A Big League Gesture for a Little League Coach

Clement Cohen watches the major league baseball playoffs with a critical eye. When a millionaire big leaguer bobbles a pickoff throw or can’t hit the cutoff man, Cohen’s stomach clenches.

“You get a little nutty when the kids do it,� Cohen says, “and then you see guys making millions, grown men, and they can’t put it together. But the playoffs have been exciting, lots of good baseball. Lots of frustrating baseball too. All in all a couple of exciting series.�

It has been an exciting baseball season for Cohen, 64, a resident of Encino who received the great honor this year of being recognized as a fine coach and a finer human being by a former player at the Little League World Series.

To his great surprise, for the trip was offered as a chance for the old coach to see a former player being honored, Cohen accompanied Robin Yount to Williamsport, Pa.

For three years, Cohen coached Yount in the San Fernando Valley Little League. Never did Yount and Cohen make it to Williamsport, though when Yount was 12, the team was undefeated during the season. Cohen recognized that Yount had special baseball skills, but it was not the baseball talent that drew Yount and Cohen close or what has kept them close for more than 30 years.

Yount was always welcomed into the Cohens’ home. Clement’s wife, Esther, would invite Robin for lunch and dinner, just another member of the family. When Yount was in high school and feeling as if baseball wasn’t for him, Yount called Cohen for advice. Gently, Cohen talked about Yount’s talent, his special talent. Yount kept playing baseball.

“Mr. Cohen is the type of guy everybody likes,� Yount says.

Yount is 45 and still can hardly bring himself to use Cohen’s first name.

“Mr. Cohen, um, Clem, was the type of personality you respected as a kid because he was almost like one of us, and you still respected him as an adult.

“The first thing that came to my mind when I was invited to the Little League World Series and to bring somebody with me, was Clem Cohen. He and I had both dreamed of playing in the World Series, we both came so close together and this just seemed like a perfect fit. Because I’ll never be able to pay him back for everything he helped teach me.�

So it was that Yount invited Cohen and his family to Cooperstown this summer when Yount was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Cohen’s grandson, Elan Cohen-Sieder, whom Cohen coaches now in Little League, visited the Hall of Fame and left wanting to return. It is that tie to baseball’s history that so many children don’t have or ever get.

And when Yount called Cohen a few weeks later and invited him along to Williamsport, where Yount was to receive the William Shea award as a former Little Leaguer most recently inducted to the Hall of Fame, Cohen expected to sit in the stands and cheer.

There he was, spiffy in summer whites, when Yount began talking to the crowd of more than 40,000. Yount told the crowd how Cohen had given him much more than instructions on how to bunt and move the runner to second. Yount talked about how Cohen taught him values, about right and wrong, about how to be a good winner and a good loser, to be fair and honest, about how to always do and be your best.

Then Yount called Cohen onto the field and handed Cohen the William Shea award and asked Cohen to speak.

In the retelling of this, Cohen gets a hint of wetness in his eyes. But not for long. Quickly, Cohen is talking about the respectful way Yount always behaved; about his “yearning to learn,� Cohen says.

“The thing about Robin was that he was not too good to learn,� Cohen said. “In 31 years of coaching, I don’t think I’ve ever had a player who wanted to learn as much as Robin.�

Cohen was a teacher once but, he says, “Then I retired. I had to support my family.�

That was a joke, a little one anyway. Now he is a dealer in fine art, traveling around the world to negotiate and purchase pieces for clients. But no matter what Cohen did at his day job, he always coached.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Cohen was a huge Chicago Cub fan. He lived near the old Wrigley Field and was a batboy for the old Pacific Coast League Angels, a Cub farm team, “for about three nights, until my mother said I couldn’t be coming home that late,� Cohen says.

Even now, Cohen says, he’s a Cub fan. He went to Dorsey High and USC. He met and married Esther. He coached his own sons in Little League and now his grandson. He remembers how Yount’s team was one out from going to Williamsport to play in the World Series.

“We were playing Bolsa Chica,� Cohen says. “We were 20-0, leading by a run, two outs in the last inning and we dropped a fly ball. Lost in eight innings.�

That loss didn’t matter. Neither did it matter that Cohen has never taken a team to Williamsport. What matters is that a young baseball player became his lifelong friend. And that they went to the Little League World Series together.

*

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected].