







It doesn't have to happen in the major leagues. We forget that sometimes. Greatness can unfold in Little League games with obnoxiously manicured turf, in pickup ball on drab sandlots that spit out dust devils, in remote villages that use goat fields because they have to or even, as it did Friday when a kid named Derrick Salberg made the best catch ever, in front of 643 people on a field with a 4-foot-tall outfield fence.

There was something utterly gorgeous about what Salberg did. Much of it indeed was the aesthetics of the catch. Baseball, a game of straight-line running, rarely offers situations in which the human form can put itself on display. When a fly ball rocketed toward Salberg in left field, he started to run, 10 desperate steps, until he reached the comically low fence at Lower Columbia College's home park in Longview, Wash. Then it happened: his legs springing and his right arm extending like he was Inspector Gadget, his hand squeezing the ball so improbably, his entire body clearing the fence, all 165 pounds of him crashing down with multiple Gs of force, head over heels, literally and figuratively, and in love with what just happened.

Because it wasn't just the fact that Salberg had made the best catch ever, something he couldn't realize until he saw the video of it and put a visual to how it felt. Nor was it that this catch came in the ninth inning with two outs and the tying run at the plate in a 4-2 game, clutch of clutch, robbing a kid named Keone Kela of his dream fulfilled.

No, it was about a coach, too, the one who has slaved away for 18 years in the relentless and often thankless world of coaching junior-college baseball.

His name is Kelly Smith, and the best catch ever saved his career.







He still mows the field. After all these years and all those championships, you'd think LCC might just spring for someone to keep the grass in decent shape. Nah. This is Kelly Smith's duty: to take care of 33 boys who love to play ball and maintain the grass on which they do it.



"I fertilize like a champion," Smith said. "Nobody fertilizes like I do. They're going to miss my fertilizing skill."

Smith, 55, is done after this season, he said, "because I could not care less. I mean that literally. … I'm just tired, man. This job will send you to your grave."

Which, when stripped of the chardonnays he was enjoying late Friday, means: A moment like what happened Friday is gravy, a bonus on top of a career that veered off the path many expected and morphed instead into something altogether different – and maybe better.

[Video: Benches clear in Boston as Red Sox-Rays rivalry heats up]

The great juco coach, the local legend, is an institution, and Smith fits the profile. He played three years in the San Francisco Giants' organization, stalled out at Triple-A in 1982 and went into coaching. He spent a few years at Portland State before returning home to Longview, where he'd grown up and played alongside his best friend, Bud Black. While Black ascended to manage the San Diego Padres, Smith stayed home, turned down overtures for an assistant job with an Oregon State program that eventually won two national championships.

Smith whet his appetite for higher-level ball by coaching in the Cape Cod League – Frank Thomas, J.T. Snow, other big leaguers. LCC fulfilled him and his family, trumping the magnetism of aspiration and affording him the opportunity to build a powerhouse. In his first 17 seasons, Smith won five Northwest Athletic Association of Community College championships and finished second seven times. He doesn't focus much on the wins. He prefers to call himself Bud Levy – "I'm Bud Grant and Marv Levy in one."

Story continues