What Keeps Coaches in the Dugout When Everything Says Walk Away?

Why do high school coaches keep showing up when the hours are brutal, the stipend is small, and the critiques are loud? We open the door to the dugout and talk honestly about purpose, sacrifice, and the quiet wins that outlast any trophy. Ken shares his ongoing battle with ulcerative colitis and multiple surgeries, describing what it means to keep serving through pain and why the podcast became a bridge back to the game after disability retirement.

We walk through the real day-to-day: opening cages before sunrise, prepping fields on sweltering Saturdays, and making lineup decisions that weigh the dreams of an entire roster. Parents hear a candid view of how coaches see all eighteen kids, not just one, and why choices are made with development, accountability, and team roles in mind. Players get a direct message about standards, discipline, and the kind of pressure that forges character. The big theme is clear: baseball is the classroom where resilience, teamwork, and ownership are taught in real time.

Along the way, we honor mentors who shaped us, the families who hold the line at home, and the former players who call years later to say thank you. The conversation is raw and grounded—less about schemes and more about stewardship. If you care about youth sports, coaching culture, or how athletic programs build future fathers, husbands, and leaders, this story will resonate. Subscribe, share with a coach or parent who needs this perspective, and leave a review so we can keep elevating voices that make the game better.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Episode Theme
• 1:35 Sponsor Message: Netting Pros
• 2:38 Ken’s Health Battle And Surgery Choice
• 6:45 Why Coaches Coach: Beyond Logic
• 9:51 The Daily Grind And Sacrifices
• 13:07 Life Lessons Learned Between The Lines
• 17:13 Parents’ Perspective And Lineup Decisions
• 21:02 Message To Players About Accountability
• 24:10 Encouragement For Fellow Coaches
• 27:30 Gratitude, Mentors, And Personal Costs

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Today on Baseball Coaches Unplugged, you'll learn why high school baseball coaches coach plain and simple. Why they put so much time into their craft, time spent away from family, and developing players that are aren't even their own sons, all for the love of the game, and they do it for very little money. These coaches are critical to the development of great young future men in today's society. Next on Baseball Coaches Unplugged.

SPEAKER_00: 0:53

This is the Ultimate High School Baseball Coaching Podcast. Baseball Coaches Unplug, your go-to podcast for baseball coaching tips, drills, and player development strategies. From travel to high school and college, unlock expert coaching advice grounded in real success stories, data-backed training methods, and mental performance tools to elevate your team. Tune in for bite-sized coaching wisdom, situational drills, team culture building, great stories and proven strategies that turn good players into great athletes. The only podcast that showcases the best coaches from across the country. With your host, Coach Ken Carpenter.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35

