Charlie Tilson played a lot of baseball growing up in Wilmette on his path toward a major league career; yet one play still stands out to him as a foundational moment.
Tilson recalled one game when there were two shallow lines drives that fell in front of him for base hits, as he was “caught in between” in baseball parlance.
He soon got a message from his coach, Mike Napoleon, that he needed to dive in those situations.
“Regardless of whether you drop it, you got to go for it,” Tilson remembered Napoleon telling him. “He wasn’t afraid to let guys know that is what baseball is all about. It is a challenging sport but you have to put your best foot forward and he wanted his guys believing in themselves. He didn’t want anyone playing apprehensively.”
Such is one story in Napoleon’s history-making career as the longtime New Trier High School coach known as Coach Naps won his 951st game on April 27. With the win, he became the winningest baseball coach in Illinois High School Association history.
Napoleon connected breaking the record with coaching for more than 40 years.
“I’ve stayed in it,” he said. “I’ve stayed in the game that I love to coach for a long time. I’ve had great players, great coaches and a great wife and family that support me.”
It has been a career with roots going back to growing up in Chicago’s Northwest Side where a self-described “gym rat” played a lot of football, baseball and basketball at Shabbona Park.
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“That is what us gym rats did, we just hung around the park,” Napoleon said.
Soon he was coaching, combining his love for the game and working with children.
“I just enjoyed doing it with the strategy involved and the mechanics,” he said.
Napoleon developed friendships with many including Mike Rizzo, the Washington Nationals General Manager and President of Baseball Operations.
Rizzo recalled the two as player-coaches of a local Pony League All Star team and even as a child, he observed Napoleon had the talent to manage as they broke down the mechanics of swings.
“You could see that he had the feel for handling game situations,” Rizzo said. “He has always been a people person kind of guy.”
As he got older, Napoleon continued to pursue athletics at St. Patrick High School, named captain of both the football and baseball teams in his senior year. He went on to attend the University of Illinois, conceding he was an “average” player. Yet there was an interest in staying with sports, now as a coach.
His coaching career started after college graduation as an assistant at Quigley South High School, then getting his first head coaching job at Notre Dame High School in Niles, followed by a stop at Providence Catholic in New Lenox.
In 1996, New Trier hired Napoleon and for the last 27 years, he has guided the Trevians baseball team (along with being a varsity football coach).
“This was a school I wanted to be at some point in my career,” he said. “They had great facilities and it seemed like their equipment was always brand new. Their players played hard and they grew them tall out here. It seemed some place I wanted to be.”
It has been a successful run highlighted by state championships in 2000 and 2009, a pair of second place finishes along with 14 Central Suburban League titles and a 2000 induction into the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Napoleon explains his coaching philosophy that has been in place at New Trier for nearly three decades and concurrently with the Wilmette Waves Legion Baseball Team.
“We play hard but we play within the rules and I would like to think we are usually good defensively and we run the bases extremely well and we do a good job of putting the ball in play,” he said.
Watching his friend from a distance, Rizzo, speaks of Napoleon’s abilities.
“He has always been a ‘tough love’ kind of coach that players are always drawn to,” he said. “He can be a disciplinarian in a way that the players know that the best interest is involved. When he says something to you, it is to make you better. It is not to build him up, it is to build you up.”
On April 27, when Napoleon’s Trevians beat Glenbrook North to break the state record, Tilson was in the crowd at Duke Childs Field.
He also spoke of the “tough love” from Coach Naps.
“It was the tough love that you want,” Tilson said. “He really saw the potential in me and he pushed me to get the most out of my abilities. I learned a lot in the process. It had a great impact on my career.”
On the flip side, Tilson, whose major league career was cut short to less than a 100 games due to injuries, said he and Napoleon would often travel to Chicago’s iconic SuperDawg restaurant as Tilson struggled with the disappointment of getting hurt.
“He was always someone I could always count on,” Tilson said.
The state record obviously thrills Napoleon as he warmly mentions the hour it took to read all the messages he received after breaking the record. There is also pride that both of his sons have pursued coaching just like their father.
He also takes pride in not having to be the only disciplinarian when he sees a lack of effort.
“We’re to the point now where other kids on the team will call them out,” he notes.
He said he enjoys coaching as much as he ever has, but the final outs in his career may not be far off as he plans to retire from teaching in 2024. He would like to get 1,000 career wins and coach until 2025, but he plans to speak with athletic director Augie Fontanetta after the season to chart a path going forward.
But those are conversations for the future. Right now, there is a celebration of the present.
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“To do what he has done there is an extraordinary achievement,” Rizzo said. “He has a skill set and determination that few people have.”
Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.