April 4, 2012 was Opening Day of baseball season and in the evening I found myself at a T-ball game at the local Little League Field. The significance of going to a game to watch some five-year-old’s play the first baseball game of their lives was not lost on me.
When I was young, we didn’t have t-ball. You waited until you were nine-years-old and tried out to play real baseball. My first year of tryouts did not go well. My father was going through a period at work during which he had to work on Saturdays. I think we only had one working car at that time and my mother had five other children to care for that morning, so I had to walk to the field by myself. The Friday evening before, he gave me explicit directions on how to walk to the ball field and to which place to go to sign up.
He left for work that morning, doing his best to reassure his nerdy little boy that I’d be OK; he told me this would be an easy thing to do. We lived in a rural area with animals, no sidewalks and no traffic signals. The walk was along our country road, past horse corrals, roaming dogs, towering eucalyptus trees and one or two cross streets. The directions to our community Little League field were simple. It was, at most, a few miles down at the end of our street, but it seemed like ten miles to my nine-year-old legs. Off I went that morning wearing some old, beat up baseball cap and carrying a glove that he wore when he played softball during his service in the Navy during the Korean War. Thinking back on that mitt, I don’t see how anyone ever played ball with it and at the time I carried it, it was about fifteen years past its prime.
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I recall being overwhelmed when I got to the ball park. I’d ridden past the park in my Mom’s car many times, but on those days the field was usually empty. This morning it was packed. The dirt parking lot was jammed with cars and, by my estimation, there were a million people running in two million directions.
I did my best to push my fears down into my gut and steadied myself. This was the first time I’d been on my own, without a parent or adult nearby and I narrowed my eyes into the turmoil before me, trying to find the registration table. I’d been on the lot for what seemed like three seconds when swoosh! my ratty little baseball cap was snatched from my head.
I turned to find a big kid sneering down at me, my hat in his hand. “You call this a hat!” He was huge, maybe even in his early teens. I made a grab at my hat and he tossed it to another kid behind me. There then followed a classic game of keep-away from the little nerdy kid with the thick glasses. In each direction they tossed my hat I turned to find another kid, each holding his own brand new mitt and wearing his own crisp hat.
They seemed so well orchestrated to me. Each time I’d lunge for my cap, the kid would throw it to another. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them laughing at me and taunting me and throwing my hat to the next kid. The parking lot was well-trampled dirt and from the ensuing melee rose a cloud of dust that clung to my face, accentuating my emerging tears. I’d done my best to keep those tears from rising but my frustration and anger overwhelmed me and the other boys saw them. I was finished.
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To taunts of baby! and little girl who wants her mommy! I left the field on which I’d arrived only two minutes before. My fingers tingled with adrenaline from my fury and I had nowhere to direct it but through tears. I wiped those burning tears from my face and sobbed the whole way back.
My mother was surprised when I walked through the front door so soon after leaving. I ran past her to my room and threw myself onto my bed, nearly retching with rage. She came to my room and I screamed the specifics of what had happened. The details of the rest of the morning are forgotten to me, but she called a neighboring mom who drove me back down to the field.
“Which one?!” my friend’s mom screamed. Hand to my face, still trying to hide my humiliation, I raised a finger and pointed to the head bully. These were the days when any and all adults had authority and you’d just as quickly suffer a corporal beating from a neighborhood parent as from your own. She marched up to him. “Where’s his hat?!” she yelled at the boy who now didn’t appear so big. He trembled before her and raised an arm, pointing to another, smaller boy who wore my hat. That boy stood behind two saucer-sized eyes, not moving a muscle as she strode to him and tore my hat from his head. She turned to me and shoved the hat into my chest with an angry, “Here!” as if this was somehow my fault. I got into her car and we went back home, my first season of Little League now over before Noon on the first day of tryouts.
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Luckily my first foray into baseball was not my last and the following season (and for two more) I got to play and it was a glorious time. In those days, the league was divided into “Majors” and “Minors.” Those in the Majors were on teams named after big league teams. Those of us relegated to the minors were named after our team sponsors. The first year it was the local American Legion Post. That wasn’t bad. The next two years it wasn’t so good. My second year our team sponsor was Emile’s Fudge and the third year it was Norco Rubbish. Those two names emblazoned across our backs afforded us no end of ribbing from other kids.
Those memories came so easily back to my mind as I stood on this t-ball field, which was in the opposite corner of the park, behind the outfield fence of the regular field. I had soft-edged recollections of hits and misses, catches made and balls dropped, scoring runs and even a successfully executed hidden ball trick. It’s just about five decades later, and I still have memories of my days playing Little League baseball.
