It wasn’t long after Jack Flaherty arrived at his brother’s little league field and found their mom that he launched into all the reasons this was it, he was done, no more baseball.
A freshman in high school, Flaherty had clashed with a coach, felt the welt of failure, or reopened some other scab of frustration and was, his mother recalls, “venting.” On a field nearby swarmed a team of kids four or five years younger that he often helped coach. Jack was the big to their littles, and as they played he cataloged the reasons he no longer would.