HAMILTON — Lewis Earnest sat in a deer stand as a cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
It was a text from Graham Pritchett, a former infielder on the Hamilton High School baseball team. He was the same age as his oldest son, Austin. As kids, they played on the same Little League team, attended the same elementary school and hung out at each other’s houses.
Pritchett’s text said he loved baseball and wanted to return to the team. Earnest replied, his emotions hidden behind the bluntness of non-face-to-face communication: “I just don’t think so.”
—Two sides of a “Grizzly Bear”
There are two versions of Lewis Earnest. The first is the one people know — Aberdeen native, longtime Lions baseball coach, winner of three state championships in baseball (five including slow-pitch softball) and more runner-up trophies than he cares to remember, father of three, teacher at the high school, and husband of 19 years to Debbie.
The second, and the more mysterious and gruff character, is the man kids hear stories about, especially those interested in playing baseball. Demanding. Uncompromising. Stubborn.
“They say he didn’t really take much crap,” senior catcher Parker Rye said.
Rye paused. “He don’t really take much crap now either.”
Senior outfielder Cole Gill, like many players, knew Earnest from church and Little League, long before he reached the high school.
“I heard in those state championship days … he’s let them out at the Little League fields, had them run (back to the school more than a mile away),” Gill said.
The Earnest you know usually depends on where you meet him — in the classroom, where he teaches driver’s education, Biblical history, and physical education, or on the baseball or softball diamonds, where his emotions, hidden behind dark sunglasses, give him an aura of respect and intimidation.
The softball team calls him a Grizzly Bear.
“Most people say, ‘Your dad looks scary,’ but he’s not,” senior pitcher/third baseman Austin Earnest said Wednesday while he watched his dad throw batting practice. “He’s easy to talk to. It just seems he’s hard to talk to, just looking at him.”
It’s not that he’s mean, Lewis Earnest said. He’s just not a real personable guy, unless he’s spoken to. He doesn’t go out of his way to talk to folks, a self-admitted flaw. But if you talk to him, tell a joke, you’ll see him open up. Talk, even laugh.
And if you want to build a winning program, to teach your players how to be respectful men and women in the community, you send your kids to him.
“It was something that wasn’t here before he came, and it’s been here ever since,” said Don Self, a school board member and longtime friend of Lewis, who had two of his sons play for Earnest.
—Immediate consequences
Part of the luxury of being in your 17th season in charge of one of the area’s most successful high school teams is you don’t have to yell and scream or throw buckets of baseballs anymore — unless you want to.
By the time teenagers in this community reach the varsity squad, they’ve heard enough stories — like the time something upset Earnest in practice. He got mad and threw the fungo bat. It got stuck high up in the backstop. Players waited until Earnest, realizing what he did, started to laugh before they did the same.
There also was the time the Lions returned to the school after a terrible performance at the Monroe County tournament.
“When we got back he took a bag of balls and a bag of bats and threw them around at the field and threw the lights on,” said Nathan Self, who was a part of three state championship teams (1997, ’99, 2001, all in Class 1A). “We stayed there until he got satisfied.
“There were some moms out there saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re keeping my baby out there on a school night.’ He didn’t care … When we went home that night and came back that next day, it was a totally different team.”
If they did something wrong, there were immediate consequences. There was no clowning around, even at a relaxed batting practice. He was always on them, keeping them busy, staying on task. It’s what they needed, he said.
Earnest was tough on players because he cared. He wanted them to succeed, perhaps more than they wanted to, or knew they could. It’s why one of the better compliments given to him is he has the ability to transform an average player into a great player. All they have to do is listen, keep their grades up and, by all means, don’t move during the playing of the National Anthem or else.
It’s why more than a dozen former players have moved on from this program to play college baseball, from Tracy Cockerham to Josh West.
The formula has worked. His first season at Hamilton High ended with a 17-15 record and a berth to the North State title game. The following season, the Lions reached the Class 1A State championship game.
The irony is, if you believe Earnest was mean before, he’s gotten nicer, drawing the ire of his younger brother, Jason.
“You need to go back to your old ways,” he tells him.
—A changed man
As Earnest surveys the field, where chatter continued, especially in the infield, where players giggle amongst themselves. Years ago, he would not have let players joke during any practice.
Perhaps society has softened him. Earnest wonders if he could keep players at the diamond after a loss like he did years ago without complaints.
Maybe it’s his old age, he joked.
The change in Earnest also could have something to do with the five-way bypass heart surgery procedure in December 2009. It forced him to back off some of the physical demands of coaching baseball, from throwing as many as 600 balls a day to participating in fungo drills.
Sometimes, when he’s upset — make that livid — he’ll just walk off and not say anything.
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m still intense,” he said. “I don’t throw as much as I used to because of everything that’s cut up in me.”
Back at his office in the baseball field house, Earnest has traded his sunglasses, which hang near his chest, for reading glasses that take their place near the edge of his nose. His baseball cap is removed, exposing a head of salt and pepper hair. He sits at his desk, the sun’s glare peering in over his shoulder. Two rows of trophies rest behind him.
They remind him of a question his daughter, Emily, a left fielder on the slow-pitch softball team he coaches in the fall, asked earlier that day. Reed Jones, a former player, asked if he wanted the 2010 North State trophy. Earnest forgot he gave it to him.
After the Lions’ 2010 postseason run ended short of a state title again, Earnest was presented with his third trophy in recent seasons. Aggravated, he handed it to Reed, saying, “You can have it.”
He laughed about the moment, as his Lions work their way through the playoffs this season.
He wonders if today’s players love the game as some of his past teams. Back then, they would come to his classroom — at all times of the day — to talk baseball. Sometimes they interrupted class, but nobody complained.
He misses the days when players would hang out in his office. Sure, guys like Rye and Chase Reeves stop by now more than they have, but still, not as much as in the past.
—Valuable lessons
“You need baseball more than baseball needs you.”
It’s one of the last messages Earnest gave to Pritchett before telling him he didn’t want him to return to the baseball team. Months earlier, he started hanging out with the wrong crowd, doing the wrong things. While the Lions would miss his playmaking ability, Earnest was willing to take the loss. He couldn’t risk him influencing his young team.
Later, he thought about his decision.
“I watched him grow up. I just couldn’t turn my back on him,” Earnest said. “Felt like baseball may be the one thing that could keep him on track, or turn him around.”
Debbie agreed.
“You’ve watched him grow up from just a little kid. You cannot turn him away.”
So the new Earnest did something his o
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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