For 42 years, Coach Gary Hatch has guided the Sehome Baseball program toward state championships. And USA Baseball toward world championships. And the Bellingham Bells toward league championships. It marked the end of an era when Coach Hatch announced his retirement a few weeks ago. Coach Hatch was the greatest coach I’ve ever had, but during the four years I played for Coach Hatch he taught me about much more than just baseball.
Beyond my parents, who were incredibly supportive and influential on my upbringing, there’s no one who shaped my life like Coach Hatch. I wouldn’t be the person I am today (in my opinion, a pretty decent one) without those immeasurably special four years wearing green and gold.
Photo Courtesy of Bryan Albert
Coach Hatch wasn’t one to be lax in any aspect of his life, and he expected his players to do the same. One of his favorite sayings, of which there are many, is “if you’re not doing it right…you’re doing it wrong.” We were always expected to fill in “you’re doing it wrong." This applied to everything, from our drills in practice to lifting in the offseason, to how we conducted ourselves on and off the field. He held all his players to a high standard, one that we were all terrified of disappointing.
One of the many things that always made his teams great was excelling at the little things. That came from both the expectation of discipline that Coach instilled in us, and from the constant repetition to get things right. From the absolutely stacked team in 2007 that won state to teams that scraped by without top end talent, every single team did the little things well. I remember a February practice my freshman year where, during a two hour snow delay, we did rundown drills for literally three hours until every member of the team, from Kai Hatch, who went on to play Division I baseball, to the worst guy on the freshman team, was doing it right.
Coach Hatch loved to use the pressure game and no one was better at it than us, both offensively and defensively. We spent so much time in the gym on rainy days going over bunt defenses and first and third defenses and pickoffs that I’m pretty sure, five years later, I could go out there today and run those plays again. We spent countless hours getting our bunting technique perfect, getting the barrel of the bat up and keeping it away from the pitcher. All that practice paid dividends when we had to get a squeeze down in a game.
Coach Hatch expected greatness from each and every one of us. We weren’t hoping to go to state every year, we expected to. That expectation led players like me, who hadn’t had much success hitting at the varsity level until our senior year, to be significant contributors on state tournament teams. If you were in the lineup, you were expected to produce. So we did. That expectation helped us stay focused through rough patches in our season, and not accept anything less than our best out on the diamond. In 2009, we only beat Lynden Christian (a small school with a weaker program) by a score of 8-1, and we ended up have a full-blown practice after the game. Mediocre wasn’t good enough.
Coach Hatch didn’t let mediocre become good enough in our own minds either. He was constantly talking about exclusive moments when each of us would get the chance to make a game-winning play. During playoff time, we’d lie down in the outfield, do breathing exercises, and visualize ourselves making great plays. He even got scientific, telling us to “spike the cats” and release the neurotransmitter catecholamines during pressure packed moments, never letting ourselves bow to a clutch situation. He believed in us and expected us to believe in ourselves.
I don’t think anyone went through four years with Coach Hatch without getting chewed out for something. We all make mistakes sometimes. He usually just limited it to practice, so you knew if he yelled during a game, you really screwed up. I remember my sophomore year I was courtesy running on varsity during a crucial late-season game. I got doubled off at first on a hit and run where I was caught napping on a fly ball that was clearly an out. After the inning, Coach ran straight at me from coaching third base, looked me right in the face and said, “Hey, you’re better than that.” He was right. You better believe I never made that mistake again. There was something different about getting yelled at by Coach Hatch than other coaches I’ve had. More than anyone else, it was evident that he was yelling because he cared, both about your progression as a baseball player and a person. I think everyone on the team felt that, and that was the reason we played so hard for him.
Baseball is a game of failure, a fact Coach Hatch made sure every one of his players knew starting from the beginning of their freshman year. I learned from Coach that being good at baseball is all about responding to that failure. He wouldn’t permit any of us to become flustered by it either. He made it very clear that if you were going to show your opponent how much they were getting to you, you’d find your way to the bench very quickly. Before high school, controlling my emotions was probably my biggest problem as a baseball player. I figured it out pretty quickly once I got to Sehome, though. The kind of focus and self control that playing for Coach Hatch taught me transcends baseball and shows up in my life on a regular basis.
That fact brings me to the best thing about playing baseball for Coach Hatch: It made me a better person. I grew exponentially as a baseball player during my four years at Sehome, but I was never talented enough to really go anywhere playing the game. What I gained most was discipline, work ethic, hustle, dedication, toughness, and resiliency. Life happens. Sometimes it isn’t very fun. But I always have confidence that the basic skills I learned playing the game I love for the best coach in the country will serve me well in whatever I decide to do. Coach Hatch always used to say that we had four years to play and forty years to think about it. From a baseball standpoint, that’s true, but I feel like I still have Coach Hatch’s voice in my head guiding me in whatever I decide to do in life.
So thank you, Coach. Thank you for turning me and a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears 15 year old kids into something resembling men, ready to take on whatever life throws at us. Thank you for teaching all of us how to play the great game of baseball the right way. Thank you for always giving us 110 percent.
Hum Babe!