Baseball Coaches Unplugged is proud to be partnered with the Netting Professionals in Provence one facility at a time. The Netting Professionals specialize in the design, fabrication, and installation of custom netting for baseball and softball. This includes backstops, batting cages, BP turtles, screens, ball carts, and more. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches, and cubbies. The netting pros also work with football, soccer, lacrosse, golf courses, and now pickleball. Contact them today at 844-620-2707. That's 844-620-2707, or you can visit them online at www.nettingpros.com. Check out netting pros on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for all their latest products and projects. Hello and welcome to Baseball Coaches Unplugged. I'm your host, Coach Ken Carpenter, and I'm starting today's podcast in a way that uh that's a little different. I uh recently, and when I mean recent, last week I decided to have a surgery that uh has a 50% failure rate, which means it also has a 50% success rate. I have uh developed ulcerative colitis in 2010, and for 10 or so years, 10, 12 years, I I coached with ulcerative colitis. And for those of you that aren't familiar with that, that is a uh a disease that uh like I tell a lot of people, I wouldn't wish on my I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. On an average day, I would be in the bathroom 20 times a day. My my routine became handfuls of pills throughout the day, just enough water to rinse down the pills, no food or drink the entire day, coach, get home at 8:30 at night. My wife would fix me a meal, I would eat, and then in turn be up sick all night. In a way, it was a great weight loss program. So every baseball season I would average about 20 pounds of loss, but that kind of leads me into where I am now, and uh I I decided to have a J Pouch. The J Pouch was put in my body 10 years ago to kind of give me some sort of relief, which really wasn't much. And I I found out uh in the past six months that it had failed and it had to be removed because they were concerned that if it stayed in, it would create cancer. I have uh battle canceled because of the ulcerative colitis, because of medication that they pushed on me. I got through that, and now I'm down to either wearing a permanent bag, which I've been doing temporarily for the last almost year, and now I've uh decided to do what is called a K pouch, the 50% failure rate pouch, I guess. It's a procedure that not very many doctors in the whole entire country do. I took a chance, went to Cleveland Clinic, did it. I'm in tons of pain. I uh yeah, I'm fighting through it. My voice isn't quite quite where I want it to be. I apologize for that. I am uh just banking on that uh like every coach does when they they send a coach, send a player from second all the way to home, and the ball's hit hard to left field, taking that chance, hoping that uh he's gonna be safe at home, and that's kind of what I'm doing with myself right now. Um I've got more procedures to go, but the one thing I didn't want to do was try to take a week off from trying to do this podcast. And uh I I apologize if the last few podcasts have been short ones for where it's me just talking about uh a particular subject. I'm gonna kind of do that today, but I can assure you that I'm going to sit down tomorrow with a great coach who is uh getting his chance after 11 years of being a JV coach and an assistant coach. He's finally going to get his opportunity to be a varsity head coach. So I'm gonna sit down with him tomorrow, and that'll be the uh show for next week. But for today, I want to talk about why coach and why why do why do coaches coach? Parents, uh you probably need to hear this. Uh coaches, I'm I'm sure you probably already know this. And players, you may not quite appreciate it now if you're in high school, but if you're a player looking back 15, 20 years uh from when you last played, it'll it'll probably hit home with you. But as a high school baseball coach, the truth is you you know people would always ask you, why do you coach high school baseball? And honestly, if you're looking at it from purely a logical standpoint, it it makes absolutely no sense. Let me just paint a picture that's probably happening right now, but I'm gonna use the month of February as my example. It's February, it's 6 30 in the morning before school. Um, and because you've got a couple of guys ask you, hey coach, can you can you open up the facility? And if you're one of those coaches that have one of these nice indoor facilities, you open it up just so the kids can come in and get a couple extra swings before school starts. In October, you know, the coach might be watching a fallball game, or he may even be conducting a informer fall practice when he can easily go home after school, or like a lot of coaches, you have to wait until football, basketball, and all the other sports get a chance to get in the weight room, and then you show back up later that evening to have your players come in for their workout. Maybe it's Saturday afternoon in July, and you're prepping your field for yet another travel baseball tournament game with kids that will never step foot on your field again in the spring or never get a chance to coach instead of doing what a lot of people do, and a lot of teachers and a lot of coaches, a lot of families, they have cookouts in the summertime. But you're picking up seeds if you have a turf field, you're you're dragging your field, you're doing everything you can to make that field look as good as possible for players and tournament directors, all for very little money. You tell your wife, last game starts at 6, probably ends about 8 o'clock after you get the field ready for the next day. You might get home around 9 o'clock, so you tell your wife, hey, just just make me a plate of food and put it in the fridge. You're