Al Kyte's Life Take-Aways

As children we learned early that our dad meant what he said.  We knew he loved us, but when his voice took on a certain tone and his eyes, a certain expression, we had a clear signal to stop what we were doing and listen.  Whenever my sister or I stepped across some behavioral boundary, dad would get our attention in that way, then let us know what punishment to expect if we did not stop.  And that was exactly what would occur if we failed to heed his warning.  He would not yell or scream at us, and there was never an idle threat.  What was most impressive was that our dad had already thought about what that punishment would be.  Eventually I called this technique his “two strike” policy.  We were warned (strike 1) and, if necessary, punished (strike 2).  This discipline was consistent and fair.

My dad used that same technique in his coaching. With money tight, he supplemented his teaching income by working nights and summers for the Oakland Recreation Department. One summer in this capacity he was assigned to coach a team of 11 and 12-year-old boys in a poor area of the city. Among those boys was a highly-gifted athlete named Vada Pinson. One day Vada was pitching batting practice and threw a pitch close to the head of the boy at bat. That boy fell to avoid being hit by the pitch, and Vada laughed. My dad interjected. “Vada, we don’t throw at another player’s head, even if that player were on an opposing team. You do that again and you will be removed from the team.” There it was—the “two strike” policy. Vada didn’t believe a coach would kick the star player off the team, so decided to test his coach. He threw close to the boy’s head again. When my dad took his uniform, Vada said, “Mr. Kyte, I was going to come to Oakland Tech to play for you. But now I’m not. I will go to McClymonds High and get game-winning hits against you.”

A few years later, Vada proved to be as good as his word.  He was playing on the McClymond’s team and did get a game-winning hit against my dad’s team.  Later he went on to professional baseball and had a highly-successful career as an all-star outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds.

 I remember the night Vada phoned my father.  Cincinnati had come west to play the Giants in San Francisco.  In their conversation, Vada said,  “Mr. Kyte, I have thought for some years about how you kicked me off that team when I was 12 years old.  I realized you didn’t gain anything by doing that.  Eventually it occurred to me that you had done that for me—for my character.  You may have prevented me from making a similar mistake later on when it would have hurt my career.  I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for caring enough about me to kick me off a team.”  I remember how proud my dad was of the man Vada had become.

My dad’s high school baseball and basketball teams won 22 championships, and lost others because he benched star players who held themselves above the team and its rules.  Oakland Tech’s athletic field is named Al Kyte field and at least three of his players named their sons after him.  There is no question that my dad played to win, but the character development of his players was more important to him than winning.  He believed that a school coach’s job was more about developing better people than developing better athletes.  I wonder how many of today’s performance-driven, walk-on coaches that would occur to?  Hopefully more than a few.  This world needs men and women of character more than it needs super athletes.

Some nights are more memorable than others.  One I won’t forget occurred on a fishing trip into the mountains of south-central Alaska.  In the middle of that night, I woke to find that I needed to answer nature’s call.  I rolled out of my sleeping bag, grabbed my shoes, tip-toed downstairs and out the cabin door, and walked over to the outhouse.  When I was finished with my business there, I tried to leave that outhouse, but couldn’t.  I was locked in!  How could that have happened?  Well, to get into that outhouse I had lifted the little hook on the outside of the structure’s door, and that hook had fallen back into a locked position from the impact of the door closing behind me when I entered.  It was 4:00 AM, I was in my long johns, and trapped.  There was no way I was going to call for help, because as the leader of the group I would never hear the end of it.  And I wasn’t going to damage the outhouse.  How was I going to get out of there?

I found that I could crack the door open a quarter of an inch so knew that all I had to do to get out was to find something rigid to poke through the crack and lift the hook upward.  So I started looking around for an old nail.  There wasn’t even one.  That was the most neatly constructed outhouse I have ever seen.  The only thing I could find in it was one magazine, which proved too flimsy to lift the hook off.  There wasn’t even a roller for the toilet paper, and I didn’t wear glasses then. It was looking bad, but in the back of my mind I had been thinking of something that just might work.

I sat down and removed the shoelace from one of my shoes.  With one hand I held the door open that quarter of an inch and with the other hand started to “hand cast” that shoelace back and forth like a fly line.  After a few attempts, the lace went knifing through the crack and became draped over the shank of the hook.  I hung on to my end of the shoelace and slid the cover of the magazine through the crack to capture the other end that was hanging down barely outside the door.  In that way I was able to bring that end of the shoelace back in through the crack.  Once I had both ends in hand I could raise them high enough to lift the hook up from its locked position and open the door.  I was free! 

The next morning when I told the anglers in my group what had happened, one guy seemed to doubt my story.  Later, when he noticed me go into the outhouse, he locked me in.  I was forced to use my shoelace escape a second time.  Why does there always have to be a skeptic?