Play Ball!
I don’t consider myself a great athlete, in fact when I was young, my father shared that opinion of me. He would have told you that he was somewhat disappointed with me in any sport I tried. Little League baseball would have been an excellent example.
Too young to play yet
I was always short for my age. When my parents took me to my first little league meeting of the team I was assigned to, the coaches didn’t quite know where to place me, in the majors or in the minors.
The adults looked at all of the players that had been assigned to them and split them into two groups. One group was designated for the majors; those must have included kids who the coaches knew either from previous years or gave the impression that they were good athletes. The rest were designated for the minors and sent off to the opposite end of the field to practice with adults. You can guess based on my size which field I was sent to.
All the kids in the minors’ group were told to go out into the field and try and catch balls that were hit to them. While I was out in the field not many balls reached me so I had no opportunity to show what I could do.
As we were playing, one at a time, we were asked to come up to try our hand at batting. When it was my turn to bat I took a bat, stood firmly in the batter’s box, bat over my shoulder, and awaited a pitch. Unlike in the majors’ side of the field, we were not being pitched to by kids. We were being pitched to by adults.
Now when an adult has to throw a ball to someone that they believe can’t hit the broad side of a barn, yet wants them to feel good about themselves, they throw the ball very softly and try to aim for the sweet spot of the batter’s swing with hopes that the hitter will be able to make some sort of contact. For me, that meant I could hit every pitch I was thrown and hit it well. All the adults were very impressed with my hitting ability and assumed I could both catch and throw a ball equally as well. I was immediately sent across the field to the majors, where I played outfield for the rest of the season. My father would have been impressed, had he shown up to that first meeting.
The season did not quite go as expected. I ended the season with a .000 batting average, spending most of my bats, either striking out (kid pitchers really don’t want to make it easy for you to hit the ball), grounding or flying out, or walking (it does pay to be small). I do remember once being thrown out sliding into second base. When I questioned why I was called out (I thought I was safe), the umpire said that I should learn how to slide. Don’t you just love those supportive adults?
My team did make it to the World Series of that league and won. With all my family there to watch me play, I was the only person on the team that didn’t get into the game. My father would not have been surprised. I did get a plaque as did everyone else on the team.
I felt bad not being able to play, but I did get a plaque saying we won the pennant. I was somewhat pleased that the award we all got for winning had the word pennant misspelled. They spelled it with only one “n”. I guess even adults can’t always hit it right
.
I never played little league baseball again. My next sport to try would be ice hockey and that didn’t happen for another 3 years. Back to the minors.
