Baseball began in the country and it doesn't get any more country than this. The chickens, the former occupants of the building, pass by from time to time, their clucking outside a punctuating cadence to the thwack inside.
Cluck. Thwack.
Cluck. Thwack.
Add a baseline and you may have a funky background beat for Tim McGraw.
Inside, Clay Gallagher of Petaluma is learning to hit a baseball. He's 11 years old, a Little Leaguer, and Clay doesn't care if this was once a chicken coop, that one of the windows is partially blown out, the apparent victim of an errant baseball. Clay doesn't care if there isn't a baseball field within miles or that no one is watching him or talking to him except Joey Gomes.
Gomes is one half of the legendary Gomes Brothers, the Petaluma Gomeses as it were, the Casa Grande Gomeses. Jonny was a Tampa Bay (Devil) Ray for all or part of six seasons, third-place finisher in 2005 A.L. Rookie of the Year voting, now with Louisville, the Cincinnati Reds' Triple A affiliate.
Joey, a year older at 29, was an All-American at Casa and also at Santa Clara University. He signed with Tampa Bay, made it to Double A before a torn hamstring tore him away from the big leagues' fast track.
Joey Gomes sat on a metal folding chair, facing Gallagher at a right angle. A batting tee stood between Gomes and Gallagher.
They were inside a netting-enclosed batting cage that filled out nearly all of the Coop, as Gomes so affectionately called the wooden structure. By big-league standards the environment was Spartan, but Gallagher and the 17 other kids Gomes instructs aren't asking where's the fridge with Gatorade. It's not relevant, as Gallagher so succinctly stated.
"What's not to like?" he said, cutting right to the core of it.
It's confidence, that's what goes on inside the Coop.
Confidence, such an ethereal, fragile thing, so vulnerable to shatter for children, that's what Gomes is selling and that's what the kids are buying. Kids that can go hitless through a Little League season, spend time with Gomes, and then go 3-for-3 in their next game. Sounds mythical, but it's happened.
His kids -- they range from 9 to 17, coming from Healdsburg to Petaluma -- find that hitting a baseball is not the only thing that goes on in the Coop.
"My coach at Casa, Bob Les-lie, told me once that I wouldn't learn how to play baseball until I learned how to fail" said Gomes. "I didn't understand it then, but I came to. Baseball teaches you how to deal with failure. It's a great metaphor for life. You hit it perfect, right on the nose, a screaming line drive, and it goes right to the shortstop. You did everything right but you made out. Does that mean you failed?"
Gomes suggests not. Tip your cap and move on. Like life. Get 'em the next time.
Life is a mix of sad and bad, stops and starts, ascents and descents. Life is all over the place, like a baseball that can be hit anywhere on the field. Resilience is a quality suitable for all ages and nowhere is it more obvious than in learning how to hit a baseball.
"You can make out 70 percent of the time in baseball and still be considered a great hitter," Gomes said.
He works with the kids -- Little Leaguers to high schoolers -- to show how to live with that 30 percent, to be OK with that 30 percent. By, and this may read ridiculous, knowing how to swing the baseball bat properly.
"Getting a good pitch," Clay said, "and getting a good swing on it."
Gallagher had just described the Gomes' ethos and his teacher jumped off his metal chair in delight and gave Gallagher a high five. Gomes is big on high fives. Gomes is also big on ignoring the word "no" or anything that implies a negative.
Gallagher swung, dribbled the ball off the tee.
"Now what did you do there and what do you need to do differently?" Gomes asked.
Gallagher responded accurately. He rolled his top hand over his bottom hand when he swung, a common mistake made even in the big leagues. I'll keep my top hand back, he said. Gomes then said, "OK, let's do it."
Notice the absence of the negative. Gomes didn't say, "You didn't" or "How could you?" or "Do you know the mistake you made?"
It's not important for Gomes to hear himself tell Gallagher what the kid did wrong. Rather, it's important for Gomes to hear Gallagher say what he needs to do to get it right. It's a fine point, a very fine, subtle point, but Gomes is constantly moving Gallagher in the direction of success, not jerking him backward with failure.
"It's so easy in baseball," Gomes said, "to tell someone what they did wrong. But what they should know, and this is what I focus on, is how to do it right. I focus on the positive. So how do you keep your hands inside? What's your best pitch to hit? What do you do if you have an 0-2 count? What is the pitcher trying to do to you? I focus on the mental more so than even the physical."
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