Influence of Baseball on My Life

¶ … Baseball on "My" Life

Baseball is considered to be the great American past-time, a part of our nation's culture and heritage. Baseball is as much a part of being patriotic as eating apple pie and voting for the president. As an American child, baseball was invariably a part of my childhood experience. From the baseball cap and baseball glove that my father posed me in for my first birthday photo shoot, to the block-baseball team that used my suburban home back-yard as the outfield, to the interrupted regularly-scheduled programming of lengthy televised games in our Not-Fighting living room, to the good and evil dichotomy of coaches that would shape my Middle-School and High-School teams, baseball has been an omnipresent force in my life. It has been there to highlight the great times, as well as emphasize the bad ones, and occasionally, when fate thought kindly of my situation, even brought some comfort and relief when the rest of the world was falling apart. Baseball built my childhood identity for me in many ways, and it also assisted me in defying every expectation when I discovered my new identity.

My father did not sing me lullabies when I was a baby. When Mom told him to tuck me in at night he put on his best Phil-Rizzuto announcer voice and, amidst whisper-crowd cheers and tongue-clicking sound effects, gave me the play-by-play analysis of his baseball fantasy game. Of course, he probably sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" for good measure, but the focus was definitely on the game, not the song. Most of my memories of this event are fuzzy and unclear, but I do clearly recall as a toddler when Mom opened the door to check on us, he suddenly interrupted the bases-loaded play of the night and started singing an off-tune rendition of a Cat Stevens song. Or it might have been Kenny Logans. The point is that baseball-bedtime was our secret, and assumably something Mom would not have thought was healthy. She was always reading Self-Help books about raising the ideal child, and everything from prenatal vitamins to New-Age touch therapy in herbal baths were her way of saying, "I will love you if you will be perfect." Baseball was not part of her vision for me, so my father had to sneak in a little male-bonding when she was not looking.

Mom and my father never fought. They did, however, consistently play a sport I have learned to call "Not-Fighting." This is obviously the name, because when you ask them what they are doing in the midst of the activity, they would answer, "We're NOT fighting." With clenched teeth and fists, they would pitch complaints and blame at each other, always striking out at the other's words with a heavy swing. I think I must have been an unknowing patron of the game, because time with me was often the trophy with which the winner of Not-Fighting walked away. When Mom was victorious, I would be rushed off to go purse and shoe shopping at the mall, with an obligatory stop by the toy store -- where I was not allowed to look at sports gear because it was a symbol of something terrible and horrible about men in our society, or so a therapist I consulted for a single visit later in life extrapolated as my Mom's reasoning for everything. When my father won their game, we went to the park. Or sometimes to a bar -- my father was friends with every single employee at the local sports "pub," and I think with the majority of the sheriff deputies as well, so bringing a kid in was no big deal. Well, that's not entirely true, because it was a big deal to me. I knew it meant I was a part of some secret club for men Mom did not like, and I knew it meant they thought I was special. The only problem was that I felt "special" not because I belonged to the group there, but because I felt like an outcast in a place that it was all right to be one.

The men there talked about the art and skill of baseball, and I was at least intrigued by that. I found an encyclopedia article that states: "Baseball requires skill and athleticism, but also has a depth of strategy and anticipation which often goes unrecognized by those less familiar with the sport. Pitchers develop strategies on how to pitch to the batter by studying the batter's previous plate appearances throughout the year." (Zollman) Mom was definitely a top-hitter for not recognizing the skill involved in things she did not herself enjoy. Everything from baseball to abstract painting was done without talent. However, Mom was not completely off-base when she complained about the sexist and otherwise undesirable aspects of baseball and other sports, especially on television. A recent report found that "The television sports news did focus regularly on women, but rarely on women athletes. More common were portrayals of women as comical targets of the newscasters' jokes and/or as sexual objects (e.g., women spectators in bikinis)." (Duncan et al.) My father said it did a growing boy some good to see what real men were like. I suppose that was part of the major differences between them, but also in some ways what made them so much alike. I did not feel like I was a part of my Mom or father's vision for me.

