Every person has a story, and all of us can pinpoint certain moments in our lives that have defined who we are today. Even so, not everyone shares the story they have to tell. Walter Ryan Adams, a high school baseball coach, tells his players a story every year. It involves how he answered some of life's most difficult questions and found his purpose from a speech, a letter, and a baseball. In the course of his story, he explores how to respond to criticism and being picked on; how leaving your comfort zone can make a difference in your life; how to overcome challenges that seem insurmountable, such as asthma; and how good friends can make huge differences in your life. By recalling the details of his past, Coach Adams seeks to create a moment that his students will remember. It is these moments, after all, that define us. He doesn't tell this story for himself. He tells it so that others can learn what it means To Be the King of Diamonds.

To Be The King of Diamonds

By Walter Ryan Adams

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2011 Walter Ryan Adams
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-5635-5

Chapter One

Could I ever wear the crown?

Throughout my life there have always been a few constants. No matter where I have been or where I ended up, the one thing that always seemed to remain was the game of baseball. I am currently a high school baseball coach and a teacher. I was never the best player. I was not born with the "five tools" to make it to the next level. I always described myself as a player who was good enough to play among the best but would not stand out as the best. Still, I believed early on that I was meant for something more. That belief carried me through my high school career and continues today. The game, in a way, saved my life. The game, in a way, gave me a life. I am forever in debt. This is one way I hope to repay that debt.

I was born and raised in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The city is located roughly seventy miles north of New Orleans. If Louisiana was a boot, my hometown would have been the big toe. Bogalusa used to be among the larger cities in the state. It was home to a paper mill and located in the pit of the racial tensions that plagued the South in the 1960s. When my parents graduated in 1969 and 1970 respectively, Bogalusa High School was being integrated. There were areas of the South that shared the struggles of integration. Bogalusa seemed to be one of the places that had yet to recover from those struggles. The population of my hometown went from around 30,000 residents when my parents were in their adolescence to nearly 13,000 during mine. As one can imagine, other aspects of the city also seemed to dissipate. Education and sports were two things that even I could notice at an early age.

Growing up in a Catholic family my parents recognized early that my sister and I would go to the local private school for our education. For high school it would be St. Paul's School located in Covington (some twenty-seven miles south of Bogalusa). From Kindergarten to my 7th or 8th grade year, though, I would attend Annunciation Catholic School. Annunciation was the same school that my mother and her seven siblings had attended. It was the same school my sister and cousins had attended. In fact, it was the same school in which my mother was my first grade teacher and my aunt was the principal. Needless to say, I never really got into trouble. I was in a comfort zone. It also helped that the class that I was in never grew beyond thirty students. It was easy, for the most part, to be accepted since the majority of that thirty had been together since preschool. We were on the same little league teams together, attending each others birthday parties, and certainly developed those long-lasting bonds that childhood friends seem to have. This is not to say that we are all the very best of friends to this day. Those bonds that developed were the kind where you can grow apart but still remember each other in those semi-embarrassing moments of childhood. It is this type of friendship that will become pertinent later in this story.

I was born in 1981, I loved sports (my parents used to tell me that "ball" was one of my first words), and I was asthmatic. My ailment put a few limitations on myself as a kid. Some of it I know was all in my head but I did have some legitimate reasoning. My Dad never wanted something like asthma to stop me. He wanted to provide me with all of the opportunities that he never received. Naturally, in every sport I played (attempted rather) Dad was our coach. Dad had the vision of his son one day playing in Bryant-Denny Stadium for his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide. It was a dream and I was a dreamer just as every seven year old seems to be. Football, then, would be our first obstacle and it was wasted on me early. When making through an entire game without having an asthma attack is an accomplishment, it may be time to find another sport. Furthermore, I did not take too much to the whole physicality of football. I was too soft. I tried Basketball in my preteen years. Thank goodness I had not done that before that time. That would have been asking for an attack. Also, I never took to the whole dribbling with your left hand thing.

Then there was Baseball. It was different. I liked the fact that you only had to run for a little while and get to stop at the next base. I liked the idea that if you hit the ball hard enough you could just jog around the bases. I liked the IDEA. I was not much of a home run hitter. In fact, I never hit one while in little league (not even in practice). But, regardless, I had found the sport that I would make my own. If my other classmates were to be good at all the other sports, then I had to be the best at this one. At least, that is the way I looked at it.

The trouble with your father trying to give you every opportunity is that it can be misconstrued by others. When you combine the small class size, the connections of my aunt as principal, my dad as coach, and myself as an overall asthmatically soft non-aggressive kid, there leaves little room for doubt that I was going to get picked on sometimes. It was obvious from my football background that I was not much of a fighter. So when I did get some riff from my friends, I let it get to me. By my sixth and seventh grade years, dad had put together an "all-star" team so we/I could play more games. I would hear from the other kids that the only reason I was on the team was my Dad was the coach. I felt that none of them thought I had any talent and for a while that is what drove me to play. I had to prove something. But as long as I was in Bogalusa that was not going to happen.

Our first "all-star" excursion followed a perfect 9-0 season during league play. The decision to not add any players from around the league (we thought) was the reason for our early dismissal from the famed 'Fire-cracker classic'. The next summer the best players from around the league were combined to form a team. The result was the same. In two summers we managed to win one game. We (our all-star team) were usually at the short end of ten run (sometimes twenty run) beat-downs. It was a reality check for us and a sign of the future of Bogalusa High School baseball. When the results from our games were frequently lopsided, it was difficult for there to be a significant passion for the game. Successful high school programs are developed from successful little leagues. "All-stars" had dropped baseball on the priority list for some of my teammates. It remained for me, though, among the top priorities.

Being on the teams that lost at such a frequent rate, I could not tell if I was any good. Without a basis for comparison, maybe the other kids were right. Maybe my passion for baseball was futile. Besides my dad, no one else really thought I was anything special. Maybe I was a delusional thinker. Maybe Dad and I both were. There was only way I could have found out. And I would.

At the end of seventh grade year, my parents sat me down to talk. They approached me with a simple question. Do you want to go back to Annunciation for your 8th grade year or do you want to go to St. Paul's? St. Paul's went from 8th grade to 12th. Those who went got a head start on high school courses and had a smoother transition to the overwhelming aspect of being a high school freshman. The choice was mine and it was a difficult one to make. If it had not been for one aspect of St. Paul's, the decision would have been a lot easier. I would have chosen to stay at ACS. I knew how my personality was and I...