Coach Naham pronounced the stressed first "a" in his name like you'd find it in the alphabet, and the second "a" like you'd find it in the beginning of the word "alphabet," or like the word "ham." He had a perpetually frozen facial expression that looked like he'd just bitten into a ripe lemon. And ever since the day he was hired to coach our team, the Baltimore Newcomers, we'd had the worst season in minor league baseball history. We hadn't won a single game, or even scored a single run. We often blamed this fact on his unorthodox coaching methods. Today, we were about to play game 42. Naham brought us into the dugout an hour early for a pep talk.

"What's up, Coach Naham?"

"Well, kids," he replied with his trademark grizzled sourness, "I'm gonna show you exactly what you did wrong in the game yesterday." He brought out a boombox. We all knew what that meant.

"Awww! Coach Naaaa-ham!" we all whined in unison. "Not the Sonna lesson again!"

"Shut up! You're gonna pay attention to everything you hear and every word I say like you've never heard it before, and this time it'll work, dammit!" As with the past 39 times, he took the debut LP by local post-rock quartet Sonna, We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight, out of the case and put it into the weathered Emerson. He turned the volume up and pressed play.

The all-too-familiar but still effective railroad train cadence of the brushed snares that begin "The Opener" kicked in. The gentle, cleanly picked guitars complimented the shuffling beat perfectly, as always. "Steve Albini at work, fellas," he said. "Check out the pristine mix, and his trademark powerful ambient drum sound. It's part of what makes this section so great. Everything's crisp. And that's how you started out last night! The first inning was extraordinary, striking out every player and hitting a couple of doubles. And you, Crasner! Hitting that triple only to get tagged out while attempting to steal... that was just bad luck in good circumstances."

Crasner smiled, avoiding eye contact. It was always Crasner, and he always reacted the same way. He was Coach Naham's nephew.

But as the beat shifted into something less driving only to disappear completely, and the guitars had only gradually changed by the fifth and sixth minute out of nine, Naham grew grim. "This is just the start of an overlong stretch with no change in strategy." As the stainless guitar tone and drum sound continued over the next ten minutes, we, as usual, began to see what he meant. Even with an added Rhodes electric piano on the third track, "We Sing Loud," it did nothing to disrupt the texture for the better. With the other team sharpening up and noticing their opponents' strategies, our home team, Sonna, were starting to fall behind. "Swing and miss, if you will," Coach always added. We hated that line. We'd make fun of it behind his back, puckering up our lips and adapting his smoke-stained growl. He hadn't caught us yet.

"Now watch for this, guys," he said right around the track's three minute mark. Suddenly, vocals came into the mix for the first time, singing along to the main guitar melody. "This is guitarist Chris Mackie's attempt at a change in strategy," he remarked. "Now, what's wrong with it, besides the flower imagery in the lyrics?"

Crasner piped up. "He's not hitting the notes too well, Coach Naham!"

"Exactly!" Naham gave his best attempt at a grin. It looked ridiculous. "When you switch up your strategy, you have to make sure you can hit the high notes, and hit them with perfect pitch." It was, he believed, his best advice, despite it never having worked in the baseball realm. Moving on to "Sing Soft Tonight," he remarked, "The beat is so lethargic, and still it's awkwardly uneven. Avoid becoming uneven, even in lethargy!" That last part really didn't make any sense, as far as sports advice goes, but he was right about the song.

The two closing tracks, "Sleep On It" and "Real Quiet," maintained the exact level of guitar-picking energy that the record had sleepily and blandly sustained since the first third of "The Opener" had ended. There were some very brief successful moments with tempo changes, slight guitar overdrive and beat introductions, but even these got tedious quickly. Coach simply let us listen, reveling in the complete averageness that supposedly represented our performance in the game last night and every other night.

When it was over, we had about 10 minutes to game time. He walked up to the bench where we sat, and crouched down. He told us the same anecdote for what we didn't realize was the last time. "I played We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight for my father just before he passed away," he said, tears welling in his eyes. "When he heard it, he said, 'This band, Sonna... they're not a winner like you'll be, sonny. You've got plenty more ideas than they do. You'll be a winner for sure.'" Then he gave his traditional pause, and shouted, "Now, let's get out there and play some goddamn ball, Newcomers!"

We didn't win that game, just like we hadn't won any games. And after that fateful day-- the day of game 42-- Coach Naham quit coaching entirely to write for Magnet. It was a good decision. He was a bad baseball coach, and I'll never understand his attachment to that Sonna record. But I will remember his bitter face, the pronunciation of his name, and just how accurate his album analysis was. For the rest of my life, I'll remember.

-Spencer Owen