Garrett Mock Teaches With Love, Compassion, Occasional Swelling And Bruising

Washington Nationals pitcher Garrett Mock has a simple philosophy when it comes to coaching his youth baseball team in the off-season. Wear a cup.

Mock is spending this winter coaching the Columbia Angels, a select team of 14-16 year-olds in the Houston area. His team happened to be leading 17-0 during a recent game when one of his players attempted to bunt for a base hit. So Mock did what any youth coach would do when concerned about teaching sportsmanship: He asked the opposing coach to have his pitcher drill Mock's player with a 90-mph fastball in the ribs.

So one of the guys that coached that team, I've known him for a long time, and I said, 'Hey, when this kid gets up to bat, I want y'all to put one right in his ribs, and I ain't kidding.' I was like, 'Just kind of give me one of these hand signs, let me know that this kid throws gas,' because I didn't want to bring him in when the kid throws 86 if you've got a kid that throws 91, you know?

I'm not so surprised that coach would request such a thing: I've followed the youth coaching career of Bill Romanowski too closely. What actually surprises me is that the other coach agreed to it. My response would have been more along the lines of, oh, I don't know ... "Fuck you."

As we learned in the Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue, life is rough, and if a man's gonna make it he's gotta be tough. But there's a difference between teaching hard life lessons and simply being a clueless douchebag, and Mock has fallen onto the wrong side of that fence, unfortunately. Look, we understand that you play for the Nationals. But that's no excuse to take your frustrations out on kids.

Garrett Mock's Coaching Tricks [DC Sports Bog]