A beautiful evening for baseball

Sunday was a beautiful evening for watching a baseball game.

Except that I wasn't really thinking about watching a baseball game, despite the fact that I had driven 25 minutes to reach the field, and toted along a fold-up chair, hats for my daughter Holly and me, salad and strawberries to contribute to a picnic, and a picnic blanket.

I was thinking about how I'd managed to vacuum only half the house. I was thinking about what time I'd need to get Holly to day camp the next morning and whether the schedule would enable me to reach my office on time. I was thinking about why the washing machine had mysteriously turned itself off in the middle of a rinse cycle, and when I could be home for a service visit if the washing machine didn't resuscitate itself in the morning. I was thinking about how many more games were left before Tim's summer league ended, and whether I'd submitted all the paperwork in order for him to start driver's ed next week. And I was thinking, as I always do during baseball games, about whether any of us in the stands or whether any of the players on the field were likely to get beaned by a fastball and sustain a brain-threatening injury.

And just as it looked like a win was within easy reach, the other team tied the game and it went into extra innings.

All of which almost made me overlook the fact that it was such a beautiful evening for a baseball game.

By 6:30, the edges of the field were bathed in shade. My parents had arrived earlier and claimed a wide swath of grass for our picnic. I'd taken time at home to hull the strawberries, and they were tender, sweet, and room temperature, just the way I like them best. Holly was excited about the start of camp. Tim was pitching with an air of assurance, whether merited or not.

It was the last weekend of June, and the whole summer still lay ahead....and yet as I watched the extra innings begin, in hopes of a prompt and easy tie-breaker, I realized the sense of limitless time was an illusion. The baseball season would indeed end, but more changes would follow. Holly would soon be old enough to make her own plans on a summer evening, plans which very likely would not include her brother's baseball games. By the time a new baseball season rolls around, Tim will be able to drive himself to the field. My parents won't be here to picnic with us forever either.

It's strange to have a sense of things ending just as the summer is beginning, but sitting there watching the game made me ever more aware of how much that game was like my life itself. So many details to keep track of -- details involving household maintenance, employment, health, finances -- but also so much to enjoy. And, too, so much to worry about: an errant pitch slamming into an eye or skull and changing everything; a bad decision about which side street to take on the way home.

Life is short, I reminded myself as the game entered yet another tied inning. Summer is short. The baseball season is short. Even the strawberry season is short. This abundance of blessings -- family, food, health, security -- all of this could, and in some ways inevitably will, pass.

There were still a couple of tied innings left for me to savor, and I stopped thinking about the malfunctioning washing machine and upcoming deadlines and paid attention to baseball. Tim's team lost, but that didn’t matter. We had a wonderful time. It turned out to be not only a beautiful evening but a perfect one.

Baseball chatter

It may well be the case that “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” as Tennyson so famously put it, but you wouldn’t know it from the conversation in the back of my car as I drive my 15-year-old and his friends home, late on a spring afternoon.

All that these young men’s thoughts seem to be turning to right now is baseball. Whether they have a chance at making the starting line-up. Which of their freshmen teammates under- or overestimates their own abilities. Who is likely to be called up to junior varsity before the season ends. Which drills were most difficult at today’s practice, and which ones most rewarding. Whether it makes sense that pitchers and catchers are required to run approximately five times more laps than their teammates representing other positions.

I know many parents believe the one upside of drawing carpool duty is getting to eavesdrop; in the commute from school to home (or from school to home to home to home, depending on the number of kids in the carpool), they furtively fill up on adolescent gossip and rumination on topics social, academic, and societal.

But not in our carpool. In our carpool it’s all baseball, all the time. At least this week. Last week too, come to think of it. Pretty much every week since baseball tryouts took place in mid-March.

And I have to admit, I think it’s adorable.

These aren’t little kids, after all. I’ve known not only my own son the pitcher but also his friend the catcher and his other friend the first baseman since T-ball days, although back then there was no need for carpooling since every parent attended every game and every practice. 

