The Futility Infielder

Almost exactly a year ago, Michael Lewis set the baseball world on its ear with a New York Times Magazine article excerpting his forthcoming book, Moneyball. This weekend, Lewis returns to the mag with a different kind of article, one having absolutely nothing to do with Billy Beane or sabermetrics (though the Oakland A's play a small part). It's the story of Lewis' legendary New Orleans high school baseball coach, Billy Fitzgerald, a man the author describes as "born to drill holes into thick skulls and shout through them."

Lewis paints a nuanced portrait of an intense man at a strange crossroads in his career. So revered by his former players that they've raised enough money to name Isidore Newman School's gym in his honor, Fitz is nevertheless under siege from the parents of his contemporary charges. The private Newman School has been full of affluent kids since Lewis' days -- " I'm not sure how many of us thought we'd hit a triple, but quite a few had been born on third base," he writes -- but the current ones find themselves increasingly protected by their tuition-paying parents, who feel that the crusty coach's methods are too harsh for their priveleged tykes.

Drawing upon his own adolecent experience, Lewis goes back to relive his rite-of-passage moment with the coach, which came when he, as a doughy adolescent who "resembled a scoop of vanilla ice cream with four pickup sticks jutting out" was summoned to emergency relief duty in a Babe Ruth League championship ballgame. I won't spoil the payoff, but suffice it to say that emboldened by Coach Fitz's confidence, Lewis becomes a varsity athlete and comes to view his mentor with respect and awe.

The author catches up with other Newman alums who hold the coach in similarly high esteem, including Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. He delves further into the coach's methods, finding a sophisticated, literate, adaptable man beneath the bluster, one with a method to his seeming madness:

Not how to win, though winning was wonderful. Not even how to sacrifice. He was teaching us something far more important: how to cope with the two greatest enemies of a well-lived life, fear and failure. To make the lesson stick, he made sure we encountered enough of both.

Against this Lewis draws a contrast between Fitz's old-school ways -- which have placed his job in jeopardy -- and the school's current culture, including a crop of players with whom the coach is increasingly out of step. A week after the writer visits, Fitzgerald has so many players under suspension for an alcohol-related incident that he can't even field a team. But despite the obstacles, the coach keeps attempting to instill hard lessons in his players.

While it might sound a bit like Fitzgerald was pulled from central casting, rest assured that Lewis considerably fleshes out this would-be stock character. If those of you who already knew much of the stat-heady history detailed in Moneyball learned anything from the book, it's that Lewis is one hell of a storyteller. This one is well worth your time.