Game over

The final out had been called. The final post game speech had been given. The balls and bats had been stored away.

The opposing team had retrieved the gloves and hats they had thrown into the air in celebration, but were still hooting and hollering into the air.

But on the other side, the tears were still falling.

Inside the fence, the Destrehan Wildcats were taking their sweet time putting away their gear before they had to walk off the baseball field -- some for the last time. Some had a harder time than others, wishing for one more chance, one more at bat, one more inning, one more game.

Outside the fence, their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins were waiting to hug, to kiss and to share their tears. Flashbacks to that first hectic t-ball game and the hundreds backyard pitch-and-catches overwhelmed some as they waited for their sons to come through the gate.

And off to the side, a small family hugged and consoled and shared tears with The Coach.

It was a tough loss, yes. But for him, this was it.  There will be no more next time. No more next year.

After 25 years of coaching high school baseball, my husband Marty Luquet, decided that this was to be his last season on the Destrehan baseball field. He had his reasons, some he has shared, some he has not. I know that he's not having as much fun as he was the day he started back in 1981 at a now-closed New Orleans high school. I know that he's not as happy as he was the day he got his first team after a 10-year hiatus to work in recreation. That day, he bounded into my house and shouted, "I got my first name back!"

"Coach."

And he can't move the way he used to.

So I guess it was time.

And what a 25 years it has been.

• 447 wins, 251 losses
• Two state runner-up finishes
• Class 5A All-State Coach of the Year in 2002, 2003 and 2005
• All-Metro New Orleans Coach of the Year in 2002 and 2010
• All-River Parishes Coach of the Year in 2002, 2004 and 2010
• 14 consecutive playoff appearances
• A 33-1 finish in 2004, with a 30-game win streak and a No. 2 national ranking

And that's all fine and dandy.

But to him, his proudest moments have been off the field.  

The guy in the grocery store who shouts "Coach!" and leaves his basket unattended for 20 minutes after he runs across the store for a reunion.

The guys at the local minor league and college ballparks who come shake his hand.

The 30-plus former players who showed up at the first Saturday home game of the season to honor him and stand with him for the National Anthem one more time.

The hundreds of texts, Facebook messages, tweets and emails he has received since announcing his decision, and the flood since losing his final game on Saturday.

The many compliments from the opposing teams on the way his team plays and acts and conducts itself at all times.

And this ...

As our family hugged and cried and did our best to console one another in that final moment, as the parents waited outside the fence, a young man dressed in the opposing team's yellow waited at third base. And he waited.

He waited a long time. 

Finally, the Luquets broke free from one another and The Coach. Still fighting tears, he spotted the boy and made his way over.

"Coach," he said. "I didn't know this was your last game. My coach just told us you were an icon in baseball. I just wanted to shake your hand."

And he did. And made The Coach cry some more.

Oh, who are we kidding? There will be more baseball games, both as a spectator and as a coach. He's not done with the third base box just yet. He's already signed up to coach an American Legion team that will combine his now-former team with his former arch-rival Hahnville. There's talk of an All-American League team to coach too. And he can't wait. 

I guess that Honey-Do list will have to, though.

Click here to read an outstanding tribute to The Coach

Bases loaded

                                                    

My husband, The Coach, and I have had a couple of sleepless nights here under the flare.

Most of it was caused by this wonky old window unit we had in our upstairs bedroom that started sounding like a pair of maracas on Saturday. Annoyed by the sound, The Snarky Teen, who was hanging out in my bedroom with her BFF, decided just to turn it off. By the time Coach and I turned in for the night at 11 o'clock or so (yeah, we're so exciting that way), it was 85 degrees in our room.

We turned the thing back on and forced ourselves to tough out the noise in favor of the cool air. But neither of us got much sleep.

On Sunday we headed off to Walmart to get a nice, shiny, QUIET new one. But we still haven't figured out all the modes and stuff, so last night I think it was on fan most of the time. Yeah, I need to find and read that manual soon.

Then there is the impending surgery The Snarky Teen will have to undergo in a few weeks to straighten out her oh-so-crooked spine. If that doesn't keep you awake nothing will.

But tonight we're awake for different reasons.

The Louisiana High School baseball playoffs began this week. Tomorrow, my husband's team, the Destrehan Fighting Wildcats will take on the Byrd Yellow Jackets in a bi-district round game. So, right now, I'm upstairs ready for bed. He is still downstairs.

