Tabitha Baggett filled out God’s lineup card perfectly

 

 

A column by Jimmy Wigfield

God filled out his starting lineup for Thursday and in one of the boxes He wrote, “No. 5, T. Baggett. Position: Heaven.”

By the time Chan Lowe learned of Tabitha Baggett’s departure while sitting in an airplane on a tarmac in Atlanta, Baggett had already triumphantly circled the bases and had flown home ahead of him.

When Baggett reluctantly retired a year before her death from cancer complications, Lowe took over as Leroy’s softball coach feeling he would be a pinch hitter at best for a woman who had won 486 games, forged the Bears into a championship-caliber program and demonstrated the X-ray vision, the motivational piping, the attention to detail and the hardy toughness of a great coach.

“You don’t replace a Tabitha Baggett,” said Lowe, his voice quivering. “No matter who you are, you can’t fill those shoes. I just tried to hold it in the road the best way I could.”

Lowe sat in numb silence during the one-hour flight to Mobile. Below him, those who admired and loved Baggett convulsed while gathering pieces of their broken hearts.

Lowe took Leroy back to the state tournament for the third straight season but not without frequent texts to and from Baggett. The day after her death, he scrolled through them, rather like leafing through the pages of a coaching encyclopedia.

“I’m never going to delete them,” said Lowe, his voice softening.

Those texts gave an insight into part of why Baggett was so good.

“She was always one step ahead of everyone,” Lowe said. “Watching her call pitches was probably the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen in my life. She didn’t pitch to batters, she pitched to outs. She knew how to pitch a batter just by their stance, their swing, whatever, and she studied them so much — OK, where’s our best player on the field? I’m not pitching to strike her out. If we strike her out, great, but I need a ground ball to our shortstop or I need a fly ball to our center fielder. She called pitches to get the ball hit to our best player on the field. And we’ve had some great players over the years.”

In one of the texts, Lowe asked Baggett how to pitch to Thomasville’s best hitters.

“You don’t go up and out to Mardie Carpenter or Imani Brothers,” Baggett replied. “They will beat you if they can get extended.”

In another text, Baggett asked Lowe about the outcome against J.U. Blacksher. The Bears lost 2-1 on what Lowe felt was a numbskull decision but even from afar Baggett had the correct answer.

“I got beat on a gamble,” Lowe told her, explaining at length that a batter had consistently hit the ball up the middle, so he moved shortstop Hannah Howard closer to second base to cut off what surely would be another ground ball.

“As soon as I did that, she hit it right in the six hole where Hannah would have been,” Lowe said.

Baggett responded: “If it makes you feel any better, I’d have cheated her to second base too.”

Lowe went from bewildered to bewitched.

“It makes you look like an idiot in the middle of the game but to know that somebody that won over 400 games would have made the same decision makes you feel a little bit better,” he said.

 

A sweet ‘bad ass’

 

One of Baggett’s many gifts, as her players discovered, was her predictable unpredictability. They knew she was disarming and caring yet she could disassemble a player down to her cleats with a mere look.

Former player Rebecca Andrews summarized the dichotomy of her forever coach.

“Such a bad ass, yet also such a sweet and soft soul willing to do anything for anyone,” Andrews said in a Facebook post.

When Baggett was pregnant with her first son, Catcher, she cried during a team meeting because she feared she had lost her hammer in the toolbox.

“These hormones are making me soft,” Baggett complained.

Andrews didn’t know how to interpret what she was hearing.

“When your coach that will break clipboards and make you run countless foul poles for poor game performance is in tears, it’s shocking,” she said. “There were games we played so poorly that we were scared to get back on that bus with her. If coach B was silent or walked away, you better be afraid! We would go ahead and line up to run some poles without even being told because we had such mad respect for her. I towered over ‘Shorty’ at six feet but all she had to do was look at me to put fear in my soul. I was willing to do anything to please coach.”

Those who played with her at Fruitdale — back then she was Tabitha Baxter — often felt the same way. Brian Henry, who coached her there, said she was a precocious leader who found laziness and failure intolerable.

