I was 10 years old when my father's youth baseball coaching career came to an end, 57 years ago today. And what an ending it was! On the evening of August 22, 1965, his Covina Post 207 team won the Anaheim American Legion Invitational Baseball Tournament, emerging victorious over 72 of the best teams in California. Winning the Anaheim Tournament was a supreme accomplishment – the perfect coda to his coaching days – and I was never prouder of my father as I was that night.
As happy as I was over his tourney win, though, I was also sad. Literally all my life, my dad had been a baseball coach. To me, that was practically his whole identity. "Ed Shannon" meant "baseball" more than anything. I couldn't conceive of him not being involved with the game in some way.
And yet, as we drove away from that last game, Dad seemed strangely lighthearted. Of course, he was always an upbeat guy, but as important as baseball and his boys had been to him for so long, and as final as his departure was to be, I really thought he should have been somber, not smiling, maybe even crying. Surely he'll be sad when it finally sunk in that he'll never set foot on a baseball diamond again?
But of course I was wrong, and it just went to prove how little I knew at that age about how adults really see the world. Now I look back, and I can fully appreciate why Dad felt the way he did. For when time closes one door, opportunity opens another. He was now free to pursue other interests, and over the next couple of years, he went on to start a new import business: a venture which grew to be far more remunerative than his old steel fabricating plant ever was or could be.
So there was life after baseball, after all! Far from being a loss, that bittersweet ending brought good fortune to my father and to our family, and taught me an important lesson about grownup life, as well.