And I can picture him right now. He's sitting at the computer with the Class 5A bracket on the screen. He's chewing on his thumbnail, spinning back in forth in the desk chair, half watching the MLB channel as he imagines every possible scenario that can play out over the next two weeks. He's figuring out who will pitch tomorrow, then the next day, then the next. In his mind, he's playing it all out, right up to the moment when he gets to hoist that golden trophy.

We have this running joke between us about our mental bases being loaded. There was this one time when I was stewing with the weight of the world on my shoulders and he wanted my attention. "Listen, Bud," I said. "What would you do if, in the middle of a game, when you're down by 2 and have the bases loaded with two outs, I marched right up to you in the third base coach's box and demanded your attention? What would you do?"

He got the message. So, if I say, "My bases are loaded," he knows to back off.

Well, tonight, his bases are definitely loaded.

It's not that we haven't been here before. This is his 14th season at Destrehan. His teams have made the playoffs every year. Twice his teams have played for a state title. In 2004, his team won 30 games in a row.

But this year is different.

While, right now, there is a tomorrow (and a 60 percent chance of rain), tomorrow there may not be one.

This is his last season as The Coach. He wants to do other things, he says. He wants to live a life without baseball, he says. He wants to travel and have fun, he says.

Right.

I'm thinking he's going to take one look at my Honey-Do list and go volunteer to coach somewhere.

But what this means is, if he loses tomorrow (knock wood), he's done. There will be no next game. There is no Next Year. It's all over.

Now, if he wins tomorrow, he gets to play a best-two-out-of-three series next weekend, likely on the road. If he wins that, he gets to play another three-game series closer to home. And if he wins that, he gets a golden ticket to the big State Tournament.

Yep. More sleepless nights.

Lots of people are hoping he does. The state championship is the one thing that has eluded my husband in his storied 25-year career.  Well, that and a winning lottery ticket.

So, from our nice, cool, quiet bedroom where I'm about to go to sleep, I'm sending my husband a message:

Win, baby.

The Coach's Wife

I don't often write about my husband.

Oh, if you're a regular follower of this little blog you know that he's a high school teacher/baseball coach and once was a short-lived volleyball coach, that he has a really bad memory, doesn't do birthdays very well, or DIY projects around the house. That he can remember virtually every pitch of that big win against E.D. White 14 years ago, but can't remember to put his cell phone in his pocket before he leaves the house. That he used to get thrown out of baseball games -- a lot.  That he loves baseball, his convertible, me, his children, his new grand baby, his sofa, his pool, his dogs (probably in that order) and that he always took my side when his mother and I would fight.

In large part because of that last phrase is why he and I have been married 20 years come December, and together two more than that. Yes, we did meet at a bar. We DO live in (the suburbs of) New Orleans, you know.

But I don't often get to write about The Coach. For one thing, I am a sports writer, he is a coach. In journalism circles,  it is extremely frowned upon for a journalist spouse to write about a public persona spouse, whether he/she is an athlete, a coach, a politician or a crime victim. It's just not done. So it made some folks nervous when he went from being the local assistant recreation director to my boyfriend, to my fiance, to my husband, to a coach (again) in the area I was assigned to cover for the then-daily newspaper.

In an effort to thwart that -- and my new stepson's senior season as quarterback at one of the schools in my area --  the Men In Ties moved me from my beat in the River Parishes Bureau to downtown New Orleans. Yeah. That was fun. Not.

Eventually, they saw the error of their ways and moved me back to where I belonged, with the mandate that I could not cover my husband's baseball team. That was fine by me. And we all got along splendidly until 2010 when I was moved from sports to crime (prep writer to perp writer), then 2012 when I was let go in the then-daily's move to "Digital First."

But now I'm a free lancer and the journalism landscape in New Orleans has changed dramatically. Now, the New Orleans paper I used to work for and the Baton Rouge-based paper I now write a lot for are in an all-out newspaper war over territory. I just happen to live in the suburbs between the two (a.k.a., "No Man's Land"). And, suddenly, some folks think it's OK for reporters to write about their husband's team. And sometimes, it just can't be helped.

