Coach

Writing from the vantage point of age 43, Michael Lewis reflects on the people from childhood that resist being trivialized by time. Chief among them is Billy Fitzgerald, his former coach at the Isidore Newman School, a small, wealthy private school in New Orleans. Everyone called him Coach Fitz. Lewis had avoided Fitz for nearly 30 years, until two contradictory pieces of news made him seem like a mystery worth investigating.

The first: David Pointer, a former player and New Orleans financier, launched a campaign to renovate the school gym and name it for Fitz. Hundreds of former players and parents responded with donations, many parents saying Fitz had done the hard work of raising their children. The second: During a summer season, Fitz's current players lost interest and played listlessly. After the final game, Fitz criticized each player individually for failures ranging from skipping practice to breaking promises about conditioning. The players complained to their parents, and the fathers of eight of them filed complaints with the headmaster. Several wanted Fitz fired.

Lewis flies to New Orleans to meet headmaster Scott McLeod. Newman, founded in 1903 as a manual training school for Jewish orphans, had become an affluent institution where, McLeod says, parents' willingness to intercede on their children's behalf grows worse each year. McLeod finds himself caught between devoted former players funding the gym renovation and outraged current parents demanding Fitz be removed. He cannot fire "a legend," but he cannot ignore tuition-paying families either. He has summoned Fitz to his office several times, something no previous headmaster ever did, to insist Fitz modify his behavior.

Lewis flashes back to seventh grade, when Fitz first appeared at Newman. A 6'4", 220-pound minor league catcher in the Oakland A's farm system, Fitz spent his off-season coaching eighth-grade basketball with ferocious intensity, screaming for hours and running players until they collapsed. Sean Tuohy, the team's best player, who would go on to set the Southeastern Conference career assists record at Ole Miss, looked at Fitz's court and said he hoped he would never reach eighth grade.

Lewis's pivotal experience came the summer after freshman year. By then Fitz had quit professional baseball and become Newman's full-time coach. Lewis was 14, physically slight, and of no obvious athletic use. On the last night of the season, with the team tied for first and leading 2–1 in the final inning, Fitz made an illegal second visit to the mound, and an opposing coach forced the umpires to remove Tuohy. Fitz called on Lewis to pitch. The opposing team celebrated, convinced the game was over. On the mound, Fitz erupted with fury, then suddenly became calm, placed a hand on Lewis's shoulder, and conveyed total confidence that Lewis belonged in that moment. He told Lewis to pick off the runner at third, then walked away. Lewis describes the sensation as wholly new: a feeling that he was about to show the world, and himself, what he could do. He picked off the runner and struck out the next batter to win the game. Weeks later, the headmaster told Lewis that Fitz had spoken up for him, suggesting there might be hope for a student who had spent the prior year earning C-minuses and picking fights with teachers.

The following year, Lewis pitched for the varsity at 15. When he left town with his parents during Mardi Gras break, he violated an unspoken code that commitment to baseball should come before personal comfort. Upon his return, while Lewis struggled on the mound, Fitz began shouting from the dugout, declaring that Lewis had been skiing. In 1976 New Orleans, the accusation exposed Lewis as privileged and soft, packing a broader message that wealth breeds the expectation that life should be easy. Distracted, Lewis took a line drive that broke his nose in five places. Rather than feeling wronged, he felt cared for. He returned wearing a protective mask, stayed after practice for extra work, and applied his newfound intensity to every part of his life, as though Fitz had found a switch inside him and flipped it on.

Returning to his investigation, Lewis interviews roughly 20 former players. Nearly all say Fitz changed their lives. He explores the controversy through NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, who played for Fitz at Newman. A disgruntled parent cites Manning's rumored confrontation with Fitz as proof the coach is out of control, but Manning's own memoir credits Fitz as a major source of his toughness. Manning tells Lewis directly that the real problem in high school sports is parents, not coaches like Fitz.

Lewis visits Fitz at the school and finds him gray-haired and heavier but largely unchanged. Fitz says he can no longer get inside his players because the parents intervene whenever he tries. His office holds no trophies, only books, reflecting an intellectual side Lewis barely noticed as a boy. Lewis asks about the legendary stories that circulated among the players, including tales that Fitz once punched basketball star Pete Maravich and chased future All-Star Rusty Staub, and discovers they were largely invented by 14-year-old imaginations. Fitz does not even remember the mound scene that has lived in Lewis's memory for 30 years. Lewis reflects that the moment meant far more to the "white rabbit" than to the magician pulling it from the hat, and that the real tragedy is Fitz is no longer permitted to look for white rabbits in empty hats. When Lewis asks how Fitz has adapted, Fitz replies with bitterness that he has learned he cannot save everybody.

At a game, Lewis observes the divide among parents. The complaining fathers cluster behind home plate, while Stan Bleich, a cardiologist and self-described outsider, sits alone defending Fitz. Bleich's son, Jeremy Bleich, a 16-year-old left-handed pitcher recruited by over 40 colleges, has been alienated from teammates because of his devotion to Fitz. Older players mockingly call Jeremy "J. Fitz" behind his back. A week later, eight players are caught drinking before the regular season. Fitz suspends them and gathers the team for a speech about responsibility. A mother calls to argue her son had only one sip and should not have to run.

Lewis flashes back to the summer of 1976 for a final story. Fitz had entered the team in a stronger league against bigger schools, and defeat followed defeat. After a blowout loss in which runners refused to slide, Fitz took the team at 11 at night to a field behind the gym, its surface littered with glass and shell shards, and ordered headfirst slides until the boys bled. He forbade them from washing their torn uniforms until they won. The team lost seven more games in increasingly foul uniforms; opposing teams grew first amused, then unnerved. Fitz delivered nightly sermons on what it means to be a man and coached through severe illness. One night Lewis spotted him walking home through a dangerous neighborhood, doing penance for the losses. Gradually the boys changed. They stopped fearing failure, and the games grew closer. They finally won a single game and celebrated their 1–12 record with the intensity of champions, hurling their filthy uniforms into the washing machine.

Lewis reflects that Fitz was not teaching them baseball but how to cope with fear and failure, the two greatest enemies of a well-lived life. Fitz understood that his players would never permanently conquer their weaknesses; the only glory lay in the quality of the struggle. When Lewis received his acceptance letter from Princeton University, he ran back to school to tell Fitz.

In a final present-day scene, Fitz gathers his depleted team on the same hard field where boys once slid until they bled. He opens with an Aesop fable about a boy hurling rocks into a pond while a frog begs him to stop, telling his players that their recklessness is death to him. He closes with a Mark Twain quotation about people's refusal to think. Fitz's wife, Peggy, has hinted that for the first time Fitz is considering giving up coaching, faced with a climate that makes his methods nearly impossible. Lewis asks if there is hope. Fitz responds with conviction: You never give up on a team, just as you never give up on a kid. Lewis closes by reflecting that he fears either his own children will never encounter their own Fitz, or they will, and Lewis himself will fail to understand what the coach is trying to do.