home by 9. And you know, you you finally sit down, you eat your you eat your dinner, you maybe get a chance to see your kids, and if they're really young, they're already in bed. You know, and and for what a stipend that breaks down to maybe two, three dollars an hour if we're being generous? Parents who question every lineup decision that you make, the pressure of trying to win games while developing 14 to 18 year olds, many who think they know it all, but here's the thing. Every cage listening knows exactly what I'm about to say. You don't do it for that. You do it for the for the moment when a kid who's struggled all season finally gets a hit in a critical in a situation in a critical situation, and you see something click in his eyes, not just about baseball, but about perseverance, about not giving up when things get hard. We do it because we know the lessons learned between the white lines, the discipline, the teamwork, the resilience. So those are things that turn boys into men. See, here's what a lot of people don't understand. Yes, you know, we're teaching the basic the game of baseball. We're teaching kids how to turn a double play, how to read a pitcher, how to get a get a good jump at first on a steal, how to how to attack strikes when you're thrown. But that's just the surface. What we're really doing is so much deeper than that. We're teaching them how to be good teammates, and one day that translates into being a good coworker, a reliable friend, a supportive husband. We're teaching them how to handle failure because in baseball everybody knows the best hitters fail seven out of ten times. And that lesson that's going to help them navigate every setback that they face in life. We're teaching them accountability, showing them that their actions affect them, not just themselves, but the 15 other guys in that dugout. And someday that becomes understanding that their actions affect their wife, their children, their family, and their community. There isn't a coach out there that hasn't had a former player reach out years later, 10, 15, 20, years down the road. They're not calling to talk about the championship that won or the no-hitter of the day through. They're calling to tell them that they just became a dad. They remember something that they said about being present. They're telling their their coach that their own son, they're coaching their own son's little team, little league team now, and they finally understand why you as a coach pushed them so hard. They're telling me, they're telling you, they got through a tough time at work because they remembered what it takes to be down, you know, maybe down by three runs in the seventh inning and battle back to win. That's why we coach. But let's be honest about what it costs. And I'm not talking about money. And Lord knows we all as a coach could use a salary that actually reflects the hours that we put in. I'm talking about the real costs. We miss our own kid events. I can recall seeing something on X where a coach before a game was looking down at his phone and to maybe a parent or the average fan walking by. It could have easily looked like he was doom scrolling and not really locked into what his team had to do that day. But in reality, he was watching his wife FaceTime, his son's first at bat as a T-ball player. He missed out on that. He missed it in person, but he got a chance to see it on the phone. So, parents, when you walk by that coach, please understand there's a lot more going on in that coach's mind than just coaching the game of baseball. Coaches sacrifice their time with their spouses. They give up weekends, holidays, summers, or at the fields when their dads are grilling in the backyard. Coaches are doing the little things to help make a player get just a little bit better. Maybe they're writing them a letter or reaching out to a college coach to give that player on their team an opportunity to do that something that very few get to do, play college baseball. It's a year-round commitment now. It's been that way for a while. There's no off season anymore. Fall ball bleeds into winter workouts, which becomes spring season, which leads into summer travel tournaments. Somewhere in there, we're supposed to have a life. But the truth is, this team becomes your life. These players, they're not just on your roster, they're in your hearts, on your minds constantly. And then comes scrutiny. And believe me, regardless of how good you are and how good your team is, scrutiny's gonna come. To the parents listening, I want you to hear me on this. We see your son differently than you do, and that's okay, that's natural. You see that little boy you raised, the kid with unlimited potential, the player who deserves every opportunity. We see that too. But we also see eighteen other kids who deserve the same thing. When we make a lineup decision that you don't agree with, please know every coach agonizes over it. We've lost sleep over it. We want every single one of our kids to succeed, but we also have a responsibility to the team, to teaching life lessons about earning your spot, knowing what your role is on a team, about preparation, meeting opportunity, about handling disappointment with grace. I promise you, we're not out to get your son. We're not playing favors. Though it might feel that way sometimes. We're trying to put kids in positions where they can grow, where they can learn. Maybe they're playing a position that they never played when they were in little league or when you coached them. We're putting them in a situation where they can contribute. And sometimes the biggest hope growth happens when things go the way we hoped. To the players listening, one day you'll understand this. Maybe not today, probably not this season, but one day you'll look back and realize that your high school coach wasn't just some guy yelling to run polls. He