What is “The Coldwater Kid” about?
"The Coldwater Kid" tells the story of Tommy Hale, a small-town Michigan baseball hope who leaves on a scholarship with the whole town cheering and comes home quiet, with a limp and no explanation. Now he stocks shelves at his uncle's hardware store, walks past his old jersey and coaches Little League, and when kids ask if he made the big leagues he answers, "I made enough." Track ten on The Last Porch Light, it is one of the album's third-person stories about coming home.
The Coldwater Kid lyrics
Tommy Hale from Coldwater, Michigan
Population twelve hundred and change
Threw a baseball like a prayer in a windstorm
And everybody said that boy's going places
Scholarship to State, left on a Greyhound
Mama waved until the bus turned the bend
Town paper ran a front-page story
Coldwater's finest, they called him back then
But the Coldwater kid came home quiet
No parade, no headlines in the news
Came back with a limp and a silence
And a look that said he'd paid some dues
The Coldwater kid came home different
Than the boy who left with all that light
Sometimes the places we go to get bigger
Just teach us how small we are at night
He took a job at his uncle's hardware store
Stocking shelves and cutting keys
Kids come in and stare at the trophy case
At the high school where his jersey still hangs
He don't talk much about what happened
Between the scholarship and now
Just says sometimes life throws you a slider
And you learn to put the bat down somehow
But the Coldwater kid came home quiet
No parade, no headlines in the news
Came back with a limp and a silence
And a look that said he'd paid some dues
The Coldwater kid came home different
Than the boy who left with all that light
Sometimes the places we go to get bigger
Just teach us how small we are at night
And maybe that's the story nobody tells
The ones who almost made it out
Who came back to the town that built them
And learned to love it anyhow
He coaches Little League on Saturdays
Teaches kids to keep their elbow up
And when they ask him if he made the show
He smiles and says I made enough
Yeah the Coldwater kid came home quiet
But he came home, and that's the part that counts
He found a life between the glory
And the ground
The Coldwater kid came home
And he stayed
And he stayed