By the time I was six or seven, there was a group of neighborhood kids that started up their own weekend baseball game. (During the summer, weekend baseball games are played any day it is not raining.) The backyards in our area were all connected and there was a "community rule" intended to beautify our lawns and create a tight-knit community of neighbors which prohibited the use of fences. This meant that the kids had a nice open playing field, once someone agreed to let them play in their yard, of course. Fear of broken windows from stray baseballs and dislike of rowdy boys made most of the yards, even those belonging to the boys' parents, off-limits for play. Fortunately for them, my dad was keen on the idea of having them play in our yard, and the house next to ours was empty every summer. Mom said the boys would be a bad influence on me, and she expressed great concern about rumors she heard at the PTA meetings about one of these boys in particular being "not right in the head" and "too sensitive" for me to hang out with. My father argued all of the benefits of learning to be a part of a team and sportsmanship. Mom said he was wrong, but psychologists say he was right. "Those involved in organized sports reported higher overall self-esteem and were judged by their teachers as more socially skilled and less shy and withdrawn. They also found that 13-year-old boys who had been involved with a sport during the past year were less likely to report having experimented with marijuana than 13-year-old boys who had not played a sport during the prior year." (Partenheimer) In my house, Mom's rules were God's rules, so I had to be contented to watching the boys play from my bedroom window, in my head making all the play-by-play calls.

The scent of fresh-cut grass and newly laid asphalt and pools of sunscreen lotion burning cancer into the skin of sun-bathing Suburban-babes and all the sweet and sickly smells of summertime drifted in with the breeze through my screened second-floor window. I had an oscillating fan in my room -- that's the kind that looks like an alien robot turning his head from side to side preparing to attack when backlit by nightlights -- but in the daylight with a group of seven to ten boys my own age running amuck with bats and balls and leather gloves and shorts and bare feet on the wet baseball-diamond lawn, the fan was an announcer's microphone. When I spoke into it, the turning blades broke apart my voice and made me sound just like a radio broadcast, to my own ears at least. No, sorry, our son can't come out and play, but in reality, they could not stop me, because I was in fact a part of that baseball club. Five days a week, sometimes six, they were there, and they were my friends, even though they didn't know I was watching or listening or learning.

Looking back, I was depressed. Not just mopey about being stuck in my room while the other kids played outside. I was absolutely overcome by hopelessness and helplessness and despair. I did not really want to die, things were not that bad. I just wanted out. My rich fantasy life could only satiate my desire to connect with other children to a small degree. I did not realize I was depressed at the time, I just thought I was a freak. I had to be, or else I would be outside playing with the other kids. Mom had to be protecting me from the scrutiny of the normal children. According to one football coach whose writings have become very important to me as I have aged, "Many experts believe that an increasing number of children today display symptoms of clinical depression. For varied reasons, these children feel emotionally abandoned or rejected by parents, peers or society and suffer diminished self-esteem. Without a positive counter influence for these children, experts believe their negative thoughts and feelings may ultimately translate to violent actions." (Norton, "Tragedy") The only violence I wanted to be a part of was the cracking of a baseball bat on the ball as I hit a home run, or the friendly slapping of backs with open hands that friends do to congratulate one another. "What can be said about the role of organized youth sports on shaping children? Ideally, kids who are involved in positive, organized sports programs typically learn valuable lessons, do well in school and are less likely to get into trouble." (Norton, "Tragedy")

Even though I was separated by metal mesh and more than twelve feet of a drop to the ground from the baseball game in the backyard, I was learning valuable lessons by observation. The way the kids interacted with one another was fascinating; there was no fighting, and especially no Not-Fighting. They all celebrated no matter who won. In fact, I don't think they usually knew who won, because the boys were prone to switching teams and occasionally rules in the middle of a game. Everything was held together, it seemed, by a very strong team leader with a big imagination and sometimes a short attention span. The baseball team run by the coach at the YMCA was nothing like the little neighborhood menagerie that infested my back yard three summers in a row. When I was nine, I finally had the freedom to leave the house myself on summer days, much to the protest of Mom. My father wanted to go with me everywhere I went when he was home. I had other ideas in mind though, and I really just wanted both of my parents to leave me alone. The point, however, is that I started going to watch the Little League baseball games during that summer. I was surprised to see so many glum faces among the players. After all, every game I'd watched from my bedroom window was full of laughter and smiles. The kids at the YMCA field games looked tired, overworked, and under-appreciated. This was an important lesson for me, because I had wished for nothing so much as to join Little League as soon as I heard about the team that was forming. However, I now understood there was a huge difference between the games I saw in my backyard, which I was banned from, and the Little League games, which I had been told could possibly be an option for me. I had no desire to be a part of this group of miserable wretches. . . It just did not seem like they were playing baseball. Baseball equaled happiness. "A good youth coach will make a commitment to ensure that each player has a positive and enjoyable experience. By recognizing and rewarding players performance and achievement, coaches are making the sports experience enjoyable and fun." (Norton, "What is Fun?") Playing baseball should be playing; kids should do it to have fun, they are not professionals that are getting paid. After attending my second YMCA game, I decided I was not going to bother coming to those games anymore. While I was walking home, however, something very special happened.

