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 Frank
Wilson Dodge has been an integral part of the Howard Palmetto Khoury
League for more than three decades and even though his three children
are now adults, he has no intention of quitting.
Frank Wilson Dodge
"I just finished my 33rd year in Khoury
League," he said. "I did the same thing all the dads do.
Usually, you manage or coach your son and once they leave, everybody
usually goes on. But, I guess I'm a field rat, I just kept hanging
around. And, if you just keep hanging around they'll find you and put
you to work."
Dodge, who has coached a dozen different league teams
from T-ball and Atoms to Bantams and Midgets, has had a direct affect
on more than 200 Pinecrest youngsters over the years. He continues to
work in the league as an umpire and is so highly regarded by Howard
Palmetto officials that he recently was given the coveted Wayne Moore
Lifetime Achievement Award for dedication and service.
Dodge, 60, a Pinecrest resident since 1967 and a retired widower, says
his success with youngsters can be traced to the fact that he has
never really grown up and is still a kid at heart.
"I'm still 11 years old," he said with a
twinkle in his eye. "Every other team in the league was made up
of 12 eleven-year-olds and a father. My team was made up of 13
eleven-year-olds. We played every day and that's what won for us.
"The other fathers would say, 'well, Dodge, you
practiced every day and that's why you won all those games.' I'd say,
no we didn't practice, we played every day. Instead of practicing
baseball, one day we might all be up in a tree telling dirty jokes.
Or, if it was yo-yo season, we'd be all over the diamond doing tricks
with yo-yos. It was bonding, that's what did it."
Dodge says he used praise and bonding to get the most out of the
youngsters on his teams, a formula that worked well as youngsters
clamored to play for him and his teams invariably won the majority of
their games.
"If you want to have 10 or 11 year olds playing ball," he
said, "you've got to think like them. You can't make them be
38-year-old hotheaded fathers who come home with a lot of stress and
holler and scream. Kids will be exactly what you tell them to be and
on game day I'd tell a kid, 'holy mackerel, you looked great!' even if
he'd just missed the ball."
Dodge says the situation in youth athletics today is depressing
because of the heightened emphasis on winning at all costs.
"I'm an umpire now and I'm behind the plate and I watch it
all," he said. "It's very depressing. So many guys come out
there and the only thing they think of immediately is that they want
to win the game. And that's not how you do it. We all want to win.
You've got to do the fun part, the bonding thing, and then do the
mechanical things; teach the proper technique the throwing, the
catching, all the little things and you do all this as you're
bonding and they'll listen better, instead of hollering and screaming.
And then you back into a win."
Dodge, a native Miamian -- his grandmother came here from North
Carolina in 1926 --grew up in the part of town now known as Little
Havana. He attended Shenandoah Junior High and graduated Miami High
School in 1958.
"I went to Miami High," he said, "the same as my
mother did. And my mother's mother was a truant officer at Miami High
when it was located downtown by the railroad tracks in 1926.
"I was the Huckleberry Finn of my high school," he
recalled. "I was always in the woods snake hunting and frog
hunting or fishing all the time. My first job when I was 14 years old
was working in a tackle shop. I built fishing poles and I became a
bonefish guide while I was still in high school. I was always
outdoors, so I didn't get too much studying done."
Dodge went on to Florida State University -- as did his sons Kevin,
38, and Keith, 31, and daughter Kelly, 37 and then went to work in
finance for Chrysler Corporation. A decade later, he switched to the
Minolta Corporation, working as a financial advisor and credit analyst
until his retirement four years ago.
Dodge is a licensed diver and continues to fish regularly with his
sons. Annually, they participate in the state's lobster season and
usually bag the limit.
"We do it every year for two weeks," he said. "It's
like a religion. We go to Long Key and stay at the Edgewater Lodge.
We're heavy divers."
Dodge, who works out regularly at the Zone Fitness Center and looks
10 years younger than the 60 he admits to, said he plans to continue
working with the Howard Palmetto Khoury League.
"Like I told you," he said with a smile, "I'm still
11 years old."
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