ST ANN, Mo. — "Once a coach, always a coach," Vince Misuraca said.
It's a Tuesday night at the 72-year-old Athletic Boys Club Ballpark in St. Ann, Missouri. Looks like an ordinary night with kids delivering base hits and parents cheering them on in the background.
But in the dugout, managing two games for about six hours is an extraordinary man named Vince Misuraca.
"I am just hoping that I can be some kind of good influence," Misuraca said. "They deserve it, they're coming out here being good kids so they deserve a break."
Coach V has been doing this for 47 years. Over 100 teams and nearly 2,000 players, and he has advice for everybody.
"He is always so patient with us. Never furious or anything like that no matter what happens during the game," player Jalen Allen said. "One of the nicest guys I have ever met."
Thanks to some timely hitting, Coach V's team won the game 4-2 on Tuesday night. But he knows his job isn't about wins and losses.
"If it's not fun, it's not worth being out here," he said. "And I have more fun with the kids than the kids do with me."
"He loves it," coach Josh Doering said. "I think he can't stop. It's just in his blood, helping kids."
On this day, he bought his catcher a new mitt. For any of these players who have trouble with fees, Coach V takes care of it.
He does all of this coaching with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, three back operations and two strokes. One of the strokes happened 18 months ago, which left him in bad shape.
"One day I went to visit him and he had no clue I was there, he was just out and I was in and he didn't know who I was," coach Chris Cunningham said. "And we've known each other for 30 years. It was bad."
Did his doctor think it was a good idea for him to continue coaching?
"He didn't say it was a bad one, so...." Misuraca said.
You see, baseball and kids give him all the oxygen he needs.
"I do it because I love it," he said.
When asked how much longer he could continue coaching, he had one simple answer.
"Forever," he said. "Forever."
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