Tired of Being David.
Built to Become Goliath.
I have spent decades coaching from the underdog’s corner — small nations, borrowed pitchers, lopsided scores. That ends in Bohol. For the first time in my coaching life, I am building a program designed to be the one everyone else is hunting.
There is a moment in every coach’s life when the scoreboard stops being a number and starts being a verdict. My moment came on a baseball field in Spain, on what should have been an ordinary evening, and it became the worst night of my coaching career. Not because we lost. I have lost before. But because that scoreboard told me something about my situation that I had been refusing to say out loud for years.
My Therwil Flyers did everything right early. Leadoff walk. Sacrifice bunt. RBI double. We grabbed a 1-0 lead before Spain had a chance to breathe. And then it all fell apart in a way I still have not fully made peace with. By the time we borrowed an American pitcher from the Viladecans roster — not to even the odds, but to stop the bleeding after the game was already gone — it was too late. Final score: 17 to 3. A Mercy Rule loss. Only the second time in my entire coaching career that a game was stopped on my behalf. I have never been embarrassed on a baseball field like that night.
I have never been embarrassed on a baseball field like that night. The score was not what hurt. It was the helplessness. No matter how well I coached, no matter how hard my players worked, we were always climbing a hill the other team never had to climb.
Population
Population
EBC B-Pool
Switzerland had six million people. The countries we played against had populations ten times that size, baseball ecosystems ten times as deep, and talent pipelines we simply could not replicate on two practices a week across a six-month season. When we upset Ukraine in 1994, they had 52 million people to our six million. I am proud of that win. But pride only carries you so far.
I was young and dumb, and I really thought two practices a week and two games on weekends over six or seven months a year was enough time to develop elite players. I realized in 1998 that European baseball would continue growing, but not at the rate that would develop an abundance of minor league prospects. I honestly believe that if Europe had a different baseball ecosystem — one that had more national leagues with six or seven quality teams — there would be a significant number of European minor league prospects. But most European leagues have only two or three quality teams, and subpar pitching that does not help develop hitters who can compete at the professional level.
So I left. Not because I stopped caring about the game or about the players who gave me everything they had across those seasons in Switzerland. I left because I finally told myself the truth about a ceiling that no amount of coaching could break through. I was tired of limits. I was tired of being defined by the size of a country.
2 practices a week
Borrowed pitchers
17-3 mercy rule losses
Growth measured in decades
Always the underdog
Full-time coaching investment
Kids built on adversity
Elite prospects by 2028
The measuring stick for all of Philippines
The team being hunted
When I watch sports, I love rooting for the underdogs. But when I coach, I want to be the team that is hunted.
I have scouted the top youth teams in the Philippines. I know what is out there. I know which programs have the facilities, the funding, and the family connections that make winning feel like a birthright rather than a battle. Some of those kids are very talented. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
But I have spent enough time in the barangays of Bohol to understand something that no scouting report captures. The kids who have the “least” do not take anything for granted. They do not show up to practice wondering if it is worth their time. They show up because practice is the best part of their week.
A Super Typhoon does not rattle them. A King Cobra following a rat into the family home does not break them. They already know what “hard” looks like. They were introduced to it before they were old enough to understand it.
These kids know how it feels to still be hungry after eating lunch or dinner. These kids will put in the work needed to help provide their parents and siblings a better life.
That is not sentiment. That is a developmental reality.
The Bohol Coconuts are not being built on talent alone. They are being built on the combination of talent and desire that produces the kind of player who gets better every single week.
These kids understand the alternative to getting better is a life they have already seen up close and are determined to leave behind. Our kids are built different. With the Coconuts, your last name does not matter. What matters is what you are willing to do.
I also want to be Goliath, again, because that will mean a lot of our kids are achieving. I don’t want kids who settle for being good. I want kids who want to be great.
Some people will call that arrogance. That is fine. I have heard that word applied to ambitions far smaller than this one.
My wife and I are simple people. I would never have gone overseas to coach baseball if I were chasing money. This has never been about money. It has always been about what happens to boys and girls when someone finally believes in them enough to build something specifically for their benefit.
What is in it for me? I want to change these kids’ lives. I want to open doors to college, trade schools, and for some of them — A new life in the United States, Japan, or South Korea. I want to give them a dream of playing baseball or softball for a paycheck that transforms not just their life, but their entire family’s future.
I want to be Goliath because that will open doors and opportunities nobody expected from a program in Bohol. The Coconuts will be the measuring stick that other regions in the Philippines strive to become.
I have been David my entire coaching career. I know exactly what it costs. I know what it feels like to borrow a pitcher just to stop the bleeding. I know what it feels like to look at that scoreboard and understand that the game was never fair to begin with.
I am done with that. We are building a Goliath in Bohol. And we are going to have a lot of fun doing it.
