Swan song for longtime youth baseball coach Paul Witten

Upon arriving Wednesday at Dreams Park, Witten began making the rounds — with his reserved demeanor and charismatic chatter for all things baseball — prompting his assistant coach, Tony Sylvestri, to text West Coast Federals founder Jerry Berkson with a a quick update.

Sylvestri’s text read: “Paul’s the mayor of Cooperstown.”

For Witten, who started coaching in the area in 1993 when he was 21 with the Foster City Pony League, his term as the mayor of Cooperstown will be his last go-around as an area coach. With his youngest son Ashton Moniz-Witten, a recent Aragon graduate, moving across the country to play NCAA Division III baseball at Nichols College, Witten will be relocating to Dudley, Massachusetts, where the college is located.

Witten is as involved as a baseball fan as he is a coach. With Ashton Moniz-Witten pitching at Aragon in the spring, Witten attended all the Dons’ home games, and turned up at every road game when his son was pitching. Witten was also a regular at Skyline College games, where the oldest of his two sons, Tyler Moniz-Witten — who is set to transfer to the NCAA Division II program at Cal State Dominguez Hills — was a sophomore this past season.

Concurrently, Witten coached the Federals 12U team to a 28-6 record during the club baseball spring season.

“Baseball kept me very busy this spring,” Witten said, “as it usually does.”

While the Federals have seen an array of coaches come and go since Berkson founded the club baseball organization in 2006, Witten has a unique story. His resume as a District 52 coach is evidence of this, as he coached Ashton Moniz-Witten’s San Mateo American All-Stars teams — with rosters largely built from Federals teams — from 2014-16.

After Ashton Moniz-Witten aged out of District 52 play, Witten stepped away. But then in a rare move, he returned to coach the 11s team in 2021, despite not having any children on the team.

“I’m not going to have a team if I don’t have a good coach … and Paul was always there,” Berkson said. “Paul doesn’t have the baseball experience that some of those guys have, but as far as game management, and the team relationships thing, he has that down. And I think that’s as important as anything.”

Witten admittedly isn’t as skilled at coaching hitting and pitching technique as many coaches. But he doesn’t have to be. Coaching at a premium baseball club, kids don’t generally find their way into a Federals uniform unless their skills are advanced in these areas. So, Witten focuses on the defensive side of the game. He’s more an advocate of “playing catch,” in the baseball slang sense of taking care of the ball in the field.

“A lot of kids that come to us can already hit and pitch,” Witten said. “But if they can play catch, then it’s something special.”

With Witten’s enthusiasm for talking baseball, though, the philosophy of “playing catch” doesn’t stop there. He is a staunch advocate of playing fast catch, a term that has a more literal translation.

“I really adopt that philosophy,” Witten said. “You’ve got to get rid of [the ball] fast. ... If you can play fast catch better than the other team, you’re probably in a position to win those games.”

Witten’s Federals 12U team got so good at playing fast catch during the spring, the players actually outgrew their age group. For this reason, the squad began playing in 13U tournaments.

It didn’t slow them down. The team’s 28-6 overall record includes four 13U tournaments, starting with an invite to the Northern California Travel Baseball tourney, the Gauntlet, held April 29-30 in Stockton. In four games, Federals pitchers tossed two no-hitters, one by Seanan Young and the other by Michael Ohman.

The Federals went on to win the 13U tournament Cinco de Mayo Fiesta at Twin Creeks in Sunnyvale, culminating in a 15-3 championship-game victory — a rout Witten welcomed.

“At the end of the day ... I want killers,” Witten said of how he coaches his players to approach the game. “And I have killers. They want to kill you on the field. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.”

Coaching “killers” might seem like an antiquated approach, but Witten embraces the old school. He credits local hitting guru John Quintell — a 1986 graduate of Capuchino and founder of longtime private baseball clinic Sweet Swing — for breathing the old school blue-collar approach into him.

“I think there are a lot of gimmicky ways that people train,” Witten said. “And what I love about the way John trains, is there are no tricks.”

Raising “killers” isn’t as menacing as it sounds, though, especially for a youth baseball whisperer like Witten.

“He’s a very big player-type coach,” Berkson said, “and when you can do that and actually teach the game at the same time, that’s pretty good.”

Berkson and Witten have joked they will reunite with the West Coast Federals in three or four years if and when Witten moves back to the Bay Area. Make that half joked. Berkson said he would seriously welcome back Witten, and has even enticed his longtime friend with a group of promising 6-year-old baseball standouts who will be ready to don Federals uniforms in 2027.

For Witten, though, having began his coaching career in San Mateo County 30 years ago, he’s already been essential to several generations of local baseball players, and has come to realize just how profound is his reach while making the rounds as a high school baseball fan in recent years.

“There’s nothing better than when you see a kid in high school that still calls you coach,” Witten said.