They Asked Me to Coach. I Still Want to Play.

In 2024 I was the pitching coach for the Party Animals.

Sold-out ballparks. Big league stadiums. The most fun anybody is currently having in baseball. I moved my family from California to Savannah for it, expecting a three-year run, and a lot of it was great.

I've been quiet for a while. This is the first honest account I've put out of that year, and I want to get it right, because I'm grateful for it.

What the days actually were

Up around seven to eat. On a bus by nine, or ten, or eleven, depending on which bus you were on. At the field until roughly midnight. Sleep. Do it again.

You're on stage the whole time, not just during the game. Fans first, every interaction, all day. That is the job, and it's why the thing works.

I loved that part. I'm weird and I'm loud and I'll dance in front of ten thousand people without needing to be talked into it. I'm not a good dancer. It has never once stopped me.

Coaching pitchers in a format built to invert pitching

Almost everything I know about pitching is about staying within yourself. Finding your own tempo. Slowing the game down when it speeds up. Controlling the one thing on the field that only you control, which is when the next pitch happens.

Entertainment baseball inverts that on purpose. The clock is the point. So the coaching comes down to two things: throw strikes and be entertaining. Work fast. Keep it moving.

That's the right coaching for that product, and I'd give the same advice again. It also means you spend very little time on mechanics. Everyone is in their own lane, there's a lot happening around all of you all day, and it was my first year with them. Coaching professionals is mostly restraint: one thing, maybe two, and only once the trust is there. Trust takes longer than a season. I was learning as I went, and I'd do it better the second time.

Batting practice

The fastest way I found to connect with the guys who weren't pitchers was to throw them batting practice, so I threw as much as anybody wanted. I loved it. Somewhere in there I tore my labrum, and I went through stem cell treatment in Turkey in January of 2025. I came out of it throwing better than I had before.

The day at Fenway is its own story. I took batting practice there, and I got to pitch off that mound in the rehearsal game. That one I'll keep for the rest of my life.

What I figured out about myself

I was still working out whether I could keep playing, so I was trying to train alongside my pitchers while I coached them. It's an awkward place to stand. You can't pitch here and there. You have to stay ready, and I wasn't, so I put the throwing down for the season.

What that taught me is that I'm a better coach when I'm competing. When I have a game on my calendar, I bring more into every room I walk into. Take away the competing and some of what I have to give goes with it.

I've coached kids for most of my adult life. I'm good at it, I love it, and I'm not about to stop. I'd coach in a pro dugout again tomorrow. But the best version of me is the one who does both: a player who coaches, a coach who still pitches, whichever way you want to say it.

Where that leaves me

I'm 41. I throw a hundred pitches a game in Florida heat, and I feel better than I can remember feeling. My body responds faster, my head is quieter, my stuff is sharper. I'm not saying that to brag. It's the thing I can't stop thinking about.

I never got my real chance as a player. I've written about the whole path, including the four organizations that picked me up and couldn't clear me. I've been manifesting a shot at pitching in a big league park as a player. Call it ego, call it manifesting. I've pictured it for too long to pretend I haven't.

Jesse Cole

I want to say something about Jesse Cole, because I watched it up close.

The reason Banana Ball works, and the reason it's growing as fast as it is, is that he doesn't stop. He is a perfectionist about the fan experience and he's at it day after day. I'm an entrepreneur too, so I look at that through a founder's eyes, and I respect it a lot. A pace like that is the product. You can't build that thing at any other speed.

It wasn't a perfect fit, for either side. I wasn't asked back for a second year, and I can see why from where they stood. I took the job on the understanding that I could keep building my other businesses, MADE Baseball and CageList. I never felt I'd broken that understanding, but I could feel how it looked when I put hours into my own work. If I'd been on the other side, I'd have seen it the same way. A job like that deserves your full attention, and that's a lesson I took with me.

Quiet, and coming back

I've mostly been off social media for two years. That wasn't a strategy. It was a hard stretch: a cross-country move, a new baby, the end of the job, then another move to Orlando, because my daughters' mother is Brazilian and Orlando has direct flights to Brasília. I rebuilt MADE as a local business along the way.

I'm not a big social media guy, and I know how this world works. People want to see you doing the thing, in public, regularly. So I'm starting now, and I'll be posting more of the story as I go.

Ray

Ray Ortega manages the Glowmojis in Cosmic Baseball, an entertainment league played under neon lights, in the same family of formats. He's also the first creator on CageList, the batting cage marketplace I built. I'm the second. I have a lot of respect for him as a coach, as a pro, and as a person. His creator page is worth a look.

I say "champion" a lot, and I do it on purpose. It's how I talk to my daughters, to the players I work with, and to myself. It's one way I build the life around me out loud.

If you've got a thing you're good at that sits right next to the thing you want, I don't think you have to pick one. I'd rather find the room where both are welcome.