“Fall down

seven times,

stand up eight.”

Proverb shared by Kenneth Baggett

to Leroy’s players

during the state tournament

 

 

 

 

 

 

By JIMMY WIGFIELD

OXFORD, Ala. — That Leroy lost a softball game and a possible state championship Wednesday night was far less important than accepting the fact that the one person who made it all possible is fighting for her life while showing her players how to “B Strong,” as their uniforms proclaimed.

Longtime Bears coach Tabitha Baggett, who built Leroy into a state contender, announced after a 9-0 loss to No. 1-ranked Skyline that she is retiring to concentrate more fully on her two-year fight to beat breast cancer and to spend more time with her family.

“This has to be it,” Baggett said after an emotionally wrenching meeting with her players, who were dressed in pink uniforms in a show of solidarity with their coach.

“I hate to walk away from it but at some point we all have to do it and it’s time for me,” she said. “I have things I have to focus on with my kids and in my personal life. I’ve been battling this for two years.”

Baggett said her prognosis is uncertain — “the doctors haven’t given me one” — but she has been undergoing chemotherapy.

Baggett, who grew up playing softball in Fruitdale but preferred baseball for many years, also has sons of 3 and 11 and her husband Kenneth has stood by her side as an assistant coach for years. Their oldest son plays travel baseball and she wants to devote more time to them.

“They’ve shared me long enough,” she said.

After the final game, Baggett — who took the Bears to the state tournament eight times — gathered her weeping players in the left-field corner of Signature Stadium, the pinnacle of high school softball in Alabama, and told them of more than just winning and losing games. As they sat on the grass and listened to Baggett speak, the tears on their faces glittered in the stadium lights.

Finally, as they stood up, the players wrapped Baggett in long embraces one at a time.

“I love you coach,” they said through their sobs.

“I love you too,” Baggett said, tears trickling from the corners of her eyes.

They all might have been remembering something Kenneth Baggett shared with them earlier in the day after a 4-3 win over Hackleburg decided by Brookelyn Keith’s game-winning RBI triple in the last inning, which clung desperately to a sliver of fair territory along the right-field line.

Kenneth Baggett told them of a Japanese proverb that translated means: “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” In their freshly won victory or in defeat, in halting words that he forced through his clutched throat, he told them to look at the broader scope of life, to never give up hope, that winning and losing are both fleeting and the greater accomplishments might come far later — as long as they never quit.

The Baggetts developed the spirit as much as softball skills. Leroy won 10 games this season by coming from behind.

“Coach is amazing,” said pitcher K.K. Guy, who won three games in two days at the state tournament. “She loves each of us like we were her own daughters. This has been tough for her. We played for her in everything we did.”

Leroy baseball coach Matt Braun, whom Baggett asked to help with the softball coaching after the Bears lost two second-round playoff games to Sweet Water this season, has boundless admiration for her.

“The job we do is really difficult to do well with no adversity,” he said. “She has overcome an unimaginable amount of adversity with poise and grace. She has had her best years the last two years when she has had it the most difficult. She’s one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”

Braun was having a hard time coping with the two walk-off losses to Sweet Water when Baggett asked for his help and, realizing the health issues she was enduring, could not refuse.

“I think so highly of her that she is the only coach I would have come and helped after our season ended,” Braun said.

After Leroy had been tied up and thrown in the deep end of the ocean in two earlier games at the state tournament only to swim out, Skyline rattled its sabers early in Wednesday’s championship round, taking a 7-0 lead in the first inning and protecting it with Olivia Treece’s one-hitter on the way to its 10^th straight victory and a 33-12 finish.

Only Keith’s double to left-center field in the top of the fourth prevented a no-hitter. The Bears never got a runner past second base.

Leroy — which finished as the Class 1A state runner-up for the second straight year — took the field with its players’ nerves jangling, knowing they would have to win twice, perhaps nearly until the roosters started crowing, to win the Blue Map for themselves, their community and Baggett.

They committed three errors in the first, leading to four unearned runs off Guy, their ace who threw 315 pitches in two days.

“I’m very sad and disappointed,” Guy said. “I know we could have done better. We were very nervous in the first inning.”

When the Vikings weren’t taking bases with the errors, they were taking batting practice.

“They were just hitting me,” said Guy, who finished her junior season 17-8. “They were barreling me up.”

Baggett said Guy — who gave up four hits in the first — didn’t pitch badly and was the victim of the errors, two of which came on routine plays that could have ended the inning before the damage became insurmountable.

“The truth is, K.K. should have been out of that inning with one run but we booted it and threw it around too much,” Baggett said. “We came out a little jittery and couldn’t recover. I was surprised. It’s not that they didn’t have the ability to do it but we gave them too many and then you can’t play your game.”

McKenzie Smith came on in relief and held Skyline to one hit for 3.2 innings before the Vikings scored twice in the sixth.

The Bears finished 26-18 after coming out of March with a 14-12 record and nowhere close to resembling a state championship contender.

“I couldn’t be more proud of them,” Baggett said. “From where we were at midseason, not a lot of people thought we’d be here. Very few people get to play this game and come here. I’m not hanging my head about it. They were better than us today.”

It’s going to take time for Leroy’s players, alumni and fans to get accustomed to watching games played at the field named in honor of the Baggetts four years ago without seeing them in the dugout. But for those who were on her last team, giving everything they have for the Bears will always include her.

“I’m going to work hard this summer,” said Guy, who vowed she wants to win the Blue Map as a senior for the school, whoever the new coach is and the coach who taught her how to play the game.

Baggett expects the foundation she and her husband built to continue being fruitful.

“I’ve been surrounded by great people and there will still be a ton of great people here,” Baggett said.