Take Me Out Coach, I’m Ready to Play

Yesterday, I was at a playground with my four-year-old son when he decided he wanted to roll down a hill that overlooked a little league baseball field where a father was instructing his two sons. While B–and two other little friends he’d just made–frolicked in the thick grass, I stood and watched the man as he hit grounders to his two boys, one who seemed about 8 or 9, the other 5 or 6. Each time one of them made a mistake he would correct them, showing them how to place themselves in front of the ball or why their throw to first had gone errant. The youngest one in particular seemed aloof and once when my son made a gleeful noise he turned and watched, his gaze lingering. I’m sure he would’ve rather leaped over the outfield fence and joined in the afternoon fun, instead of being barked at by his gruff dad. “What a dickhead,” I thought at one point as the father chastised his older kid for making a “bad throw.”

Perhaps I was superimposing my own feelings on the situation down on the field. As a youngster, I spent day after day fielding grounders from my father and swinging the bat at balls he whizzed my way. Was it fun? I don’t know. As a result, I became very proficient at Little League baseball but it also brought with a certain amount of stress, in some ways taking the whole fun out of recreational sport. By the time, I was 13 or so I was burnt out.

I think about this with my own son. Do I want him to be good at sports, yes, but I also want him to come to it on his own. If he does, then maybe I can step in and give him some pointers. But watching that dad drill his kids in the finer points of baseball also gave me a little itch. I already was picturing getting B a glove next summer and getting him out on this very same field, teaching him to keep his head and glove down on ground balls streaming his way. The problem is my son is not intimidated by me at all–as I was with my father–and may simply refuse to listen to my instructions, instead strolling out to the outfield, finding a dandelion and sitting there in the grass smelling it like Ferdinand the bull. If so, I won’t hold it against him. It’s just baseball.