The plate
The home plate is a metaphor for performance in this novel, because that is the place where all the prep work and skill of a player is judged in real time. In the pursuit of well-executed performance and consistency, the coach has to help his players to attain a kind of peaceful point of view, one that doesn't let anxiety get out of control. The plate becomes the platform for an exercise in self-trust.
Practice as the skill of excellence
Coach Sweet is right about practice. The real reason to practice isn't to built discipline—in fact, unless a player already has discipline in order, they will experience practice like torture, and they won't get better because they're not having fun. But by contextualizing practice within the ethical objective of learning one's ability to attain excellence at something, then the players notice their progress, and they enjoy the tranquillity of focused work.
The Republican leadership
Just like his own father, the leadership at the school have old fashioned ideas about the market and about the role of competition in human life. They find meaning in victory, in competition, and in school pride. But, they also don't see the ethical problem with their attempts to imbue those principles in the children. They urge Coach Sweet to lead his team in the way they want, in the way that would make Republicans. They symbolize the insidious role of politics in public schooling.
The allusion to Steve Shartzer
This novel alleges that Coach Sweet discovered the real life baseball star, Steve Shartzer. The allusion serves as a symbol of the value of Sweet's approach to leadership and coaching. Certainly, Shartzer's career has Sweet to thank, because Coach Sweet helped the youngster to see the path toward excellence in a new way, in a way that literally helped Shartzer to manifest his full potential.
The hippie motif
The word hippie is used like a slur among the school leadership. The movement was defined by its counter-cultural standard, its openness to new experience, and its abandonment of conservative moral standards. They feel that just because Coach Sweet is teaching the kids to trust their own intuition and to love themselves as well as to challenge themselves, that he is making hippies out of them. That motif serves to undermine their own opinion, because it is obviously pitting hippies as their competition, showing the danger of their competitive mindset.
