The eternal reach of a coach hits home for Leroy softball players after Tabitha Baggett’s passing

 

 

 

LEROY — Three days after Tabitha Baggett’s death, the scoreboard at Baggett Field was dark and mute but there was no need to wish it could speak of all the things that happened underneath it through the years. No, the only score that mattered that Sunday was kept by the 32 former and current players who had spontaneously gathered there to rejoice and grieve the woman they called Coach B.

One player in particular felt Baggett’s pull — Brookelyn Keith might call it a shove — to go beyond what she ever felt was possible. It is a testimonial to the late Leroy High School softball coach’s influence and powers of persuasion — a year after she left the field for the last time and even in death — that she convinced someone who never wanted to coach, who never wanted to endure again how Baggett had challenged her, to change her mind.

The dirt infield hadn’t been tended to in weeks, not since the season ended, and its orange, barren surface — packed, cracked and dusty — was lifeless and more like Mars. It needed some tilling and suddenly got it when the impromptu assemblage of players brought the field and Baggett back to life. They raided the concession stand, ate popsicles, placed flowers in the third-base box and home plate and told stories that brought laughter and tears, a moment Keith said her old coach would have disapproved of.

“I got a text from an older player saying she wanted to meet at three o’clock at the field because that’s where B would want us to be,” Keith said. “Well, she may not want us to be there because she’d probably be mad that we’re taking time out of our day to go up there. Just about all of us played for her for six years, so you can only imagine the amount of memories that were made through her. … It was bittersweet. It was needed.”

It also included a lot of playful references from the older players about how demanding Baggett was in making them earn the privilege of wearing Leroy pinstripes.

“They ain’t done nothin’ but complain how tough they had it in B’s younger years and how the young kids just get hugs and pats on the back,” said Baggett’s husband and assistant coach, Kenneth “Frank” Baggett. “They said, ‘We had to run three miles. We had to practice in the snow.’”

Keith, who graduated in 2024, Baggett’s final season as the coach, said her softball life had plenty of strife, too.

“She pushed me hard every day,” Keith said. “I actually made her mad 99.9 percent of the time because she told me that I had way more potential.”

The toughest teachers are often recalled most fondly after some jarring years with them and the dynamic between Keith and Baggett was no exception.

“She called me a sissy because I was scared to play third base,” Keith said. “She finally just threw me out there and told me to either bow up or get my teeth knocked down my throat. What I would give to go back.”

Why?

“I mean, it was …”

The words came haltingly as Keith carefully collected the thoughts rolling around in her head while she went back in time before returning as a changed person upon realizing this was the undistilled way that Baggett showed her love for her players.

“What was hard was knowing that at some point in time you’re going to disappoint her and she is the type of person you do not want to disappoint, not because she’s going to be mean, not because she’s going to get on your butt,” Keith said. “I know that I had more potential and she knew I had more potential and sometimes I wasn’t where it was needed to be.”

It gushed forward in the 2024 state semifinals, when Keith’s two-out RBI triple brought in Mariah Barnes with the winning run in a 4-3 victory over Hackleburg to send the Bears to the Class 1A state championship game.

“I don’t know if I realized, ‘Oh crap, this is it and I’m going to play balls to the walls,’ but I played the hardest and I had the best tournament that I think I’ve ever played,” Keith said.

As Keith reached third base on her game-winning triple, she was wedged in a genuine Bear hug by Mr. and Mrs. Baggett.

“When I got to third, that hug,” Keith said — pausing as the memory poured out— “was one of my biggest accomplishments. I knew that was her last year and I was so glad that I could be the one to get her that. She said, ‘I respect you so much for the way that you ended,’ and I could not think of a better way to go out just because I know that’s what she thinks of me. I felt some type of validation knowing that she noticed and she appreciated what I had done.”

Keith had finally experienced what Baggett held so dear.

“She loved to feel the pressure moments,” her husband said. “She said, ‘Nothing else gives me the adrenaline rush.’”

Keith also understood Baggett’s insistence that frivolousness does not win games. In one instance, the coach grew incensed by music playing in the dugout during a rare miserable performance.

“She came over there and said, ‘DON’T TURN THAT MUSIC ON UNTIL Y’ALL SCORE 10 RUNS!’” Keith said. “And we turned that music off and, I’m not kidding, the next inning we scored 10 runs. After that, we were like, ‘Don’t even turn the music back on.’”

The incessant desire to win began stirring in Keith a newfound commitment to Baggett’s way of life, something her husband said was already present when they began dating at Fruitdale High School.

“From the day we started talking, she told me, ‘If you want to see me, you’ll have to do it at the ballfield because I play every weekend,’” he remembered. “First off, that was fine because her father wouldn’t let her go with me anywhere anyway. Secondly, when she told me that, I didn’t know she meant for the next 26 years.”

When Chan Lowe took over as Leroy’s softball coach in 2025, he asked Keith to be his assistant and call pitches, something she never thought she would do.

“I always told myself that I’m never gonna coach, I’m never gonna be a teacher and when I graduate from high school, I’m never gonna do anything with softball again,” said Keith, who is attending Coastal Alabama Community College in Thomasville. “But when coach Lowe asked me if I would want to come help, I was like absolutely because I love Leroy. After doing it this year, I loved it. Then I started questioning it a little bit about two weeks ago. Then when Coach B passed, I was like this is what I want to do. I know that she would be so proud of me. She would eat it up.”

And now Keith’s dream is to be the Bears’ coach.

“I just hope I can be half the coach she was because she is a legend,” Keith said of Baggett. “There is nowhere else I’d rather be. I only want to be at Leroy. I told my mom the other day, ‘I’ll work at the gas station until I can get a job at Leroy.’”