updated 9:56 p.m. ET July 23, 2007

SAN ANTONIO - Mike Coolbaugh became a coach with the Tulsa Drillers earlier this month not so much for the job itself, but because his little boys loved to see him on the baseball field.

“He had just started,” said Coolbaugh’s wife, Amanda, who is expecting their third child in October. “We were going to be done with it, but his kids wanted to see him.”

Coolbaugh, 35, died Sunday after being struck in the head by a line drive as he stood in the first-base coach’s box during a game in Arkansas.

Amanda Coolbaugh, 32, said they planned to wait to find out the baby’s sex until the birth. The couple has two sons, Joseph, 5, and Jacob, 3.

“You couldn’t have asked for a better father,” Amanda Coolbaugh said through tears Monday in San Antonio. “He just paid attention to the boys, put them in clubs and sports ... volunteered time on their teams.”

The game between the Double-A Drillers and Arkansas Travelers was suspended in the ninth inning Sunday after Coolbaugh was hit by a foul ball off the bat of Tino Sanchez. He was taken to Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock, where he was pronounced dead at 9:47 p.m.

Arkansas was awarded a 7-3 victory Monday, the score at the time of the accident. The game was stopped with a runner on first and no outs for Tulsa.

“I feel that it is in the best interest of all the players and staff on both clubs to declare the contest an official and completed game,” Texas League president Tom Kayser said. “No one wanted to add to the trauma the two clubs have already endured, which would have undoubtedly occurred if the clubs were to resume their exact positions on the field so soon after the accident that claimed Mike Coolbaugh.”

The Drillers, a Colorado Rockies affiliate, said Monday night’s game against the Wichita Wranglers in Kansas was postponed.

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“Our entire organization grieves at the death of Mike Coolbaugh,” Rockies president Keli McGregor said. “We were shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the accident on Sunday evening. Mike was a great husband, father, brother and friend to so many throughout the baseball community.”

The Blue Jays held a moment of silence before Monday’s game in honor of Coolbaugh, whom the Jays drafted in 1990. The Kansas City Royals also honored Coolbaugh’s memory before facing the New York Yankees.

“All of baseball mourns this terrible tragedy,” commissioner Bud Selig said.

According to a report on the Drillers’ Web site late Sunday, Coolbaugh was knocked unconscious and CPR was administered to him on the field.

Sgt. Terry Kuykendall, spokesman for North Little Rock police, said Coolbaugh stopped breathing as his ambulance arrived at the hospital.

Coolbaugh joined the Drillers on July 3, and Rockies manager Clint Hurdle chatted with him the next day. They talked about balancing the demands of baseball and family.

“He was a good man,” an emotional Hurdle said. “We had some common fabric. He had a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, Jacob and Joseph, his wife’s six months pregnant, Mandy is. So, we talked about kids. We talked about the relationship, the demands of a father, of a coach. And he was so excited.

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“He was a good man. He loved the game and his family.”

The former major leaguer who played 44 games for the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers over two seasons was remembered Monday as a generous man.

“He always said if he won the lotto, he would divide it up between every single person he knew,” said Amanda Coolbaugh, who met Mike on the first blind date for both. They had been married for seven years.

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