“She played like she coached — with her hair on fire,” he said. “She was very passionate, she was going to work harder than everybody else. You didn’t have to worry about her. She was the valedictorian. She wasn’t going to get in trouble. She was going to make the grades. She was going to show up and go to work every day and she expected everybody else to do that.”

Unless both legs were broken — and even then, she might have dragged herself around the bases with her bare hands — Baggett played hurt and expected everyone else to.

“She was just so competitive and tough,” Henry said. “If she was hurt, banged up, sick, it didn’t matter. She just loved playing softball. I talked her into coming out for basketball and she would turn a basketball game into a rugby or a football game. You weren’t going to score. She wasn’t the greatest offensive player in the world but she would turn it into a train wreck. She was hard-nosed and she wanted everybody to be that way.”

“She called out every individual in that locker room and said this is not going to happen again,” Henry said. “She probably hurt some feelings at times but they all respected her.”

In her junior year, Henry made a mistake that cost Fruitdale a game by failing to report a pinch hitter to the umpire; she brought in the winning run but was then called out. While going back to the bus, Henry might have expected Baggett to make him ride on the roof.

“She walked up to me and said, ‘I’ve got your back, coach. We’re going to be just fine,’” he said. “I’ll always remember that.”

Baggett’s skills in high school were often far superior because she played fast-pitch travel ball.

“She understood the fast-pitch game while the rest of us were trying to learn it and figure out,” Henry said. “She played the outfield rover and she could throw you out from the outfield if a ball was hit in the middle. She could play any position she wanted. She was a great hitter. She understood you hit behind runners. That bunch probably taught me as much about softball as any group I had. It was fun.”

It was led by Baggett’s indomitable spirit.

“They wanted to destroy you when they stepped inside the lines,” Henry said.

 

Huge respect, influence

 

This spring, in her first year out of the game since she was a toddler, Baggett found herself awash in praise, concern and respect from all corners of the state.

During Leroy’s Senior Night to honor K.K. Guy and Mariah Barnes, Baggett hugged Lowe and told him, “Thank you for continuing this and letting us be a part of it.”

“This is always your program and it will always be your program,” Lowe replied.

Baggett didn’t want to draw attention to herself, leaning on the fence during most of the ceremony. What was most disquieting was realizing she needed something to lean on because the sun drained her energy.

The organizers also gave Thomasville’s seniors roses and they crossed the field to hug Baggett.

“At the state tournament this year, I go to the meeting at home plate and the first thing that opposing coach asks is, ‘How’s Tabitha?’” Lowe said. “The most classy thing this whole season was we beat Brantley to go to the state tournament. The girls interlock and they say the Lord’s Prayer and (coach) Cindy Hawthorne at Brantley steps in and she says, ‘I’m going to cut you all off right now and I’m going to ask is it OK if we pray for Tabitha.’”

Such attention, even in the best of times, made Baggett uneasy.

“Even when she was diagnosed, she didn’t want anybody to feel sorry for her,” Lowe said. “(Her husband) Kenneth texts me or calls me the Tuesday night before we play in the regional and tells me they’re supposed to put her on a vent and he wanted me to tell the girls. I had that conversation with them in that hotel room in Gulf Shores. The one thing that he made sure I told them is, ‘You don’t lose because she is going on this.’ Her mindset is don’t worry about me, y’all go freaking play, suck it up and go win.”

Baggett won because she could identify and polish each player’s strengths and then tie them together as a team.

“As coaches, we tried to get student-athletes to be able to do more than they’re capable of,” Henry said. “That was the thing that was really special about her coaching, It didn’t matter if it was her 20th player or her best player, she could get them to improve and get to the next level. She could individualize her ballplayers and make each one feel a part of the team and be better.”

Andrews, who played sparingly and is now a clinical pathologist in North Carolina, said that approach endeared her to Baggett and shaped her as an adult.

“I’ll never understand why the good die young,” said Andrews, who will be inspired all the more to play a role in medical breakthroughs because of Baggett. “Thank you just doesn’t even seem to be enough.”

Baggett’s influence will live for years on and off the field. Jersey No. 5, her favorite number, is in a display case at her home but has not been retired. Her son, Catcher, also wears the number and has a lot to live up to. If his grand slam three days before his mother also went beyond the wall is a sign, he will wear it well.