Job Well Done, Coach Dave Swisegood!

As the sun was setting Monday night, it was apparent that Dave Swisegood had coached his final baseball game of his illustrious career. His Southeastern Suns lost in the regionals to the Payson Seymour Indians in the Mendon Regional by the score of 17 to 2 ending his final season as a head baseball coach. Swisegood’s career covered 60 years and he leaves the game as the winningest high school coach in the State of Illinois with 950 wins. That total, by the way, is a remarkable 445 wins more than any other active coach in Illinois.

From his first game in 1955 to Monday’s game, Swisegood carried his enthusiasm for the game and his players from the first pitch to the last no matter the score. As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over, ‘til it’s over” and I suspect that will be the case for Coach Swisegood. Oh, his head coaching may have ended Monday, but I bet you batting practice that he’ll be around the Suns teams until his final breath.

Coach Swisegood’s friends and family were at the game Monday and you can bet that when that final out happened, his thoughts of his recently departed wife, Francis, were spinning in his head as well. In six decades, how many ballplayers has Dave Swisegood made better as a player and a person.  Too numerous to mention.

Over the last several years Coach Swisegood and I would get together and talk some baseball over lunch.  I thought I knew a lot about the game of baseball, but I can’t hold a candle to him. So in a way, by listening he’s made me a better baseball mind and person for sure.

The sun may have set on the coach Monday but not on the man. Good luck to the Suns new coach, they don’t make shoes that big anymore!