Now that they’re in high school, we’re a little more detached when it comes to sports; we’ll go to their home games when work schedules allow, and maybe the occasional away game if the distance is convenient, but certainly not practices. Instead, we make up complicated schedules for whose turn it is to drive them home on which days. (For a short time we tried leaving the carpool scheduling up to the boys, but we quickly discovered each boy was certain that his own mother was happy to drive every single day if needed. It turns out 15-year-old boys are not actually the best judges of their mothers’ time or availability.)

And now that they’re in high school, I’d understand if other interests preoccupied their thoughts once practice ended. I expected the conversation floating forward from the backseat to involve friends. Cafeteria pranks. School dances. The latest STD film screened in health class.

But all they talk about is baseball. To my surprise, once spring arrives, even now at fifteen with the baritone voices of young men and the promise of driver’s licenses less than a year away, these boys’ thoughts turn lightly not to love but to double plays and the infield fly rule.

Perhaps what makes this so endearing is the irrefutable fact of how fleeting it is. In just a year or two, even if they continue to play on the spring team, other thoughts will preoccupy their drive time: SAT scores, college applications, finding a summer job, paying for the prom. I find myself envying their absolute lack of distraction. Adulthood, it seems to me, is one big tangled forest of distractions. I want to be able to focus on anything at all with as much unadulterated concentration as these boys give to baseball.

But I also just want to appreciate the fact that they can do this, knowing in reality I can’t. Driving this carpool may get boring after a while; I don’t really know all that much about baseball myself, and the time might come when I’d welcome talk of cafeteria pranks rather than pitching signals.

Right now, though, I’m just happy to let their sports jargon fill my ears. At the moment, it’s all they care about. Soon enough, like Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s young men, their thoughts will lightly turn to love, and to all manner of other things. In reality, their thoughts already have, most of the time.

But not on weekday afternoons during baseball season. So while it lasts, I’ll cherish this.

Tim playing baseball

It’s what you might call an open secret that I don’t show up at too many of Tim’s baseball games. Even before Holly wrote an acrostic for Mothers’ Day and used the phrase “Not good at committing to watch Tim’s baseball games” for the very first letter in my name, I was a no-show more often than not.

It just doesn’t seem essential to me to appear at every game. Since Rick is Tim’s coach, Tim is always assured of one parent at the game. And I’ve never really bought into the cliché of “never missed a baseball game” (or soccer match or dance recital or skating competition) as the hallmark of an attentive parent. I go to some of the games, and I ask Tim to tell me about the ones I miss. He doesn’t read every article I write; I trust him to understand that I care and am interested in what he’s doing even if I don’t stand on the sidelines at every game.

But last Saturday I did get to the game, and it was the All-Star match-up, and it reminded me of what a joy it can be for a parent to watch a child do something for which the child has slowly and painstakingly acquired skills and honed talent. On the baseball diamond, Tim is strong, effective, sure-footed and confident; moreover, he’s happy and has fun. He was on the All-Star team but he’s not a star; he’s a good player among many good players, and that’s how he sees himself as well.

At the age of 12, the boys are no longer playing a kiddie version of the game. They pitch hard, run fast, swing the bat with considerable might and connect bat with ball a reasonable percentage of the time. Off the field, we parents reassure the parents of the younger kids still playing t-ball or in their first year of player-pitching rather than coach-pitching that the games really will get more bearable and move faster eventually. We try not to boast that our kids are at the point where it’s like watching, well, a real baseball game.

Seeing how graceful Tim is on the field reminds me all over again of that strange progression of parenthood, how when your child is young you have control over almost everything related to him: what he eats, what books he reads, who he meets, where he goes, even to some extent what images cross his field of vision. As a result, for a time he knows and experiences nothing beyond what you know and experience. And that gradually your scope of control lessens: he goes to school, meets people you don’t know, hears stories you’ve never read, learns about the Ice Age and the Iditarod and topics you’ve never thought about much at all.

And accordingly, he then develops abilities you didn’t instill. As an athlete, Tim surpassed me before he turned seven. Now, on the baseball field, he can execute moves I don’t even know exist. He’s in his own universe out there, one that hardly overlaps with mine at all. But getting myself to a game is one way to be part of this new universe, and although I don’t feel guilty about the games I miss, I’m full of delight when I do get there to watch him.

