Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.  In 1979, a young Mike Firenzi stood on the blacktop behind the gym, tossing groundball after groundball against the green wall. As he fielded each one, he focused on his desire to make varsity.  Not everyone was out working, but he was. Redwood baseball meant something to him.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Today, players linger after practice to throw rubber balls against the same green wall.  As they practice, a short, lithe man in jeans and a white t-shirt looks on while walking to his car.  Thwack.  He gets in his car.  Thwack.  As he drives away, his license plate screams with pride: FIRENZI, the man who is trying to make Redwood baseball mean something again.

Mike Firenzi has returned.

A second baseman back when Redwood won ten straight MCAL titles, Firenzi has come back as an assistant coach to rebuild the Redwood baseball team back up to the same high-caliber program that taught him so much in high school.

“I’m trying to change the way they’re thinking, the way they’re acting, and the way they feel about themselves,” Firenzi said.
Jeff Packman, varsity head coach, is entering his third full season as head coach.  He said the players value what Firenzi teaches them.

“Hearing it from someone who was on some of those great teams and played for some great coaches, I just think the players really respect him and look up to him,” Packman said.

As an extremely successful coach at Marin Catholic for the past 20 years, Firenzi models his program after that of Al Endriss, the highly esteemed head coach from those long-gone Redwood glory days.

“We knew we were going to win before we walked through the gate, and most of the time the other team knew that we were probably going to win too,” Firenzi said.  “We were always better mentally-prepared.”

Firenzi said that when he played, the players’ pride in their program and desire to win intimidated other teams in the MCAL.

“One of the things I remember was that certain teams in the Marin County League coaches would take their teams behind the dugout before games so they didn’t have to watch our impressive looking infield warmup,” Firenzi said.

Firenzi said that his roots have always been at Redwood, and he is glad that he has returned back to his alma mater.

He said that the biggest problem he had to address when he came to Redwood was creating a stable program from the freshman team to the varsity team.

“There was no stabilty from the bottom to the top, meaning that right now our freshman and JVs are doing the same things as our varsity guys,” Firenzi said. “Now there’s a uniform theme across the board.”

In the beginning of the offseason, Firenzi’s first impact was felt in the classroom.

“I want to teach them the game the way it should be played by emphasizing the little things,” Firenzi said.  “I believe that you have to do the little things good before you try doing the big things, like winning games.”

He said that he and the other coaches taught their players a wide range of detail-oriented things in the classroom, ranging from defensive alignments to baserunning and bunting.

Firenzi said he likes teaching his players in a classroom environment for two reasons. It allows the players to learn exactly what they need to be doing and be thinking about while they are playing on the field, and it instills a certain discipline into the player that then translates onto their play in the field.

He said he has stressed the importance of being a well disciplined team to his players since the beginning of the off season.

“What I’m changing is the discipline, but it’s hard nowadays since kids are so different,” Firenzi said. “I was the flat-topped, hair cut, whistle around his neck P.E.  teacher, but nowadays it’s a little more mellow.”

Head coach Jeff Packman said the players respect Firenzi because they understand how experienced he is at both coaching and playing.

“I just think these players look up to the penants hanging on the fence that he was a part of, and they know he’s someone who’s been through it,” Packman said. “Mike  demands the guys to come out and play hard every day, run off and on the field, wear their uniforms the right way, and just respect Redwood baseball.”

Firenzi made his players participate in during the offseason to learn discipline was cleaning and working on Moody field.

“Pride in the facility, that’s the new environment,” Firenzi said.

After teaching his players important baseball lessons and moral values through instructing in the class room and making them clean the field, he conditioned his players and taught them basic fundamentals.

For conditioning, he had his players flip truck tires, work on forearm strength, run the Larkspur stairs, and change the way they warmed up.

“There was nothing really similar now to what they did last year,” Firenzi said.  “Everything has been changed.”

He had his players work on fielding and bunting fundamentals on the black top.

“I like the blacktop because it gives the ball a true bounce, so we were able to work with our infielders on square one fundamentals,” Firenzi said.

After working on fundamentals, conditioning, and baseball intelligence, his players took what they learned to practicing it on the field.  He said their practices are very regimented and detail oriented.

“Honestly I’m on them a lot for the littlest things,” Firenzi said. “There’s not much screwing around, so they’re pretty much running they’re drills on their own now.”

He said that he really stresses working hard on practice days to his players so that they can have fun on game days.

The varsity team just won their first game in fashion on Saturday, March 2. With the game tied 4-4 in the bottom of the seventh inning,

Cameron Hussain stepped to the plate and delivered a walkoff single that scored Cameron Brady from third base.

That is just the beginning of the Firenzi era.

He said he wants to leave an everlasting impact on the student of Redwood before he is done coaching.

“I think it’s a problem school-wide when our football team goes 1-9 and the rest of our sports are struggling,” Firenzi said.  “I don’t see enough attendance at Redwood sporting events, and I think our school pride has gone down far too much.”

He said that one of his biggest motivations in revitalizing the baseball team is increasing school pride.

“My ultimate goal is to make this program when I leave as good as any,” Firenzi said. “We’re knocking at the door.”