The Final Chapter
After decades of coaching, Merv Moore is stepping away from the dugout to work behind the scenes — and to finally spend more time with his wife and two children.
I used to tell kids something that was simple yet very powerful: you cannot hit the ball unless you swing.
I have been saying that since the 1980s. You have to be willing to take a risk in order to do something extraordinary.
I believe in taking risks. I have never accepted the status quo.
But somewhere in the relentless grind of the last year — the four-o’clock mornings, the five hours a day on the phone chasing coaches, sponsors, and investors even on a slow day.
The skipped meals. The stationary bike that serves as my only excuse for a break. I stopped being able to smell the roses.
I never wanted to still be coaching when I became a senior citizen. And yet, here I was on the road to being the guy I never wanted to be: the coach who forgot to plan his own exit.
When God put the idea in my head to build something for Filipino kids who had very little — kids who really didn’t have “big” dreams — I knew the club itself had to dream just as big.
That is why I am walking away from coaching.
Building an ordinary baseball and softball club would have been simple. I could have organized camps and youth leagues across age groups, and spent the next decade fundraising.
I could have settled for slow and steady. But slow and steady does not produce elite teenage prospects. Slow and steady does not change lives. And frankly, slow and steady would have bored me to death.
Foreign coaches. A soup kitchen alongside a baseball diamond. A YouTube docuseries. An Eco-Lodge designed to generate sustainable revenue. And three websites — operated by Lerma, our daughter Hali, and myself — that serve as the media backbone connecting the Coconuts to the world.
The Weight of the Work
My day always begins at 4 a.m. and, on a good night, ends at 10 p.m. I skip too many meals. I lean too hard on willpower when I should be leaning on rest.
When I founded my own newspaper in the early 1990s, I slept at the office most nights. I was 24 years old. You can do that when you’re young. You bounce back. The body forgives you.
I will turn 60 next month. The body no longer forgives the same way.
This decision was an inner struggle between my passion and reality. But common sense and what’s best for the club prevailed. I want to watch my son SJ move closer to his dream of playing professional basketball — present, fully awake to the moment. I want to work side by side with Lerma and watch her glow as she brings hope to Cambanac. I want to wake up and feel genuinely refreshed.
Those are not small things. Those are everything.
The dream of developing elite teenage baseball and softball prospects remains as strong as ever. What has changed is where I can do the most good to make that dream a reality.
What the Club Actually Needs
The most important lesson I learned overseas as an international coach? That baseball and softball grow as fast as a snail when they exist as a part-time sport. Just look at European baseball.
I left 28 years ago and the same club dynasties still dominate the landscape. The game has grown — but on a continent of hundreds of millions, you only need one finger to count the Europeans on MLB Opening Day rosters last year
That is not a sport that has broken through. That is a sport that is still waiting.
I do not want the Coconuts to wait. I do not want Bohol’s kids to wait. That’s why our sports program will be year-round.
The conversations I have had with Japanese and Korean coaches helped clarify something I think I already knew: the highest-leverage place for me is not on the field. It is behind it.
The Coconuts do not need me in the dugout. They need me to build a media machine powerful enough to put this organization on the international map — a brand and a story so compelling that the right coaches, sponsors, and investors find us, not the other way around.
I have been featured in newspapers and on television stations across three continents. I did not seek that spotlight. I did not want it. But I understood its power to promote the game in places where soccer reigned supreme.
Starting an elite baseball and softball academy from the ground up in the middle of a jungle, channeled through a unique media machine, can build the Coconuts into an organization larger than some of the baseball and softball associations that have existed in Asia and Europe for decades. That is the goal.
Building Something That Lasts
The Eco-Lodge is not a side project. The YouTube docuseries is not content for content’s sake. Both are the infrastructure of a self-sustaining organization — assets that generate revenue, tell our story to the world, and allow us to stop fundraising and actually focus on building.
Year one demands fundraising. Year two should not. Year three will not.
I am an introvert by nature. I have always done my best work invisible — behind the scenes, off the radar, out of sight and out of mind.
In an administrative role, that instinct becomes a strategic advantage. The story of the Coconuts can be told loudly while the person telling it stays quietly in the background.
My first love was baseball. My second was media. But my third love — the one that has outlasted every season, every league, every early morning — is my family. The best thing I can do for all three is to step back from one in order to fully honor the rest.
I still intend to make an impact on every boy and girl who puts on a Coconuts uniform. I will just be harder to find. And that is exactly how I like it.
The chapter does not end here. It never did. It just turns a page.
There are kids in Bohol right now who do not yet know they are capable of great things.
There is a club being built that will one day be a reference point for baseball and softball development in the Philippines.
There is a family — mine — that deserves more of my time, not just support from a distance.
I am walking away from coaching so I can do all of that better. So I can swing smarter, not just harder.
You cannot hit the ball unless you swing. But you also have to know which pitch to swing at.
This is my pitch.
