Mo Vaughn doesn’t allow himself to drive his son home from baseball games.
It’s because he hears his own father’s voice.
“I know what it is to have that parent that’s just constantly leaning on you,” the Boston Red Sox icon says. He chuckles.
“I’m walking out of 1995 when I’m hitting .300, running for the MVP, and he’s still lecturing me,’ he tells USA TODAY Sports. “And I just promised myself I wasn’t gonna do that to my son.
“I would sit in the clubhouse because I would take an 0-for-4. I just didn’t want to go through that conversation with him.”
So much about the major leagues is fresh in his mind – the good, the bad, the painful. At one point, like his left-handed moon shots bound for the Fenway Park seats, his career seemed to be hurtling toward the Hall of Fame.
Then it was curtailed by injury-plagued stints with the Angels and Mets. He had a distaste for baseball until he became a baseball dad to his son, Lee.
He now had a reason to think about how much he loved and missed the game.
“All the things I’ve done, the trials and tribulations, the ups and downs and things that happened, all those thoughts and things about the past fell off,” he says.
Since 2017, he has run Vaughn Sports Academy out of Boca Raton, Florida. About 100 youth teams, stretching up to New Jersey, play under its umbrella.
He coaches Lee, 13, as well as the varsity at a local high school (Olympic Heights).
On Aug. 17, Vaughn, 57, will also be a coach at the Perfect Game All-American Classic (8 p.m. ET, PerfectGame.TV). It’s a showcase of some of the country’s best prep players at San Diego’s Petco Park.
“I’ve had so many people put their mouth on me from college,” he says. “Everybody’s always telling you what you can’t do. The minor leagues telling you what you can’t do. The major leagues are telling you what you can’t do. And sometimes people don’t even have the credentials to make those decisions.
“I look up and I say, man, thank God I ran into one or two guys that really helped me get on the path and be successful. … I know how it feels to struggle, but I also know how to fix it, too.”
Here are his hard rules for success for young athletes:
Being a sports parent starts with putting yourself in position to be ‘productive,’ especially after a game
Vaughn can still see those steps at Edison Field, as the Angels’ home ballpark was known in 1999. It was his first game after signing a six-year, $80 million deal with the Angels. He chased a foul ball toward the first base dugout and tumbled down them, damaging his ankle and knee.
“I’m the guy that never wanted to hang on too long,” he says. “I never wanted to go out as someone said, ‘Man, this guy played too long. He should have left.’ When I knew I couldn’t be Mo Vaughn anymore, it was time to go and it was a tough decision.
“I fell in the dugout after I left the Red Sox. That hurt, too. All of a sudden, five years later, I was out of the game. And that hurt, too.”
He played his last big-league game at 35.
“I never retired. I walked out,” Vaughn says. “I was going to get the hell away from baseball.”
He ran a trucking company. He got into the affordable real estate business and was highly successful.
“People talk about, ‘What do you do in retirement?’” he says. “Man, we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. All we knew is what we wanted to be. So I had no answers.”
All athletic careers come to an end at some point. But we carry the intensity of them, especially if you’ve won an American League MVP.
It’s why Lee rides with his mother, Gail, after her husband is done coaching the team.
“I need to cool down,” Mo Vaughn says. “When we lose, I don’t want to be talking to him about the game. At certain times, I gotta wait, give myself 24 hours, so I can be productive in his path moving forward.”
COACH STEVE: Tips for the postgame car ride. (Hint: Don’t be like Andre Agassi’s dad)
Be present when your kids play, but when you get home, put out a ‘soft landing pad’
Leroy and Shirley Vaughn, who were schoolteachers, were at all of their son’s baseball, football and basketball games, even when Mo attended a boarding high school in upstate New York.
“Having him around, I think about it now, you’ll get involved with some young people and they’ll tell you, ‘Yeah, my parents had to work, they can’t come to the game.’ And I was so lucky,’ he says.
“I think it was important for me and helped me. Now, the whole football coach mentality, I’m not so sure that helped me, but just him being there and showing up … I think having that father-son connection, it’s a great thing.”
Leroy had an imposing frame – 6-3, 220 pounds – that followed Vaughn like shadow. He had been a football coach at a high school in Norwalk, Connecticut, where Vaughn grew up.
When we become parents, we embrace the positive things our moms or dads did for us, but we are allowed to make adjustments.
“My son, what makes my relationship with him successful is that I do actually realize how hard it is to hit a baseball,” he says. “Listen, my dad meant well. My dad always thought that he was helping me, but in the game of baseball, you gotta give people time and the ability to be in a place that when you start talking and making adjustments and doing things that they are fully open to what happened so they receive the information in the right way.”
Vaughn’s parents were around in Boston, New York and California, too, when he became a professional.
We love to look into the stands and see our parents, no matter how old we are. But there’s also a moment when they need to hold back. We feel their support from their presence alone.
“Give space, give time, realize that, ‘Do you think this kid wanted to strike out with the bases loaded and lose the game?’” Vaughn says. “Absolutely not. They already know. You don’t have to reiterate it. You don’t have to make them feel worse.
“Home should be an environment of positivity. You shouldn’t have your son or your daughter playing softball, coming home feeling like, ‘I can’t be myself because I didn’t have a good day today. I didn’t have a good game, or I didn’t get any hits, or I made an error.’ Don’t provide that. Provide a soft landing pad. The game is hard enough as it is.”
