A Game for All Seasons

      I confess I was not prepared for the strength of my feelings.  I would never have predicted how strongly I feel about the way Beau Baylor is coached baseball.  But there it is.  He’s eight and playing in his first “kids’ pitch” league.  I will say that it is tremendously thrilling to see him play, to see him move around with a uniform on.  He is the center of my focus.  The game revolves around him.  I love to see him glide towards a ground ball or race around the bases.  I would love to claim he is chipped from my block.  But even as much as I am capable of shading my memory and rewriting history, I cannot remember gliding across the field.  What I did on the base paths was never called racing.  Even I recall that persistence was by far my greatest asset as a player.  

       I certainly did not believe that I would be one of those dugout dads who are the bane of coaches and umpires around the country, the ones who shout ill-conceived directions and relive their youths through their children.  In fairness, I don’t think I am one of those.  I am intensely interested, somewhat protective, excessively watchful and overwhelmingly proud.  I am guilty of these parental sins, perhaps others.  I should add that of these sins I am absolutely unashamed.

       However, to my surprise and horror, it has become evident that I am a baseball purist.  Gad, who would have thought it?  I am intent on seeing baseball taught, and learned, in its purest physical and metaphysical form.  Baseball as Zen exercise.  Baseball as martial art.  Baseball, the way I think it oughta be.

       I do believe that baseball should be its own reward.  The game, particularly at eight, should be a joyful experience.  Fielding grounders is fun.  Shagging fly balls is big fun.  Hitting is ultimate fun.  The joy of swinging at balls without fear of striking out, of knowing there are more pitches to come, is just about the grandest fun there is.

        I think the most fun I ever had was playing baseball.  Choosing up sides after school in backyards and empty lots and cow pastures.  Rocks or wadded-up jackets for bases, trees or garages for foul lines, balls the color of Army jeeps.  No umpires.   It was the best of times.

      The adults, well meaning, one and all, saw our interest and organized us into a Little League.  I will say that putting on the uniform was a thrill, playing under the lights with brand new, white balls and all that attention was a grand rush.  But some of the joy left the game.  It became a measure of our worth.  It was their league.  They made the rules, they told us where to play, they called the balls and strikes.   It became less a game and more an initiation into the adult world.  Somehow, I never had as much fun playing baseball after I put a uniform on.

       Friends who weren’t very good but always played in our pick-up games ceased playing altogether when it got organized.  In our games, they’d get 4,5, even 6 strikes.  The adult rules wouldn’t bend like that. They never got to play much and chose not to make their lack of coordination and skill a matter of public record.  In a sense, the ante went up when the adults took over.  It became a game of wins and losses, of bottom lines.  The results were even published in the newspaper. The victors got the spoils.  The losers got toe jam.

       Understand that I am not opposed to competition.  There was a time when I thrived on it.  The intensity required to play against someone at your own skill level or beyond is part of being fully alive.  The concentration and intensity required in competitive situations allows us to stretch our abilities and see what we are capable of.   Nature is full of examples of the shaping value of competition.  And there is competition that goes on around the edges of every pick up game.  This is valuable stuff.  I’m just not sure it’s terribly valuable at eight. 

          It’s the first game of the year and Beau Baylor is batting.  I am anxious and fearful and hopeful, my unenlightened worst.  I hear a loud, male voice yell: “Strike him out, Todd!”  And I am literally stunned.  It had somehow not dawned on me that the other team wanted my son to fail, that their success depended to a large degree on our failure.   And they wanted that to happen.   Beau Baylor is an intense kid.  He tries hard and doesn’t understand much about failure at this point.  He doesn’t tolerate it terribly well.  Who does?  But he’s eight.  He sometimes cries when he strikes out---not openly, but behind a tree, into his hands.  So Todd, to be a winner in his own and others’ eyes, must diminish Beau.  He must vanquish him.  And in so doing he must cause pain more intense than a beaning.  If the guy had said: “Stick it in his ear, Todd!”, it would have been much less jarring somehow.

       What we fail to understand is that this is win-win here.  Who can fail?  Todd in his crisp red and white uniform and new glove, standing erect and throwing hard.  Beau in his baggy blue-and-gold, blowing bubbles and waving his bat ominously.  It is no more complicated than this.  The end has nothing to do with the means.  The odds are that neither Todd nor Beau will make their living playing baseball.  This is not about job training or career advancement.  This is not even about character development.   This is about elementary fun on Saturday morning.  If it does not fulfill that mission statement, then it is worthless.  It is counter-productive.  Why do it at all?

       It’s supposed to be a kids’ game.  But adults tend to obsessively organize things.  They have high expectations.  Men in particular apparently have an overwhelming need to shout advice.  Mostly it is empty and ill conceived and unimaginative (In contrast to my own advice which is well-timed, sound and based on a fundamental knowledge of the game).  Additionally, much of their advice is physiologically contradictory and untenable for sustained periods of time, such as one at-bat. 

“Cock your elbow,” they yell, with voices that could shatter Plexiglas.  “Choke up!”  “Keep your weight back!”   “Follow through!”   All good advice, to be sure.  But now is not the time.  They shout instructions which are supposed to replace hours of practice, hundreds of internalized corrections. See, kids know how to play.  If it’s important to them, they figure out what they’re doing wrong and make adjustments.  It’s not that tough a game.  Pitch, catch, swing, run, slide.  Do it again.  A couple million repetitions and it’s like you’ve been doing it all your life.  But no amount of bonehead adult advice will make them any better.

       Well, I want to yell stuff too.  I want to be the voice in the back of Beau’s head, the one that sounds like his own, saying: “It’s just a game.  Swing hard.  Slide when you need to.  Have fun.”  I want to shield him from all the other nonsensical adult voices telling him where to put his hand and how to distribute his weight and all the other crap that didn’t exist before they invented baseball analysts who started expounding it.  I want to hit him grounders till he says, “That’s enough, Dad”.  I want to hit him fly balls till he gets tired or bored and the smile leaves his face.  I want to play catch till all our balls are in the storm sewer, or my arm hurts too much.  Then we’ll go buy some more.  And I’ll take some Advil.

        See, we’re throwing back and forth more than just baseballs here.  This is affection. This is respect. This is trust.  It’s a game where no one keeps score, no one loses and no one wears a uniform.   It is the best of times.