The biggest challenge Mike Smith faced during more than four decades as a high school baseball coach in Seminole, Orange and Lake counties had nothing to do with winning state championships or amassing nearly 800 career wins.
It was teaching actor Tom Berenger the finer points of playing catcher while assisting at a week-long baseball camp at Pepperdine University in California in 1988.
“I got a call in my room from [Pepperdine coach] Dave Gorrie asking me to bring down the [instructional] baseball slides I made, because we needed to turn some guy into a hitter,” Smith remembers.