‘You don’t have to do this’: We put ourselves out there for our kids’ sports careers, but we also need to adjust with them
When Grace – Vaughn and Gail’s oldest child – took a heavy interest in tennis, the family relocated to Florida, where she could train with a world-class coach. But with the move, Vaughn learned an important lesson about parenting: We have to be able to pull back.
“I used to ask her, ‘Do you want to do this?’” he recalls. “I don’t ever want my kids to feel the pressure they gotta live up to me and I tell them all the time: I’ve already played, I’ve already had my time. I played as well as I could for as long as I can. You are my kids. You don’t have to do this.’
“But you always gotta ask those questions because you never know.”
He found out she didn’t want the everyday grind of becoming an elite athlete. She stopped playing tennis and is now in her third year at Barry University in Miami, studying sports management.
We get to know our kids better when we allow ourselves to understand what they want.
“We’re trying to figure out what are the right words, what are the right buttons,” Vaughn says. “There’s certain ways I gotta talk to my daughter to get the best out of her. There are certain ways I gotta talk to my son to get the best out of him. We’re constantly playing like this shell game of what those words are as a parent.
“If you think that’s hard, then you shouldn’t be a parent, because that’s what we’re here to do is figure out what makes our kids tick and be successful.”
Fortunately, he feels he doesn’t have to push Lee with baseball.
Even when you’re talented, ‘the magic is in the work’
Vaughn was a 6-1, 250-plus pound first baseman. Lee, who also bats left-handed, plays the middle infield and is lean and quick. His father says he’s gaining confidence and the ability to affect the game with his arm, speed and athleticism.
“I didn’t work as hard as him,” Vaughn says, “and damn sure didn’t look like him.”
Since he was about seven, Lee has done two days per week of strength and conditioning, two days of skill work and two days of hitting with his dad.
“It takes years to develop into a good baseball player,” Vaughn says. “You’re growing, your feet are getting bigger, you’re getting taller. You gotta maintain your motor skills. You gotta get stronger. …
“He’s put in the time and there’s still much more wood to chop but I would tell parents that’s it’s a six- to seven-day-a-week thing.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends kids take at least one day off a week and two months off from a sport per year.
Games especially can wear down young bodies. Vaughn believes their impact for kids is minimal. It’s the repetition that builds familiarity with many things we do every day, even when it doesn’t produce immediate results.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen with my son,” Vaughn says. “But I know one thing: He will have worked. And I think when you teach them that at a young age, they can go off and do anything and be successful.
“That’s the thing in your life: How hard we gotta work each day. You know, we’re working, we’re running, we’re lifting, we’re hitting, and all of a sudden we (attain) that one thing, and we’re like, man, it was all worth it. … The magic is in the work. There’s no secret button for success. You gotta work, and know how to work. …
“When you’re coaching young kids, you only got about 20 minutes, then you gotta move on because their mind’s on something else. My little guys, it takes me 3-4 months for them to understand. Those same drills I do with high school kids they get it in a week.”
COACH STEVE: When can teenagers start lifting weights? What about a private coach?
‘Open your mind up to listening’: That means you, too, Coach
Vaughn likes to have coaches on his team who are dedicated to specific areas like pitching, catching and middle infield.
“I’ve always known that’s the only way to do it right,” he says. “You can never be a master of everything. I’ve had my own struggles at the big-league level, had to make changes, had to open my mind up to listening.”
A lot of successful adults don’t like to be wrong, especially if they’re corrected by teenagers. But the best coaches, Vaughn says, will pay attention to what you’re saying if they see a player is dedicated to getting better.
If we don’t know the answer as coaches, we can always consult others and get back to kids and their parents.
“Challenge your coaches,” Vaughn says. “If you know something is being done wrong, you gotta challenge it. If you’re having success, you gotta challenge it. And if there’s a coach out there that’s not able to bring you into a practice facility and show you what they’re teaching, the reason why they won’t do is because they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Don’t rely on slivers of yourself on social media; provide a full picture to coaches
Near the end of his career, Vaughn said he injected his knee with human growth hormone. According to former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell’s report on peformance-enhancing drug use in baseball, which was released in 2007, former Mets clubhouse employee Kirk Radomski said he sold HGH to Vaughn.
HGH was added to Major League Baseball’s list of banned substances in 2005 but MLB prohibited the use of any prescription medication without a valid prescription in 1971.
“I haven’t said a word to them about (the HGH use) but also they haven’t asked me,” Vaughn says about his players. “I would do anything to get back on the field. I don’t even consider it really anything factual that it’s a testament to what I did in the game, do for the game and in the game. It’s just a part of time, in my opinion.”
What we do consistently throughout our experiences, he believes, provides a full picture of who someone is.
“Anybody can make a reel of greatness,” he says about athletes promoting themselves on social media. “We can show our home runs, we can show off our diving plays, we could look like Ken Griffey Jr. What people want to see is: How do you react when things are going wrong? What type of teammate are you? Do you support your people? Those are the things that coaches are looking for.
“It’s easy to do things when everything’s going right … When it’s hard tells all about you.”
The All-American Classic – where Vaughn is coaching along with other former All-Stars, including fellow baseball dads Ryan Klesko and Tom Gordon – provides another chance this weekend. Maybe your son or daughter has a big sports tournament somewhere, too.
Vaughn loves the Red Sox, but like all of us, he roots for his kids first.
“I get to sit around these guys that are trying to get to where I was and give ’em information and talk and encouragement and knowledge and those things,” he says. “And I don’t think (there’s) a better opportunity.”
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.