Summer school for managers.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Sports Biz - Column

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT MANAGING PEOPLE WOULDN'T FILL TWO pages of a book, and might not even get me through this column.

But the handful of valuable lessons I've learned about getting individuals to work together in a common cause came from a setting where you won't find a single cubicle or copy of "Microsoft Office" or cup of molding yogurt left behind by the guy in IT who went to work for Oracle.

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Rather, the lessons derived from about 400 square feet of hardened brown dirt backed by patches of barely tended grass and fronted by a latticework of thick fence wire.

A ball field.

This summer marks my retirement after 15 years of coaching recreational-level youth baseball and softball teams.

It started when my 5-year-old son was whacking the ball from a stationary tee, and ended in mid-July with a winning season from a team whose scrappy, hard-throwing shortstop happens to be my 16-year-old daughter.

In between, everything every volunteer coach goes through. Wrenching meltdowns. Sobbing players. The occasional defiant parent. Dusty duffel bags of gear hauled 200 times from the car trunk. Miniature coolers filled with ice cubes to keep ankles from bruising and swelling. That vacant, helpless feeling when your pitcher has walked four consecutive batters and you've got nothing in the bullpen and it's only the third inning.

And every now and then, marvelous, joyous breakthroughs. The awkward kid with few friends who, hitless until now, keeps a rally alive in a championship game by lacing a hard single over second base and will, you realize, have that moment to keep forever. The towering two-out fly ball that remains suspended forever above right field before it finally lands with a convincing thwack! in the deepest part of a kid's glove--your kid's glove--for the final out.

Coaching rec-level ball isn't anywhere near as demanding as managing a competitive youth team filled with scholarship-seekers and the determined parents who drop them off in the parking lot.

But in some ways it's more emblematic of the reality of managing a company, or a division, or a mail room. You have a mix of talents and temperaments to accommodate. Some you recruited, some you inherited, some you settled for because it was Friday and you needed to fill a position on Tuesday. So you work with what you've got.

Here are three things the 150 or so players I've coached over the last 15 summers have taught me:

* Let people know what their job is. A cable TV...