In America, if you help a children's baseball team even once, your name is gone. Forever. You are Coach now. I volunteered to carry equipment for the local seven year olds. One Saturday. One bag of bats. By the second Saturday, the kids called me Coach. The parents called me Coach. A man I had never met arrived, shook my hand, and said great to meet you, Coach. I looked behind me. There was no one behind me. I was Coach. I want to be clear about my qualifications. I have never played baseball. My entire contribution was carrying bats and standing in a way that suggests reliability. But this country does not wait for your resume. It promotes you on the spot and trusts you to grow into the rank. So I grew. I tried to teach a boy named Evan how to throw. Evan threw the ball directly behind himself, into the parking lot. A perfect throw, in the wrong universe. The other parents nodded at me supportively, as if this were part of my training method. I decided it was. The warrior learns backward before forward, I announced. A father wrote it down. It is probably on a motivational poster now. Game day. We lost 14 to 3. The score stopped mattering around the fourth run, when both teams got distracted by a very confident goose crossing the outfield. The kids got slushies after, twelve of them, $1.00 each. Their mouths all turned purple, and they compared tongues like warriors comparing banners. Evan hugged my shin, because my shin is the part of me he can reach. His mother took a photo. Cody said you are a natural. I said I am a general without a war. Cody said that is exactly what Coach means. I carry the equipment bag every Saturday now. I answer to Coach. I have stopped explaining that I am not one. In this country, if you show up every week, you are one. That is the entire test. I intend to keep passing it.