Take last year, for instance. Mother Nature, who apparently dislikes the high school baseball playoff season immensely, decided to drop buckets of rain on the New Orleans area last spring. But my husband's team's playoff game had to be played. So it was moved -- from one day to the next, from one time to a later one, then to three different potential sites before it finally began at nearly 9 p.m. on a Thursday at a field no one ever heard of, and finished at nearly midnight. There was no way the Baton Rouge-ish paper would get a reporter there. They knew I was there as The Wife, so they asked me to write it up as The Reporter. And while, normally, I would never interview my husband after the game, the circumstances surrounding it were so unique that I was pretty much obligated to get a comment from The Coach about how his team handled all the adversity.

It was weird. We both hated it. And people took pictures.

So, we both decided it's just best to separate. No, not like that. But we do try to keep The Coach's Wife separate from the The Reporter. That's how we like it. That's how the world likes it.

Then his happened.

My darling husband, The Coach, decided he was going to give up being The Coach. He says he's ready, he's old, he's tired, he needs a new knee (that's true), he's ready to do other things. That all may be true, but I'm sure that does not include building me a gazebo in the backyard. He does want to take me to California and Chicago (why not Hawaii???) and spend some time with our fast-growing daughter and his new grand baby.

Whatever his reasons, the news created a stir in local sports circles. His announcement -- which initially came on his own little blog Coach Speak, became Front Page and 5, 6 and 10 o'clock news. (And the local newspaper is put in the unusual predicament of writing about one of it's former sports writers, married to the headliner. So many blurred lines...)

Then this happened.

On Thursday, my husband's team traveled across the Mississippi River to face its biggest rival, the Hahnville Tigers. They're pretty good, now, and just came off a glorious weekend in which they went 4-0 against some of the top teams in the area. They started it with a HUGE win against the then No. 2 team in the state, Brother Martin, which was then-undefeated. Hahnville scored in extra innings to win. I know, because I was there. I covered it. I wrote about it Here and Here.

And while I was there, The Other Coach, whom I've known for a long time and like very much, told me he had a plan. He decided he was going to give my husband, The (Retiring) Coach, a rocking chair to send him off into the sunset.

"Will he get mad?" he asked me.

"Hell no," I replied.

Now, ever being the journalist, I knew this was news worthy. So, I set about letting my friends in the news media know about this event. It also was coming on the heels of a day organized by my stepson (with my assistance), in which we invited all of The Coach's former players over the past 25 years to come to the game and line up with him for the National Anthem as a surprise. Nearly 30 of them showed up. That also made the news.

So after  I let friends and family and a few news media types know what was going down on Thursday, I set off to take care of me, cashing in the FREE King Cake body scrub I won from the local salon. Yay me!

Just as I was about to strip down to my skivvies, I get a text from The Other Coach:

Him: Can't find rocking chair anywhere.

Me: Want me to help?

Him: Yes. You can get to more places. Just bring me the receipt.

Me: I'm on it. Right after my massage

I then spent the next two hours smelling like a cinnamon bun, getting scrubbed and rubbed, and trying to think of a place in our neck in the woods that has a rocking chair for sale.

Then it hit me.

The local thrift shop! It's just a few doors down from my house, it's rarely if ever open, and it now contains a whole bunch of my belongings which we have put curbside for trash. The owner just picks it up and puts it in his shop to sell when he feels like it. I used to own a Bentwood rocker. I hoped I wasn't about to buy it back from him.

Nope. But I found this beat up old one, loaded it in my car and went back to relaxing.

Then, just before game time, I drove into the parking lot, texted The Other Coach, who sent two of his players to my car to get the rocking chair for his team to give to my husband as a gag.

Really.

And it went off without a hitch. With cameras and reporters from both newspapers there to document it, The Coach was surprised, humbled and honored. And I got a lovely bouquet of red roses -- from The Coach. No, The Other Coach.

I then spent the next two hours munching sunflower seeds and trying not to watch the action on the field in what turned out to be a very tight, nail-biter of a game. I try very hard to maintain my reporter face while watching these games. I don't want to be hollering and cheering against a team one day, then have to interview them the next. So I watch. I don't root. I don't cheer or clap or yell. I watch the crowd, the game, my husband, wonder when he's going to bunt and hope he doesn't try to steal home again.

He didn't. And his team won, 1-0, with the lone run scoring on a bases-loaded balk in the third inning.

After the game, I made a big production of running up to The Other Coach to hug him and thank him for my flowers. After I kissed The Coach, The Other Coach and I filled him in on the rather unusual events of the day. He laughed hysterically.

Then I put my husband's new rocking chair in my car and took it back home.

Later, we laughed about the whole thing. I made sure he wasn't mad, not that The Other Coach had given him a rocking chair, but also my part in in. He wasn't. He took it in the spirit in which it was intended and thought it was great fun.

"I thought it was great," he said. "But my team wanted to know why they got me such an ugly old chair."

Really?

Click Here to see a terrific video about The Coach and The Game.

This just in ...

The Coach actually broke his own story, you know.

 In his little blog post that I shared a few days ago, he wrote that next year will be his last.

Then this happened.

Marty Luquet decides 2014 to be final season as Destrehan baseball coach

And this... Destrehan's Marty Luquet to retire after 2014 season

And he made the 6 o'clock news.

"I didn't know this was going to be such big news," he said.

Right.

Meanwhile, I'm working on his honeydo list.

There he goes -- again

I don't often repeat myself.

But I can't do this any better a second time.

I officially become a baseball widow tomorrow. Again. It's game day eve. Again. This is his 22nd season. His 11th at his current school. His 12th since we've been married.

I know the drill.

Reposted from February 24, 2011, "There He Goes."

My husband went to bed hours ago.

It was only about 9:30 when he surprised me by suddenly announcing, "I'm going to bed," and asked me to do the few dishes in the kitchen, which are normally his responsibility.

But if I know him at all -- and I do -- he's upstairs right now, wide awake. He has tossed and turned a million times, studied every flaw in our bedroom ceiling, listened to every tick of the clock on the wall and seen every red number on the one beside the bed. His head is probably under the pillow and the blankets are all tangled.

And when I make my way up there in just a few minutes, I won't be waking him at all.

Tomorrow is Game Day, the first game of the 2011 high school baseball season in Louisiana. And, right now, he's so excited he can't stand it.

There are a lot of people in this world who love what they do. I used to be one of them. But my husband? He lives what he does.

He is about to embark on his 21st year as a high school baseball coach, his tenth at his current school, his 11th since we've been married. And he could not be happier.

The day he went from being a local recreation director to being a coach again after an eight year hiatus, one of the first things he said to me was, "I got my first name back."

"Coach."

And I became a coach's wife.

It wasn't easy because, at the time I was also a sports writer, covering high schools. And there's that whole conflict of interest thing that newspapers frown upon. So I couldn't write about him, couldn't cover his games, couldn't write about his successes and failures. Oftentimes, I couldn't even go to his games.

But I was there in spirit. And we certainly did rehash every detail when we got home.

And I learned to expect the unexpected.

Like the time he called me shortly after game time from his cell phone. I was at work at another game far away.

"Where are you?" I asked, wondering if the bus had broken down or the game had been rained out on that perfectly blue spring day.

"I'm in an oak tree," he replied, matter-of-factly.

"Why are you in an oak tree?" I asked, just as matter-of-factly.

"Because the umpire asked me to leave."

"Well, try not to fall out OK?"

I learned to sleep through those nights like these -- the ones before the first game, before the next game, and after the last game.

I learned to live with the silent partner hunched in his chair, chewing his nails as he relives every pitch, every call, every errant throw while he pretends to watch TV with me.

I learned to live with the crazy nights when my house is invaded by coaches and other wives, often bearing food and drink, as they celebrate the good days by reliving every pitch, every call and every errant throw.

I learned to live with the absences, the late nights, the early mornings, the forgotten birthdays, and going solo to family gatherings.

I learned to live with the parents and fans who don't care that his wife and child are within earshot when they call him names because he tried something that didn't work or benched a kid who didn't.

I learned to live with the baseballs. Everywhere.

And the smell.

Because I'd rather live with a man who loves what he does than love a man who doesn't.

Just a few days ago he came home smiling ear-to-ear after watching one of his former players flirt with a no-hitter as the took the mound for the first time for one of the top college programs in this country. A few days later he grinned just as broadly to watch another former player on the same team hit a home run and yet another take the mound for the opposing team.

Tonight he spent hours hunting and pecking on the computer as he compiled a list of every one of his former players who is now playing ball somewhere, either at the college or professional level.

"There are 13," he said, as proud as a parent could be. As proud as a coach could be.

And in a few hours, long before the alarm sounds, he will get out of our bed and come downstairs to sit in this very spot, where he will slave over his lineup and play the game in his head a dozen times. Maybe more.

He will pack his bag with the tools of his trade, careful not to overlook any detail. (But he will probably forget his cell phone.)

Then he will return to our room to kiss me gently goodbye.

And I will whisper, "Win."