By Scott Fowler
The Charlotte Observer
Reprinted by permission (Many thanks to The Observer for allowing me to put this story and many others I've written for the newspaper online. Check out The Observer's website at www.CharlotteObserver.com

The last pitch Little League baseball coach Sean Schultz ever threw came on Sept.14 in Charlotte as his team took batting practice.

Schultz took his normal windup, but then the baseball trickled out of his right hand and into the dirt. Schultz, 40, fell face-first toward the batter. His team of 9-year-olds wondered for a second if he was teasing them - Coach Sean was always making them laugh.

But after a few seconds, everyone realized this was no joke. Two assistant coaches sprinted to the mound, turned Schultz over and saw something was seriously wrong. One asked the other: What do we do?

The kids milled around, wide-eyed and confused. Ben Schultz - Coach Sean's 9-year-old son and one of the team's most enthusiastic members - started to cry.

All of it happened so fast on a warm Monday evening in mid-September. It was about 6 p.m., midway through baseball practice for a team that had christened itself "Bad News."

Sean Schultz would officially be declared dead at Presbyterian Hospital at 7:45 that night. He suffered a massive heart attack on that final pitch.

But his Little League team will never forget him, and you shouldn't, either. For Sean Schultz was the coach every parent should want for his kid.

Coaches hold inordinate power over kids learning how to play sports. Some coaches can squeeze the joy out of the game, yelling at every mistake and pressuring kids to excel.

But if you're lucky, at least once in your life you get a coach who can inspire without threats and teach without screams. A coach like that gives you confidence. He entrusts you with responsibility. He cares about you. He gives you a gift, showing how wondrous sports can be when played the right way.

Sean Schultz was a coach like that. "Have fun," he preached from the first practice onward. He coached in flip flops. He smiled constantly. He knew the sport, but he knew what mattered even more.

When the kids struck out, he praised them for trying. When they hit the ball, he praised them like they had just homered in the World Series.

Schultz calmed parents who didn't think the boys were paying enough attention to instruction on proper batting stances or base-running procedure. He passed out packs of baseball cards after games - not just to his best players, but to everyone.

"The first time I ever saw Coach Sean was at our first practice," said Jackson Griffith, 9. "He looked really fun. I just knew he was going to be nice. That little crooked grin on his face told me."

David McClure, the parent of one of the kids on the team, was the man who had to eventually replace Schultz as head coach of the "Bad News." McClure had already coached youth sports for many years, but changed his style to more closely mimic Schultz's after he saw the results.

"I was a better coach this year than I've ever been," McClure said, "and I know it's because of watching outside the fence as Sean Schultz coached my child. I can tend to get a little short-fused. But Sean? His fuse was limitless."

Schultz was different in that way, as well as in a lot of others. By choice, he didn't have a regular job for the last several years.

And although no one outside of his immediate family knew it, Schultz understood that his life might be shortened because of heart problems. His father is still alive but has had heart issues for decades.

In October 1999, Sean Schultz had his first heart attack - at age 30. It came two days after he and his wife Kaaren found out she was pregnant with Ben, who would be their only child.

So, much like the country song made famous by Tim McGraw, Sean lived like he was dying for the last 10 years of his life.

"We weren't doctors," said Kaaren. "We didn't know because he had had this one heart attack that he was going to die young. But we knew it was a possibility. We talked about it. We accepted it as much as you can accept something like that. Maybe we felt a little bit he had cheated death the first time, and so we were going to make the most of whatever time he had left."

A Room Dad and coach

Sean and Kaaren Schultz took a family trip to Alaska as part of their successful quest to see all 50 states.

Instead of going to work, Sean picked up his son Ben after school every day.

They built forts made of bamboo and wood in the backyard. They set up hundreds of green plastic army soldiers on the porch and re-enacted World War II battles, nurturing Ben's love of history. Sean, Kaaren and Ben took mammoth trips across the country, often camping out and together visiting every one of America's 50 states.

Every Halloween, for years, the three of them would work at a haunted house for charity. Through eBay, Schultz even bought a casket to use as a prop for one of those haunted houses. It cost $300.

"This is the casket I will one day be buried in," he would half-jokingly tell people. And it was.

Schultz was buried wearing a short-sleeved shirt, plaid shorts and flip flops. He wore a baseball cap. He held an American flag in his left hand and, in his right, the last baseball he threw.

Schultz loved the rhythms of baseball. It delighted him that his only child grew to love the sport, too. He spent hours planning for the best way to combine fun and fundamentals as a coach for Ben's youth teams for five straight years.

"Sean not working was one of the choices we made for many years," said Kaaren, who supported the family with her job as a preschool teacher and director of afterschool and summer programs at Charlotte Preparatory School. "It made it extra hard for us financially. But oh my gosh, the value of Sean being able to be with Ben all the time."

At Ben's elementary school last year, Sean was the Room Dad for Ben's second-grade class.

