Fanview: March 28, 2021

Kavorka!

By Joe Torosian  —

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”—Anne Lamott

Kick it!

My friend, our Coach, Ray Baker, graduated to be with the Lord this past Thursday. 

I’ve been around a lot of death this year—we all have—but these deaths were always about what it did to others around me. I loved all the people that passed away, they blessed me, but the sadness I felt was for their family and loved ones.

When the news came about Ray Baker—I felt it personally.

I met Coach Baker on January 18, 1985.

I was twenty-years-old and coaching a high school basketball team at my church.

Eight players were on my roster, and seven of them needed to learn what a “jump-stop” was. While I was coaching this team—there was no league to be part of—we were busy searching for games to play. 

Now, it’s usually the other way around, but the team looking for a game is supposed to be ready to play. The team picking up the phone is supposed to be the victim.

Los Angeles Grace Church of The Nazarene picked up the phone and rode a bus from the inner-city to our gym in Temple City. They had two dozen kids, all in jerseys, breathing fire.

(My definition of breathing fire on a basketball court extends beyond literal fire. It’s actually about following your coach’s words to the letter.)

I watched my guys run a lay-up line before the game. Then glanced over to see LA Grace, led by Coach Baker, doing every pregame passing drill on the planet.

I prepared my team to face a zone. LA Grace came out in a man-to-man. I called timeout and instructed my squad on how to attack a man-to-man. Coming out of the timeout, Coach Baker put his team into a zone.

My dreams of victory, which took a hit the second I saw LA Grace get off the bus, quickly diminished to, “can we at least advance the ball beyond half-court and get a shot off?”

It was a bloodletting. Two 20-minute halves with a running clock, and I think the final score was 88 to 21. Seventeen of our 21 came against the junior highers Coach Baker subbed in.

Coach, always asked me how I was. And I always reminded him that in the spring of 1995–my team beat his.

In the midst of this, one of my players lost his cool in the first half. He started blaming teammates, talking over me, and I parked him on the bench. At the start of the second half, he said he was going to be cool. I re-inserted him, and he went nuclear on me again. 

This time I was mad. I was coaching the team, I wanted them to learn from this experience, and I didn’t have time to put up with a selfish quitter.

Where the players sat in the gym was in front of a stage. I banished my guy from the bench, told him to get out of here. I was sick of his act. Everyone else was facing the music, playing hard, and giving everything they had.

Coach Baker found my guy on the stage. He left his bench—and if I remember correctly—with Bible in hand, went up, and talked to this kid. Grace was the name of the church he worked at, but grace was also his nature.

This man I met 36-years ago wasn’t just Coach Baker, he was Pastor Baker, and within a few years, Reverend Baker. He related to the student and opened a door for us to hug it out afterward.

What a lesson. Through Coach Baker, my immaturity was exposed, and I learned it couldn’t merely be about what a player did on the court. It had to be about what I could do for my player–even if only simple encouragement. I learned that day that you had to see everything and exhibit grace—if you were going to be worthy of the title, “Coach.”

When I found my way to full-time ministry in 1990, I reconnected with Coach Baker (now, Reverend Baker). We were on the same district for more than three decades. And his team always kicked my team’s butt.

But…

In 1995, I had a group that didn’t need to learn how to do a jump-stop. I beat Coach Baker and LA Grace in the semifinals of our district tournament. (I reversed the action on in-bound, sprung my guard open, to ice the game.)

When it was over, Coach Baker said, “You out-coached me.” He wasn’t happy about losing, but he was gracious in defeat.

(A few years later, Coach told me that future NBAer Paul Pierce was supposed to be on the team I beat…whew!)

I never beat LA Grace or Coach Baker again, but I never let him forget that one time I got the better of him. My second oldest daughter, Megan, her middle name is Grace because it was LA Grace we beat in the spring of 1995, the year she was born.

For most of the 90s, I was honored to be an assistant coach to Coach Baker for our district all-star teams. The years I was with him, we were always one player away. We always needed a big man, and if we had a big man, then we were short a point-guard. In our annual lament about being one player short, our bond grew.

In 1996 my daughter Megan was in the ICU, my wife was staying with her at Children’s Hospital. My oldest daughter was with her grandparents because I had strep throat. I was having problems with my boss at church, we were devastated financially, and I had to call Coach Baker and tell him I couldn’t assist him with the all-stars in San Diego that year.

I was at one of the lowest—if not the lowest—points in my life. As I described my situation, I began to cry, and Coach Baker stopped me. He prayed for my daughter, my family, and me.

At that moment, he became my coach. I knew I’d breathe fire in any direction he sent me because he saw not only the game on the floor but everything else. And all of it with great grace.

As Youth Pastors, our respect for Coach Baker was so high we never called him Pastor Baker or even Reverend Baker. He was always Coach Baker.

He was a Foster Father to countless young men over the years. And that’s not even touching on the thousands he coached at the local high school or mentored at LA Grace.

We were at a tournament in the late 90s at Point Loma (San Diego). And Several of us youth pastors were talking late at night outside the dorms about everything. And we didn’t care if we kept students awake. We didn’t care if we kept volunteers awake. And we didn’t care if we kept other Pastors awake. (Those stiffs shouldn’t have come if they couldn’t hack it.)

But as we kept yakking into the early morning. We realized we were standing outside Coach Baker’s room. Our eyes grew big, and we ran out of the area.

We didn’t care about anybody else, but we didn’t want to disturb Coach Baker. At this point, I’m not twenty anymore, and all of us are in our mid-30s, but we were scared that we may have upset Coach.

At breakfast, I came up to him and apologized. “I’m sorry, Coach, for being so loud last night.”

He smiled. “I loved it. I just wished you would have invited me to come out there with you.”

Grace.

I wasn’t Coach Baker’s best friend. I didn’t spend holidays with him or have too many lunches with him. But I learned from him, and I served with him—for what now seems way too brief a time.

There should be a Coaching/Pastoral/Seminary class entitled “Coach Baker 101—The skill of exhibiting; Grace, Love, & Leadership.”

What a great man of God he was and remains.

The Dude abides…
1,182
1 John 3:11

Joe T. is the author of “Tangent Dreams: A High School Football Novel” … “Temple City & The Company of The Ages” … “The Dead Bug Tales” … “The Dark Norm” & “FaithViews for Storm Riders”…all five available through Amazon.com.

www.JoeTorosian.com
jtbank1964@yahoo.com
Follow Joe on Twitter @joet13b
Instagram: @joet13b
Parler: @Jtbank1964
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