A Little League coach went viral for his dad joke on the mound. It taught a bigger lesson

New York Times

a day ago

Editor's Note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
It was the first inning Tuesday in the Great Lakes Regional of the Little League World Series, and Jake Riordan, the head coach of a squad from Kentucky, sensed things were about to unravel.
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His starting pitcher, Banks Denton, had loaded the bases in 14 pitches and looked nervous. The rest of his players seemed tense, too. His team, a group of neighborhood kids from the Lexington Eastern Little League, was two victories away from a trip to the prestigious international tournament in Williamsport, Pa.
Riordan wanted to lighten the mood, so he walked out to the mound. He just didn't have a joke … until one popped into his head.
'Do you know that a koala bear is not actually a bear? It's a marsupial,' Riordan told the kids, who looked perplexed.
'Do you know why a koala bear is a marsupial and not a bear? Does anyone know?'
More blank stares.
'It doesn't have the koala-fications.'
With that, Riordan turned around and walked back. But not before catching a glimpse of Denton, who seemed properly unimpressed.
Perfect, Riordan thought.
'He just smiled and shook his head like he does all the time when I do stupid stuff like that,' Riordan said.
So the Kentucky Little League coach is the best pic.twitter.com/bIeK1GUsnX
— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) August 6, 2025
Every year, thousands of teams compete for the Little League World Series. The tournament produces unbridled joy, tears and the occasional life lesson, often produced by a poignant message from a mic'd up head coach.
The moments are indelible. But so was this one, a viral dad joke with an underlying idea: In a moment that was equal parts strange, funny and endearing, Riordan was doing what leadership experts suggest: He was just being himself. Sometimes the best coaching has nothing to do with baseball.
'I don't really take anything in life too seriously,' Riordan said in a phone interview Thursday. 'It's like, it's Little League baseball. But I think consistency when you're a coach is pretty important. So I'm consistently loose and goofy, and they play that way.'
The kids from Lexington Eastern were eliminated, falling 5-2 to Illinois, though Denton did escape that jam by allowing just one run. But Riordan believed his kids won something, too — and not just the status of advancing further than any team in their league's history.
When the team gathered earlier this year, it adopted a motto: Play loose, play fast, play for each other. So when it won the state championship and advanced to the Great Lakes Regional in Whitestown, Ind., it tried to embody the ethos.
In its second game, Lexington Eastern found itself up against a team from the Indianapolis area that produced a hometown crowd of 2,000 fans. Riordan looked around as his team prepared to do its pregame infield-outfield routine. His players looked a little overwhelmed, so Riordan had an idea.
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'You know what, guys?' Riordan said. 'Let's just take infield-outfield without a ball.'
Moments later, Riordan was on the field, pantomiming hitting fungo groundballs as his players fielded them and went through their detailed routine, just with no ball.
'Make it look real!' Riordan instructed.
'All the kids come in; they're laughing, they're giggling,' Riordan recalled. 'And I'm like, well, at least they're not nervous about the 2,000 people.'
When Kentucky won in extra innings, the coaches, including assistants O'Shea Hudspeth and Mike Kretz, figured they needed to keep up the trend. So the next game, they skipped pregame infield-outfield and tried something different.
'We played five-on-five football with the kids wearing their gloves,' Riordan said.
When it comes to baseball, Riordan is credentialed. He was a center fielder at the University of Florida in the early 2000s, playing for a team that reached No. 1 in the country. When his career was over, he coached high school baseball in Gainesville before eventually relocating to Kentucky.
But he also learned something while playing for a series of coaches who ran the gamut from good-natured, crusty and a little too intense. If he ever found himself in the same situation, he wanted to have fun, and he wanted to be real.
'I think that one of the best things we can do as a coach or leader is just to be authentic — to be yourself,' he said. 'I think, believe it or not, kids or players of any age can see through the bull crap.'
Wednesday, the team from Lexington returned home from Indiana. Riordan's daughter alerted her dad that his joke was going viral on social media. His older sister also sent him a text:
I knew you were gonna be famous someday, and I knew it was gonna be either doing something stupid or maybe illegal.
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When Riordan returned my call Thursday, he had been shopping for football equipment. He still wished his team could have advanced to Williamsport. But he was proud of how his players competed.
Every year he coaches baseball, he said, his kids teach him something new. One of the hardest aspects of coaching is juggling the personalities: The goofy kids. The competitive kids. The shy kids.
'I still coach our kids hard, but hard in a different way,' Riordan said. 'The only way I knew how to do it was through laughter.'
(Photo courtesy of Jake Riordan)
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