Peter was the team leader of the backyard baseball I had watched for three years. In some ways, Peter was the leader of the entire neighborhood. He could hit the ball further and run faster than any other kid. I looked to him the way a lot of kids look at organized sports coaches, as a mentor. Mom hated him. My father just barely tolerated him. I thought he was really cool. Peter was buying gum balls at the gas station between the YMCA and home. He waved at me. It was an acknowledgment of my existence, it was a validation of my identity. Peter, the coolest backyard baseball player in the entire world, could see me. I was not invisible. And Mom called him a bad influence! For the first time in years, I felt real. I waved back at Peter. I walked home with a big, goofy grin on my face.

From that point on, my life was different. Peter was only a couple years older than me, but more and more he took on the coach/mentor role that I was missing from my life. He apparently found out that I was always watching the games, but that I never came to play. Every day, he knocked on the front door at least three times, trying to convince Mom to let me join them. After a week and a half of her saying I could not join them, Peter borrowed a ladder from his Uncle, had the backyard baseball team carry it to my house, and he climbed to my bedroom window to ask me personally to join the game. "Rapunzel, Rapunzel... oh wait, that's not it," he declared upon reaching the top of the ladder. He popped out his pocket knife and tore through the wire-mesh screen that had been my prison bars. "Come on down, boy, we're short a pitcher. Or a catcher. Or something. I'm sure we need you to play." When Mom saw me in the back yard playing baseball a couple hours later, she blamed my father. When Mom blamed my father, he blamed her. They proceeded to Not-Fight for the rest of the night, but I did not care because I was in the back yard playing baseball with Peter, Joshua, Matt, Fish, Crazy, BilBoy, Nate, Tevis, two worn out baseball mitts, a wooden bat with three chips in the handle, a dirty leather ball with a slight dent in the side, the setting summer sun, and a feeling of being alive.

I would later read some advice for coaches giving suggestions on how to deal with unruly parents. "A proactive approach can be the key to avoiding problems with unruly parents. Before the season starts, the coach should meet with all the parents and discuss the objectives and philosophies of the program and his own personal coaching philosophy. Issues such as the role of winning and losing, playing time and discipline are important topics at this meeting. Just as important is an explanation of what parents can expect from the coaching staff and what the coaching staff expects from the parents." (Norton, "Unruly") Sounds like good advice, but sometimes the only answer is to kidnap your players. Well, sometimes that was the only solution for Peter, anyway.

Peter taught me to call my fellow backyard baseball players "Pack." In my head, Peter would always be the coach I so desperately needed, but to his face we all called him "Pack Leader." (No, it wasn't a cult. It was a baseball team and a group of friends. No, we weren't a gang, either.) By the time Peter was fifteen and I was thirteen, my parents had become reluctantly resigned to the idea that I had friends, and that Peter was one of them, and that no amount of grounding me could prevent me from leaving the house to spend time with my Pack. I did not consider myself to be a "misbehaving teen" like Mom obsessed over on Daytime Television. My parents simply never listened to me, so when it came to my life I chose to affiliate with people who did. My grades in school went way up; I was now getting straight A's in school. I could now sleep through the night without having nightmares. I no longer suffered from asthma, most likely due to the fact that baseball gave me regular exercise, and Peter had also started teaching me how to Swing Dance. I never picked up on Swing Dancing, but trying to learn was always a workout.