On Saturday, Tim’s team lost, and he didn’t have any spectacular at-bats or score any points for his team. But at one moment in the sixth inning, he was in the outfield when a member of the opposing team clouted the ball; it was the best hit of the game. Tim sprang after it and fielded the ball. The batter got to third base, which he certainly deserved after such a show-stopping hit, but Tim threw to the infield in time to prevent him from getting farther. Behind me, a parent I didn’t recognize who was rooting for the other team muttered with audible disappointment, “If anyone other than Tim West had been in the outfield on that play, it would have been a home run.”

This wasn’t a headline moment for Tim, but in a way, that underhanded and unintended praise for him gave the whole experience resonance for me. Tim’s team lost, but he played the strong solid game for which he apparently already has a reputation. And I was happy to be there for it.

In the middle of baseball season

When my 11-year-old’s baseball season ramps up, with three evening games and one practice a week, I sometimes catch myself musing that this isn’t quite as much fun as I remembered it being when I thought about it over the winter.

Well, of course. The long, dark, snowy days of winter are when my son, who really dislikes cold weather, tends to become pallid and fade away a bit. At that time I remind myself of what he is like at his best: playing shortstop or on the pitcher’s mound, stretching for a fly ball, winding up for a pitch, taking a practice swing on deck.

But in the thick of baseball season, where we are now, it’s harder for me to remember just why I looked forward to this time of year. Since my husband coaches Tim’s team, both of them are gone four evenings a week from five in the afternoon until nearly nine at night. It’s too early for dinner before they leave; they’re both weary and hungry when they get home, and I spend a lot of time throughout the season trying to think of dinners that I can make early in the evening for Holly and me but that will still be tasty when reheated hours later. This approach to cooking isn’t so hard in the winter, when stews and casseroles are typical fare, but harder with summery meals.

Also Tim gets so tired with all the night games, and often returns home with mild injuries that make it all the harder for him to drag himself through dinner, shower, and bed. Last night a pitch hit his side, leaving a big circular pink bruise. He’s a good sport, but I know it hurts.

And it’s not ideal for Holly and me, either. Since Rick is the coach, there isn’t as much pressure on me as there is on some moms to be at every game, but I try to show up at least half the time. Unfortunately, Holly is not the kind of younger sibling who adores watching her big brother compete. Most evenings, she’d rather stay home. Occasionally I can rouse some enthusiasm in her for going to Tim’s game for at last an inning or two, but that’s usually when the game is at a field where she has a vague memory of once seeing an ice cream truck.

Nonetheless, there are good parts to baseball season. On a warm spring evening, sitting on the bleachers can be a blissful interlude in a busy work week. I run into plenty of friends at the games and can happily pass an inning or two just gabbing with them; Tim doesn’t know the difference. But I also spend a fair amount of the time I’m there watching him play, because I love to watch him play. I’m not a huge baseball fan, but the sight of my own child throwing a fastball or fielding a grounder astounds me. “I created that child, and he can do that?” I marvel silently. “I understand how he learned to read, and swim. And even talk. I was part of it. But how did he get so good at something that has nothing to do with me?

In this respect, baseball is a rite of passage, not so much for Tim as for me. It’s the first thing in his young life that he’s really good at which I have no competency with whatsoever. Even though he’s eleven, sometimes I just can’t get over the fact that he’s branched off from me so visibly. I know nothing about how to play baseball; he knows a lot about it. And this is just the beginning. Maybe he’ll follow me in all kinds of ways – maybe he’ll be a runner, a journalist, a parent, a baker – but maybe not. Maybe he’ll learn to fly a plane, or do surgery. Maybe he’ll speak Russian.

Back in infancy, he was physically dependent on me, and he’s still in many ways emotionally reliant on me, the way children are with their parents at least up to their teen years, which still seem far off. But he’ll grow to be someone different from me, as different as he wishes. Knowing how to pitch a baseball is only the very very beginning of this process.

Spring league ends soon but summer baseball begins soon thereafter. I still have months of night games left to go, and along with them tired children and reheated dinners. But also warm sunlit evenings, energetic ball players to cheer on, and yes, ice cream trucks. All in all I like baseball season. And next winter I’ll try to muster a little more appreciation for non-baseball season, with its early evenings and family dinners.

