I live just up the street from the local park and ball fields, and every day as I sit here at my desk I catch a glimpse of my past in the form of young ball playing aspirants walking home with their dads and sometimes mom’s.
I don’t mean the dads are sometimes moms…you know what I mean….but again….
Gotta be careful.
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Anyway, I’ll focus more on the dads and sons here, since that was my experience when I was an 8 year old baseball novice.
Nowadays they start even earlier…like 3, 4, 5 or 6. You can’t start playing baseball too early, you know. Can’t start instilling the value of self-esteem based on how well coordinated you are and your ability to concentrate on anything other than a Sponge Bob cartoon, too soon.
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I mean who needs a well-adjusted kid?
What struck me about today's vignette was the sight of a particular young man, dressed in full uniform, maybe 9 or 10, walking about 6 or 7 steps ahead of his dad, who was barking instructions at him in regard to that day’s on field performance.
The kid, head down, trudged forward carrying the tell-tale weight of failure on his back.
Was it a team failure or a personal one, I wondered. Judging from the dad’s remarks it seemed kind of personal.
“I told you about keeping your front shoulder in and your back elbow up…”
“You’re still guessing instead of reacting….”
And from what I could see the kid wasn’t reacting, at all, at least to his dad. In fact it occurred to me that his dad’s voice was the last thing he wanted to hear. Because if I were this little boy of 9 or 10, what I wanted to hear was, “Good game…let’s go get some ice cream.”
But I guess things are different now.
When I was 8 we pretty much just showed up at the field in a pair of dirty jeans and whatever shirt we woke up in, along with either some hand me down dried out piece of leather, or a glove so new it still mooed and was impossible to bend let alone close.
There we stood, gathered in a circle to hear some inspirational words from the coach, all the while wondering why his nose was so red. Then, appropriately inspired, we ran out to the field, screaming like banshees, who had a pretty good team themselves, and stood wherever we could find an open spot to stand.
One lucky kid was selected to pick up a bat and hit, which is what we all really wanted to do, while the coach soft tossed baseballs at him.
Mostly, the kid would swing valiantly at the pitch, usually miss and sometimes screw himself into the ground.
Meanwhile, the rest of us stood out at our self-appointed positions, made faces at our friends, scanned the sky for airplanes and picked our own red noses.
Occasionally the bat would find its way to the ball and, if you were paying attention....
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