was someone who saw potential in you that you didn't see in yourself. He was someone who cared enough to push you to demand more from you, to hold you accountable. This discipline we're instilling in you right now, that's going to help you become a man. Your future wife is proud to stand beside. I apologize. I am struggling to get through this because of the amount of pain and what I have to deal with right now, but I'm gonna I want to keep going here. The worth ethic, the work ethic that coaches demand can be tough at times. That's gonna make you a provider, a leader in the your field one day. The way we're teaching you to treat your teammates, to lift them up. Put the team first. That's gonna make you an incredible father, the kind of dad your kids will brag about. And to my fellow coaches, keep going. I know you're tired, I know it feels thankful sometimes. I know the weight of it all. The pressure to win, the pressure to develop, the pressure to deal with simply the paperwork and what's required just to be a high school coach. The pressure to be everything to everyone whilst somehow maintaining your own family and sanity. Remember this you're not just coaching baseball, you're shaping the next generation of fathers, husbands, leaders, and eventually great men. We're not out there at 6:30 in the morning and we're not staying late to throw extra PP or hit more ground balls. We're bit we're missing dinner with our families. When you're missing those dinners with your families, you're making deposits into futures of young men. And maybe, just maybe, 20 years from now, one of them will call you up to talk about baseball. Not just baseball, but sometimes just to say thank you. To tell us they're coaching now, passing it on, to letting us know that the example we set, the lessons we taught, the time we invested, it really mattered. That's why you coach. Not for the money, not for the glory, not for the recognition. We could be coached because someone along the way, someone coached us. Someone believed in us, someone saw past the awkward teenager, envisioned the man we would come. And it's now your turn to do the same. And speaking on that note, that person for me, outside of my father, would be a guy that I considered my second father. It was Mark Boner. I'm 62 years old now. He is still coaching as a head coach now for football. He had made such a huge impact on me. He pushed me, he cut me no brakes. But in the end, when I was frustrated, I look back now, and it's the best thing he ever could have possibly done for me. It's a calling, it's a sacrifice. It's one of the hardest, most frustrating, most exhausting things will ever do. And I can guarantee, parents, players, especially coaches, you probably wouldn't trade it for anything. And I'm 62 now, and in 2020, I had to take disability retirement from teaching and coaching. It's completely changed my life. I had no other thing to do, so I started a podcast. I wanted to talk baseball. And the closest I could get to being around the game and just reliving a lot of great memories. And if I could have done this podcast before I became a coach, I can't imagine how much better a coach I could have been. But that is the reason for me doing a podcast. I do it and I kind of look at it like it's my chance to get back in the dugout, be around the coaches, the players, go out for ground rules, joke a little bit with the umpires and the opposing coach, and then go out and compete. And I'll be quite honest with you. The reason I'm probably in the situation I am in right now, and this is for you coaches, I couldn't let things go. I never let a loss go. I hated it. It ate me alive. And there are times like every coach can think, right now, you can remember exactly what happened, the decision you may have made that maybe cost your team. But I I was fortunate. A lot more than I lost. But those games that I lost, without a doubt, have probably played a role in the situation I'm in now where I have barely any intestines left, no colon. I've got a huge bag hanging off of me that I hope that through the surgery that I can one day get rid of. And coaches, you know, I I I I don't know who's who's going to get an opportunity to listen to this. If you're a guest of the podcast, I I can't thank you enough.

SPEAKER_01: 25:32

It's uh it's been it's meant so much to me.

SPEAKER_02: 25:46

And I can never thank you enough to the listeners. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I don't know if you get anything from me, but I'm sure every guest I've had has done a great job for you. And you can take something from them. They have been so critical to the success of this podcast. Um I I want to finish with um my wife and my son. Uh I've been in some very dark places the last ten years. And without them, I wouldn't be doing this right now. I wouldn't be here. This has totally changed my life, and I hate it. But because of them, I'm gonna keep going. As always. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you get something from it. Thanks. Thank you. Today's show was brought by Will Minor and his team at the Netting Professionals Improving Programs one facility at a time. Coaches, I'm telling you right now, if you want your field to look its best and your facilities to be top-notch, you need to reach out to the netting pros. You can contact them today at 844-620-2707. That's 844-620-2707, or visit them online at www.nettingpros.com. Someone who's battling ulcer of calipus are or are in a situation where you're dealing with a J pouch or like myself trying to get a K pouch to work, please feel free to reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to talk to you and tell you what my experience has been like and give you the best advice I can give you. As always, I'm your host, Coach Ken Carpenter. Thanks for listening to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.