"He was always coming into the class and helping," Ben said. "I loved that."

At the baseball fields at Myers Park Trinity Little League, Sean drew kids closer into his huddles by talking in a soft voice, then lowering it even more when the kids acted up.

Said McRae Gage, a 9-year-old on the team: "Coach Sean was very funny and nice. And you could really trust him."

McRae was batting when his coach threw that last pitch. Coach Sean had thrown him three pitches already, and he had hit all three.

McRae was more relaxed this season than he had ever been and was hitting the ball better. His parents could see that. They attributed this to Schultz's coaching style.

As Schultz wound up for his fourth pitch and McRae crouched in his batting stance, McRae's mother Beth stood by the left-field fence, watching her son hit.

Claire Bowles, a doctor who also had a son on Schultz's team, sat in her car talking with another physician on her cellular phone. Assistant coach Fred Griffith played with his 6-year-old daughter Georgia in the outfield. Other kids gathered by the dugout or stood ready in the infield in case the ball came to them.

Practice was humming. Coach Sean always ended his practices at precisely 7p.m.

He knew how precious time was.

The first heart attack

Sean Schultz came to Charlotte 15 years ago by way of Michigan. The youngest of three boys, he grew up 20 minutes from the University of Michigan campus and became an enormous fan of Michigan's football team.

After high school, Schultz tried community college but didn't like it. He moved to Atlanta, where an older brother had already settled, and found work in the carpet-cleaning business. In 1994, he would move to Charlotte and partner with a friend to open a carpet-cleaning business.

Sean always enjoyed working with kids and quickly got involved in the Charlotte Jaycees. Eventually, he would become the group's president.

While helping construct a haunted house for the Jaycees, he met another young Jaycee named Kaaren Mires, who had grown up in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The two became friends, working on charitable events and playing together on a softball team.

Kaaren was gregarious and independent. Sean was quiet and rarely rattled. The relationship turned romantic. They developed secrets like couples do, declaring that the numbers "1-2-3" would be their code for "I love you."

On May 29, 1999, the two were married in a small chapel on Lake Wylie in South Carolina.

Sean would have his first heart attack - a "silent" one - five months later. It came during a softball game, and was mild enough that he kept playing through the pain. But he kept feeling more uncomfortable, went to the emergency room after the game and discovered it indeed had been a heart attack.

"He was a wreck when he found out," Kaaren said. "He was crying. All he could think about was the baby and me."

Ben Schultz was born in 2000 in Charlotte. He had Sean's facial features, Kaaren's thick, dark hair and an exuberance for life both his parents shared. As Ben grew, he would try several sports - flag football and soccer among them - before choosing baseball as his favorite.

David McClure was the head coach for one of Ben's youth teams. "I could never beat those two to the field," McClure said. "Some days I'd try on purpose to get there early - maybe 4:30p.m. for a 5:30 p.m. game. And there would be the Schultzes in their truck, already there, ready to play ball."

'No fireworks, please'

The day Sean died began as a happy one. For the previous several months, he had been job-hunting.

Although staying home and spending so much time with Ben had great personal rewards, he and Kaaren had begun to worry more about money. If Sean would get a job, even a part-time one, it would help them pay the bills.

That morning Sean got a call. He had been hired to work at a local gardening store.

That afternoon Sean picked Ben up from Selwyn Elementary as usual. Kaaren often came to baseball practice herself to watch, but she had car trouble. Sean and Kaaren decided she could work late and he and Ben would come pick her up at school after practice ended. She sent him a text message at 5:20 p.m.

"OK, have a great practice," it read. "No fireworks, please."

Ben and Sean Schultz got there early as usual. Sean made his son do his math homework in their black Ford truck before they went out on the field.

Practice started at 5:30. The "Bad News" team - the name was suggested by another assistant coach in honor of the 1976 movie "The Bad News Bears" - had had two games so far. The players were adjusting to their first "kid-pitch" league.

Shortly before 6p.m., Schultz began pitching batting practice. A few minutes later, the 5-foot-11, 210-pound coach collapsed.

"I was suiting up to be catcher," Ben Schultz remembered. "And then Dad fell down."

Fred Griffith, one of the team's assistants, was in the outfield when he saw Schultz fall. He ran to the mound.

"I thought it was going to be heat exhaustion," Griffith said.

Griffith and the team's other assistant, Jason Malchesky, got to Schultz at about the same time. They turned him over, called 911 and started doing CPR as best they could.

By that time, parent Beth Gage walked up. Griffith handed the phone to her so she could tell the 911 operator where they were. The field was right off Randolph Road near uptown Charlotte but not clearly marked.

Another parent, Jennifer Griffith, flagged down a parent from another team who was wearing medical scrubs. "Are you a doctor?" she asked. The man wasn't, but he worked in the medical field and rushed to help.