Do you let your kids win at board games? I say let 'em lose!

“Do you always let your kids win at board games? Do you think we should let them win when they're little?” An internet friend posed this question yesterday, and I couldn’t resist taking the bait.

Why, no, I responded. Losing at board games not only teaches children about sportsmanship but also teaches them that for some things, like Candy Land, the outcome simply doesn’t matter that much; the fun is in the process of playing.

The other learning opportunity that may get overlooked in this debate is for kids to learn what a game of chance means. Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders are, as I remember, strategy-free games; the outcome depends entirely on the luck of the draw, making the odds of winning 50/50. If you let your 3-year-old win at Candy Land every time, isn’t there a risk that he’ll get a warped view of the laws of probability?

In fact, when my son Tim was still playing preschool board games, I remember being so intent on not giving him the wrong message by always letting him win that on one long rainy day when we played several rounds of Candy Land in a row, I became concerned that he was winning – albeit fairly – too often, and that I should win a few games just to exercise his good-sportsmanship muscles, so I briefly contemplated manipulating the outcome. But the thought of myself as someone who cheats at Candy Land was just too distasteful, so I went back to leaving it up to Fate.

When Tim was about five, he invited a new friend over to play T-ball. As the visiting child stepped up to bat, Tim started calling strikes. “Strike one! Strike two! Strike three! My turn to bat!”

The other mother, whom we hadn’t met before, seemed appalled. “Tim, when we play we don’t actually keep score,” she admonished him. “We just let each batter keep going until he gets a good hit.”

Tim was clearly puzzled. “But without strikes, how do you know when the inning is over?” he asked.

Although I understood the other mother’s point, I could also see what Tim meant. To him, striking out wasn’t a sign of failure; it was a sign that your turn is over and it’s someone else’s turn to try. Easy, mathematical, straightforward.

Tim went on to be a fairly serious grade school athlete, and since my husband is a baseball coach for Tim’s age group, it’s something I hear a lot of conversation about. As a coach, my husband has never mouthed the party line about “It doesn’t matter who wins or loses.” He wants the kids to play as if winning is their goal. If they get outplayed by the other team and lose, that’s fine, but he expects his players to go into the game with a “Let’s win this” mindset.

It seems to have worked, at least with our son. Last summer, most of their baseball games ran late into the evening, and although I watched when I could, the need to put my younger child to bed often resulted in my missing the last few innings, so I would get the recap when they got home. Sometimes, Tim would crow like any other child, “We won! We won!” Other times, he would say, “We beat them, but we weren’t playing our best. We were just a stronger team. But we made a lot of mistakes.” And generally those games would be followed by a lot more analysis and intense discussion between my husband and son, and sometimes the other players as well, than those in which they lost. On the other hand, when they played hard and lost by a small margin, no one ever seemed heartbroken, just determined to be sure their hard work paid off better next time.

Last spring, Tim’s fifth grade class invited parents to a reading of personal essays they’d recently written. Tim’s friend Will wrote about playing doubles tennis with his brother against their parents. The story was a cliffhanger, with the two boys giving it their all and the nervous tension building right to game point. But in the end, somewhat to my surprise, the parents won the match. Will ended his essay with a shrug and a sheepish smile as he described that final impossible serve from his dad.

On the way out, I caught up to Will’s mom. “Nice job!” I said.

She smiled. “Yes, he loves to write, and he worked hard on that essay.”

“No, I actually meant nice job on letting the boys lose the game,” I admitted. “That surprised me. I was sure they’d win.”

She laughed, but then answered seriously. “They’re about to be eleven and thirteen and they’re turning into really good players,” she said. “By next summer, they’ll probably be consistently beating us at tennis. We wanted one last win while we could get it.”

I admired her attitude because it was so honest and, ultimately, so sensible. She gave Will one last taste of honest losing, knowing that it won’t be long until he’ll have the thrill of honest winning. I’d like to think a three-year-old playing Chutes and Ladders would benefit just as much from an honest, luck-of-the-draw win or loss as Will does from facing the truth this one last season before he becomes a better tennis player than his mom.