Last Saturday Skywalker participated in his first tryouts for 8 and under little league baseball. He really, really wants to play, and we actually sort of made him talk us into it because of the rigorous schedule (nothing worse than signing on for 3 months, 3 times a week to have your kid whining that he doesn’t want to go by Week 2).
I have to admit, sports are one of those dangerous murky areas for me as a parent: in which my own history and opinions, hopes and fears are so much in play, it’s easy to take my eye off the ball. So to speak.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. Whenever you bring kids together in what is (or will eventually be) a competitive environment, it’s natural to start comparing your kid to other kids, and by extension, your parenting choices to other parents. Are we doing this right? Are we pushing him too hard? Letting him off easy? Should we have started him sooner? Those parents over there are crazy, right?
Aside from all the usual parenting neurosis, for me this comes down to a single, fundamental question: How much can we teach our kids about hard work, discipline and teamwork — and how much is up to them to learn for themselves?
In our house, baseball has special emotional import. Hubs only played little league for a short while as a kid, but he is a dyed in the wool baseball NERD. His knowledge is encyclopedic, his fandom unrelenting. Somewhere we have boxes on boxes of baseball cards he collected as a kid, and he knows almost all the stats and history of, not just the current and former Atlanta Braves rosters, but most of the minor league system as well. I love baseball too, partly because my beloved grandfather (whom Skywalker is named after) was a die-hard Braves fan and we used to watch the games together.
This common love was an early bond in our relationship, but Hubs can talk about it for hours longer than I can even pretend to listen. (It’s a good thing our friend Ryan shares his passion. I can put the two of them together with a couple of beers and walk away for an hour, knowing they will be exactly where I left them when I return.)
Hubs grew up in a family that didn’t push on athletics. They supported what he wanted to do, and when he felt done, he was done. In retrospect, he sometimes wishes he had stuck with things longer, but he had/has a great relationship with his parents. Hubs is an amazing dad in every respect, but his patience and intentionality in playing ball with the boys is a beautiful thing to watch.
As for me, I played softball from the time I was about Skywalker’s age through my junior year in high school, and I’ve played recreational ball off and on ever since (mostly “off” the last 8 years). I enjoyed softball, but I always had a love-hate relationship with it. Partly because I wasn’t allowed to quit. My dad pushed, he was strict, and while we had a good relationship by the end of his life, it was always a little wrinkled by his criticism and my fear of disapproval.
From the moment I volunteered him to coach at the first team meeting, Dad embraced the whole enterprise with gusto. He coached my teams for several years and made intricate systems for rosters, scorekeeping and batting orders. There were magnets, as I recall, with each girl’s name, and a board he’d made himself hanging in the dugout showing the batting order and our positions on the field.
Dad wasn’t the “Dairy Queen after you win” coach (though as a chubby kid, I always wished he was). He pushed me to work harder, and criticized my laziness and inattention when my mind wandered in right field or I didn’t run it out to first. Every morning one summer, before I could go play with friends, I had to go out in the backyard alone and pitch ball after ball through Dad’s complicated practice system: over a ladder, under the tree branch and into the bucket.
He remembered years of working on the family farm, only to spend his free time throwing a tennis ball against the house and catching it because no one had time to play with him. He wasn’t just available to throw the ball with me, he insisted on it. Even when I just wanted to sit in the air conditioning and send Ken and Barbie on ill-fated dates in the Malibu dream car; or later, to go out with my friends whose parents didn’t force them to stay involved in sports.
As the years went on, softball grew more competitive. Sometimes I loved it. Sometimes I resented it. I was never terribly good at it, but I improved, I had small triumphs. I was proud of my high school team bag and letter jacket, and even the crutches I hobbled on for a few days after getting creamed in the shin by a line drive that knocked me off the pitcher’s mound. I wasn’t exactly passionate: I worked hard because that was what was expected of me. I didn’t want to let anyone down.
Later in life, however, I found that I loved watching baseball because my familiarity with the basic rules allowed me to connect in a way I couldn’t with any other sport. In college and for years after, even my mediocre softball skills were useful on co-ed rec league teams looking to fill out their roster with women. It was exercise and a point of connection with others. I knew how to be part of a team — to be part of something bigger than myself, to cheer on a teammates and back them up, even if we had nothing in common off the field. That has been useful in countless situations from grad school to the workplace.
And I’d be lying if I said I weren’t grateful for the discipline my dad and softball taught me, even if I sometimes question his methods and how he sometimes made me feel in the process. I’m not sure I could’ve finished a novel as a busy mom if I hadn’t stood in the backyard that summer, pitching balls over the ladder, under the tree, into the bucket.
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