As a dad to two boys, 7 and 2 years old, I am trying to be the best dad I can be. I’m not perfect, as every dad will say, but whenever my kids ask to play outside, my mantra has always been yes, no matter how tired or stressed I am. It’s one of the things I can say I’m good at. Half the time we go to a playground, the other half we’re in the backyard playing ball. I am not a former major leaguer, I didn’t even make it past coach-pitch little league as a kid, so I have very little athletic talent to pass down. But it’s working! The 7 year old is one of the best players on his baseball team and the 2 year old has one of the biggest legs in his little soccer club. I’m convinced it’s because we’re outside playing ball so damned much. Almost like if you do something often enough you’ll get good at it. A novel concept, I know. The hard part is having the energy to get outside that often, but the easy part is that it really doesn’t matter what kind of ”practice” it is: swinging a wiffle bat, throwing acorns, whatever keeps them engaged and having fun is all it needs to be.

I am also the 7 year old’s assistant little league coach but, having not made it far as a kid myself, I too often find myself at a loss for what to say, how to say it, and how to just be a coach. I can get all the technical breakdown of throwing motions and batting swings from youtube, but the mentality of a coach is harder to acquire. That’s where I was hoping this book could help me. The Dad Coach is written by Mike Matheny, a former major league catcher and manager. He is internet famous for a leaked “manifesto” he wrote to the parents of his son’s little league team when they finally convinced him to coach. A manifesto that basically said yes I’ll coach, but here’s exactly how it’s going to go down and here’s what I expect out of your kids and out of you the parents. It was shockingly upfront and caused a stir. The Dad Coach is the follow up book that breaks down how he runs his practices as well as tips for parent coaches.

With practices and games 4 to 5 days a week, us coaches spend a lot of impactful time with our players, making this is one of the greatest ways to positively influence kids. If you consume a lot of sports media like I do, you’ll inevitably hear a lot of the same philosophies that you’ll find in The Dad Coach. Things like developing character is more important than developing their athletic ability. I’ll admit, this was something we rarely did as coaches on our team and it’s something I know the least about. Of course I could rattle off some cliched tropes like “teamwork”, “discipline”, and “hardwork”, but are those good enough? How do you instill a concept like “hardwork” into a practice with 7 year olds? He talks in detail how important it is, but doesn’t describe how to go about it as much.

The other half of the book is breaking down how to coach specific drills and positions. The position specific sections were particularly helpful to me and there are QR codes that link to his youtube videos. To be honest some of the videos were helpful, but most were better found elsewhere.

As a former major leaguer, Mike Matheny has an inarguable insight into what it takes to play and coach at the highest level. The Dad Coach is Mike’s way of breaking those high level concepts into ways us mere mortal parents can glean from.