Father’s expectations

When I look though my photo albums of my father, he always seems to be smiling. What amazes me is that is not the image of him that I remember.
My father was always very demanding and hard to please. He always shared great visions of himself in his youth. He was a great soccer player and played for one of the German national teams, Schalke 04. He was very proud of his past. (It should be noted that I, nor anyone else in my family have been able to corroborate this fact). Having built himself up so high, it was hard for me to match his expectations, though I tried. My father was one of those people that always looked disappointed if you didn’t perform exceptionally in sports as he had. In that regards, I felt that I let him down.
When I was in Little League I managed to have a career batting average of .000. I was excited the first day of Little League. We were separated into two groups the good players (destined for the major leagues) and the rest of us (destined for the minor leagues). I, being the smallest of those my age, was put with the second group to start with. We practiced for the first day on the same field (only on opposite parts). The first time I got up to bat, an adult was pitching and pretty much throwing easy pitches to hit. It was my luck to really tear into one of those pitches and they immediately sent me over to the other section of the field with the real players. I was placed on a team and that was the last time I ever made solid contact with a ball again. I was noted for getting strikeouts and walking a lot. My team did manage to make it to the playoffs and win the pennant. In the final World Championship game (of our town) I was the only player not to play. I got little support from my dad.
Even still, I didn’t feel too bad, because I was one of the better players in my own neighborhood giving me some solace. I try to ignore the fact that most of the people I played against in my neighborhood were younger than I was.
There were no organized soccer leagues as there are now. When I reached Junior High School, I tried out for their soccer team. The first practice there were an incredible number of kids interested. To weed out the weaker ones, the coach had all of those interested run around the field 4 times. I had a number of soccer skills that my father had taught me, but long distance running was not one of them. I petered out well before the final lap. It would not be until high school that I would try again. In High School I was not competing with the number of students that were in my Junior High School. My High School was all boys and made up of 6800 students. The number was not only greater this time, but the expertise of those trying out was high. I again went to one try out and never made it past the front door. The students that were there were so knowledgeable about the game that they immediately started quizzing me on tactics. Did I know the names of all the positions, did I know the different formations, etc. Basically I knew how to kick and dribble the ball and that was it. I was so embarrassed that I left before the coach even showed up.
During the summers I did a lot of swimming. I never made the swimming team at the pool my family went to, but always did well at the end of the season, when they had races for non team members.
When I was about 15 I started playing ice hockey at a local rink. Again my height did me in. rather than put me in to 15-16 junior division, I was put into the 14 and under Peewee division. Again I wasn’t a stellar player, but enjoyed the game. It was there I learned important things such as you should purchase and wear elbow guards, because when you fall on the hard ice, it can hurt if you are not protected.
I continued playing hockey through college and actually scored my only goal at an away game, near where I grew up. My father was there to see me.
As I got older, tennis became the game that I would play. I played a bit with one of my sisters. My other sister wasn’t into sports.
Through all my life, my father never acknowledged any accomplishment I made in sports. I was nothing in his eyes, compared to the image of what he wanted. I accepted his way. I never felt that I needed his approval. At least that’s how I thought I felt. It wasn’t until I had graduated college and had been working for about 7 years that I discovered differently.
I was 28 years old and my father wasn’t doing so well health-wise. I would call him periodically on the phone to see how he was doing. I’m not sure how we got onto the conversation of sports, but in one conversation I was talking about something that I had done (at that time it would probably have been indoor soccer, which I played goalie for an adult team). His comment to me was that what I did was because my one sister and I were the only athletes in the family.
My eyes started to fill with tears. Even as I write this, I can feel a bit of that emotion that I felt then. To realize that he actually did accept me as an athlete, no matter how I performed was important to me. I guess I really needed to hear it from him. I only wish he had imparted it to me earlier. Shortly after that conversation, he had a stroke and died a few years later. It is one of the most lasting memories I have of my father.