Claire Bowles was in her car, oblivious to what was going on outside and talking with another physician. She is an obstetrician-gynecologist by training.

Her son, Carter Bowles, came up to the driver's side of the car. She put down the phone.

Mom, Carter said, I think my coach is having a heart attack.

Bowles ran to the pitcher's mound. She took over mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while others handled the chest compressions. Schultz had a faint pulse, Bowles said.

The coaches told the kids to go find their parents. But Ben ran back to the group on the mound. You need to know, Ben said through tears, that my dad has had a heart attack before.

It fell to Jennifer Griffith - who had never previously spoken with Kaaren Schultz - to call Kaaren at work and tell her what had happened.

She told Kaaren who she was, said Ben was safe and then said Sean had collapsed.

They think it may have been a heart attack, Jennifer said.

"I'm not ready!" Kaaren screamed. "I'm not ready!"

Dealing with tragedy

The ambulance arrived. And the fire truck. And the police.

Jennifer Griffith took Ben Schultz home with her son, Jackson. They tried to keep him occupied with a "Star Wars" movie.

Kaaren got picked up at work by her mother and went to the hospital. Within moments of arriving, she was told her husband had been pronounced dead.

Several of Sean's relatives, as well as the team's assistant coaches and the league's officers, gathered at the hospital.

Around 10p.m., Kaaren decided she wanted to take Ben home. Fred Griffith drove Kaaren to his ex-wife Jennifer's house, where he waited outside while Kaaren told Ben about Sean's death.

"I told my son," Kaaren said, "and watched his heart break."

The team canceled practice the next day. Instead, everyone except the Schultzes gathered at the Gages' house. The meeting ended up being more for the parents. The kids, once they saw each other, mostly wanted to run around and shoot each other with Nerf guns.

The funeral was on Saturday, Sept.19. Most of the "Bad News" team attended, along with their parents and coaches. The kids played in a 10 a.m. game first, then ate lunch and went to the funeral home. The funeral started at 1:23 p.m.

Ben Schultz didn't play in the game that morning. But he wore his green team uniform to the funeral, as did all of his teammates. Some of them had red dirt stains on their knees from the game that morning. Kaaren Schultz and several others spoke at a service attended by hundreds and lasting about 90 minutes.

The players went and stood outside in their uniforms as the service ended. When Coach Sean's casket was loaded into the hearse, they removed their baseball caps and held them over their hearts.

A final gift

After one week, Ben Schultz wanted to return to school and baseball. He ended up playing mainly infield and catcher for the "Bad News" team for the rest of the season. He said baseball made him happy and still does, and everyone who has seen Ben play believes it.

Said Ben's teammate, McRae Gage: "We didn't really bring up Coach to Ben much, because maybe that would make him feel bad."

The team and the Schultzes both underwent some counseling provided by Charlotte's KinderMourn organization. The players seemed more resilient than most of their parents expected. There were worries - one child decided not to eat dessert for awhile for fear it would damage his heart - but most were eventually overcome. In many cases, the parents have had a harder time dealing with Schultz's death.

"Sean was so laid back," said Gaston Gage, a team parent who jumped in as an assistant coach after Schultz's collapse. "That guy died of a heart attack? It's just so unbelievable."

The "Bad News" squad ended up winning more games than they lost, although no one is quite sure what the team's record was. Coach Sean wouldn't have cared anyway.

What he would have cared about was the gifts he gave them.

To David McClure, he gave patience. McClure took over as head coach and tried to incorporate Schultz's sense of fun into practices. At the last practice, McClure supervised a "Baseball Olympics" and then had the boys play Wiffle Ball.

To Claire Bowles, the doctor, he gave perspective. "Sometimes you need to put the Blackberry down and talk to the person right next to you," she said. "This experience has taught me that."

To Parker McClure, 9, he gave fun. "He really never got mad," Parker said. "When we messed up, he would just kind of help us get back into position and do it again. He mostly laughed a lot."

To McRae Gage, 9, he gave confidence. "I can hit better now," McRae said. "I thank Coach Sean for that."

To his wife and son, Schultz gave his adventurous spirit, and his love.

The Schultzes are coping as best they can. Sean Schultz did not have insurance, but Kaaren believes they will figure it out financially. Ben has decorated the house for Christmas. He hung a stocking for his dad and has filled it with presents.

The Myers Park Trinity Little League has put up a sign commemorating Sean Schultz on the outfield fence of the field where he collapsed.

Ben can't wait until the spring baseball season. He wants to play more catcher.

"That's my favorite position," he said, "because Dad showed me so much about it."

The players say they will remember Coach Sean telling them to have fun. And, like the Schultzes, they miss him terribly. They became a team this fall - a fun-loving and compassionate group, just like Coach Sean wanted.

"If I could see Coach Sean again," said third-grader Jackson Griffith, "I would tell him it would all be OK. I would tell him that Ben and his wife seem happy and that they were still cared for. By all of us."