societal climate in which we live continues to change. I’m constantly reminded of how different the world in which my children are growing up is than that in which I came of age. 

The old expression “Life was so much simpler then” rings very true. 

And that’s why hearing a name, or being reminded of a story or seeing an old television rerun from those days always tugs at my heartstrings. 

In recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about people who have been extra impactful in my life and career. And I’ve tried to begin to acknowledge and thank many of them personally. 

Yesterday, I learned of the loss of one of those people. And it hit me hard.

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Jim Woodall was my baseball coach with the Howard-Palmetto Khoury League Expos in 1980, when I was 11-years-old. 

Never did I have more fun playing baseball than that year, and that level of enjoyment had very little to do with it being a championship season. 

All these years later, I may only remember a handful of names of the guys I played baseball with on various youth league teams. But if you gave me a few minutes, I think I could name every single member of that Expos team even though we all went our separate ways more than 4 decades ago. 

That team was like a family, and Mr. Woodall was at the heart of it all. 

On the first day of practice, he assigned each of us a nickname that was tied to the world of sports and to our actual name. 

Glenn Geffner was “The Gipper.” 

Today, 11-year-old me would have jumped on Google to learn more about George Gipp, the Notre Dame football star who died tragically at 25 in 1920 and was immortalized in Knute Rockne’s legendary “Win one for The Gipper” speech.

I may not have known all there was to know about him, but for the 6 months or so the Expos were together, I routinely answered to “Gipper” or “Gipp.” And that remained the case for years when I’d run into people from that team. 

Mr. Woodall was, simultaneously, serious and fun. I remember him stressing the fundamentals of the game, but don’t have many other X’s and O’s type recollections.

What I do remember in retrospect is the culture he created around that team of pre-teens.

“Culture” wasn’t a concept I understood at age 11, but after working in Baseball for more than 3 decades, I’m keenly aware of what culture means in a clubhouse and in an organization. Good culture inspires and brings out the best in individuals and teams. Bad culture tears down individuals, teams and entire organizations. I’ve experienced my share of both. 

The Expos were a team on which no one missed practice. It wasn’t because there was a rule, like some teams have, that if you don’t practice during the week you don’t play on the weekend. It was simply because if Mr. Woodall said we were practicing at 4:45 Tuesday at Coral Reef Park, there was nowhere else you’d rather be.

This team mattered to everyone who was a part of it.

Mr. Woodall built a culture that included the team’s parents, and he united them the same way he did the players.

This wasn’t a team where parents just dropped off their kids at practice and left. Moms and Dads stuck around and watched and encouraged. They were part of the team as well. My Mom was the Team Mom. My Dad was one of Mr. Woodall’s assistant coaches. My younger brother was the batboy. Every parent was involved one way or another because that was the culture Mr. Woodall and his wife Janet created. 

Mr. Woodall built a culture where guys on that team became friends away from the ballfield. We had several memorable team parties for players and parents, including a couple of fun ones at my house. 

It was simply a season no one wanted to see end. 

We steamrolled to the league regular season championship and swept through the post-season tournament as well. The Expos finally met their match in the county playoffs, but that didn’t detract from the fun we had at our end-of-season team party a few weeks later. 

That was the last time the Expos were all together. 

A couple of years later, the Woodall family moved to South Carolina. Jim and Janet’s younger son Brad, the best player on the Expos, went on to pitch at the University of North Carolina and signed with the Braves. 

He ultimately spent parts of 5 years in the big leagues with the Braves, Brewers and Cubs. In Atlanta, he played for Bobby Cox. He was a teammate of Chipper Jones’. And he briefly pitched in a rotation with Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine. 

That’s a long way from Suniland Park. 

Brad and I reconnected in the minor leagues, I was working in Rochester, and he was playing in Richmond, where, in 1994, he was the International League Pitcher of the Year. 

After a game the R-Braves played in Rochester, I was walking down from the radio booth toward the Red Wings’ office. As I passed through the Silver Stadium concourse, for the first time in years, I heard someone call out, “Hey, Gipp.”

I immediately recognized the deep and booming voice. When I turned around, there was Mr. Woodall, who was in town to see Brad pitch. 

At that point, it had only been about 15 years since that memorable Howard-Palmetto season. But we reflected on how far we’d all traveled and pondered what the future might hold for us. 

As it turns out, that day nearly 30 years ago was the last time I saw Mr. Woodall. Our paths never crossed again beyond the occasional note on Facebook over the last decade or so. 

But I’ve thought often over the years about how instrumental the season I played for Mr. Woodall was in inspiring my passionate love for the Game that ultimately set me on a course for a career in Baseball that has spanned more than 30 years. 

So seeing the news that Mr. Woodall had passed away in South Carolina at the age of 82 hit me pretty hard. 

Today, I’m thinking about Janet, his wife of 60 years, as well as his sons Greg and Brad and their families. 

And I’m remembering the 1980 Expos. Wherever they all are today, I hope they occasionally think back to that season, the impact Mr. Woodall made on all of us and the legacy he leaves behind.

When those Expos lost their last game in the county playoffs, Mr. Woodall held a final post-game team meeting. He gathered everybody—disconsolate players and parents—beneath a shady tree at Tamiami Park.

And he told us that one of the things you learn about sports is that even the greatest seasons almost always end with a loss.

That’s precisely how I feel today.