On March 6, former Brandeis baseball coach Tom O'Connell passed away at the age of 82. 

O'Connell's name likely is unfamiliar to many in the Brandeis community; after all, he left the school in 1982, some 34 years ago. But those of us who were lucky enough to play for him  will never forget him. Brandeis, too, should remember this dedicated baseball man who was surely one of the most outstanding coaches in the distinguished history of Brandeis athletics.

Following great success as head baseball coach at Braintree High School, Coach O'Connell took over a struggling baseball program at Brandeis in 1972.  Within three years, Coach had the Judges in the 1975 NCAA Division III postseason tournament. That was Brandeis' first of six consecutive tournament appearances  under Coach's guidance — a pretty impressive stretch for any program, to say nothing of a program that had not managed even a .500 record in the few years before Coach's arrival in Waltham. Throughout this run, the team won five Greater Boston League championships, frequently defeating, among other League opponents, such Division I schools as  Harvard, Boston College, and Northeastern. In 1977, in the NCAA Division III College World Series that featured some future major league players, we nearly captured the national championship, losing a close game in the finals. By the time Coach left Brandeis after the 1982 season to begin a long and successful tenure as head baseball coach at Princeton University, he had achieved a record of 172-73-6 — an astounding winning percentage of .697. Coach is a member of the Brandeis Athletics Hall of Fame and many other halls of fame and received coaching awards in recognition of his lifelong dedication to baseball and his coaching excellence too numerous to mention here.

Coach won because he thoroughly understood the game of baseball, and he knew how to teach the game to his players. We learned from Coach that as important as good hitting and pitching are, it is sound defense and fundamentals that often makes the difference between winning and losing. We bunted correctly. We ran the bases correctly. And we played defense correctly, doing a lot of "little things" that other teams didn't.  Unless fully extended, outfielders moved forward into a catch and caught the ball with two hands in order to quickly get the ball out of the glove and produce a more powerful throw. A fielder playing a ball always heard his neighboring fielder yelling out the base to throw to. Before each pitch, every fielder knew exactly how he was going to react if the ball were hit to him. Defensively, no team was better prepared, or I dare say as well prepared, as we were to deal with any play and any situation that arose during a game, because we had practiced that play and that situation many times. We didn't lope through pre-game infield and outfield practice; we treated it as serious business. If in a game we made an error, or missed a cutoff man, it was usually a purely physical mistake; rarely was it due to being unprepared.

This precision was hard-earned, a function of Coach's demand for total focus, and total effort, in practice and in games. If he felt a player was not giving maximum effort or showing the requisite focus, he would let that player know it, in a manner that did not feature subtlety. "Bear down!" Coach would holler at an offending player during a game, in a voice that pierced through the ballpark clatter like a police siren. He didn't have to say it twice. No player was immune; and it was not uncommon for a player who had received the bulk of Coach's attention at a practice to wander back to his dorm at day's end  convinced that he had performed flawlessly and unable to understand what Coach's problem was. But, gradually, we came to understand that we had not been flawless, that our focus could be sharper, our effort more committed, our execution crisper. We came to understand that Coach was trying to make us better players and a better team. And he did make us better players and a better team. We grew to appreciate and respect him for that. He respected us for making the effort, and after we had done  the hard work, he made us feel good about our success. Coach wanted badly to win and drove us hard toward that goal, but that did not obscure the deep feeling he had for his players. 

The aspect of Coach's approach that has stuck with me more than any other was his belief that we could always do a little better than we had done, particularly when things didn't go our way. Lose a game 1-0 on a home run by the opponent's cleanup hitter off your best pitcher's best pitch? Not acceptable. The pitch could have been better. Fail to catch a screamer in the gap after a great jump on the ball and an all-out run? Get a better jump and be a step faster. Of course, Coach knew that sometimes a ball was just uncatchable, that an opposing hitter was just too tough, that an opposing team was just a bit better. But often we were able to make plays and win games for no reason other than that Coach wouldn't let us think that way. In difficult situations throughout my life, I have to great comfort and result often thought of Coach and his belief that seemingly inevitable defeat and failure are not inevitable at all. I'm sure his other players feel the same way.  

I last saw Coach O'Connell in April, 2014, sadly, at the wake for Jean, his wife of 52 years. As I said goodbye to him that day, he clasped my hand and looked at me.

"Don't forget me," he said.

Not a chance.