I had arrived at this game a few minutes early and found a few parents unloading gear and struggling to find the pegs on which to place the bases and loading the machine with chalk to lay down the foul lines and batter’s boxes.
In this league here tonight, the kids’ teams are named after major league teams. This game would be the Yankees and The A’s and the children wore the same colors and the same logo on their caps as their big league namesakes. I was invited to this game by a little boy who is the son of my daughter’s friend. Nyssa is a single mom with three kids, aged seven, five and three. The middle child, the boy, Ozyas, turned five the day before.
Cars converged and children bounded forth followed by parents lugging folding chairs and bags of snacks and Gatorade. Soon rough lines of children formed into pairs and awkward attempts at playing warm-up catch began.
I picked Ozyas out of the cluster and watched him and a team mate toss the ball. Each child stood with legs together and awkwardly tossed the ball to the other. I waited for a 
few throws and didn’t see another adult available to offer instruction so I moved in. “Hey, buddy. Step forward with your left foot when you throw… like this,” I demonstrated. He mimicked my step and the ball flew with much more power. It sailed over his friends’ head. “Great!” I said. “Now when you step, point your hand right at him when you let the ball go.” The ball was thrown back to him and he did as I instructed and the ball sailed right to his team mate’s chest and the boy caught it. I high-fived him on his great throw and then went to the other boy and offered him the same instruction. His throws became stronger and more accurate, too. I stepped back and let them play.
My granddaughter and Ozyas’ sisters soon bounced around my legs and we left the boys to their warm-up and made the trek to the snack bar. I got away from that expedition only five-dollars lighter. In my book, that’s a victory; but I do love being Poppie. The girls pleaded with me to come to the playground and watch them play but I told them that I’d been invited by Ozyas to watch his first T-ball game, and, with that explanation, they let me off the hook rather easily.
Run! Get the Ball! Throw it!
Returning to the diamond, I found warm-ups had completed and the kids were lining up to run a warm up lap around the bases. A few parents took up positions on the infield to point the way to the next base and each child made the circuit and took a seat on the dugout bench.
I listened to other parents hash out the rules of T-ball. It was quickly made clear that there were no umpires, no outs or runs recorded and each child on the team batted once, then the teams switched sides and the other team batted around. This was repeated for three innings and that’s all there was to it!
This was gonna be fun.
Poor Ozyas, for reasons unknown to me, was selected to play catcher. There was no pitcher during the game, not even the coach. On some T-ball leagues, the team’s own coach tosses a few balls to give the kids a shot at hitting a pitched ball. If they are unsuccessful, the ball is then placed on the T and the child then takes swings until a hit is made. Tonight, each kid just took a hack at the ball on the T, yet Ozyas and the opposing catcher were suited up in full catchers gear; helmet/mask, chest protector and knee/shin protectors. So I refer to him as poor Ozyas because I think it’s hard enough to play your first T-ball game without being encumbered by all that padding. But, perhaps, it’s better to be safe than sorry with children making their first hit and flinging their bat away as they ran towards a distant first base. Most of the children were aware of things only in their immediate vicinity so a flung bat may well go unnoticed until it struck with an unsuspecting skull.
Tonight parents seemed as disoriented as the players, but coaches asked parents to lend a hand, which all did with eagerness, and tentative steps were taken onto the field and towards the first pitch… or swing…
The Yankees were up and the first player was directed from his seat on the bench towards the batter’s box. There the coach handed the child his bat and helped him to the proper batting stance. Once the child had the bat high over his right shoulder the coach said, “OK…” and the child swung… missing the ball but making contact with the coach’s left-front pocket in an uncomfortably close proximity to a delicate place within his jeans. “Wait! Wait!” the coach grabbed at the bat. “Let me back up first!”
He trotted back to the backstop area where I said to him, “If anyone here should be wearing a cup, it’s you.” He laughed and sighed at the same time. Parents began shouting to the batter to take a swing which he did. He made contact and the ball dribbled about three feet in front of the plate. 
Every parent at the game immediately screamed instructions to the batter, the catcher, the pitcher, the fielders and anyone else. The problem was, it was a cacophony of screams and no one, including the players, could discern any of it. But despite this wall of shrieking coming at them from all directions, children began moving; some towards the ball. Others, who were playing the field, 
thought the screams were directed at them and began running in random directions. The batter heard the nearby-standing coach telling him to run and he ran towards first base where another parent stood, telling him to stand right there on the base.
One of the problems with that is the yelling had not decreased one decibel and the child didn’t hear the instructions. Another problem was that the batter had just moments before the game received his only opportunity to run the bases. He’d been instructed to run them all and that was what he was doing again. So while parents yelled to the fielders to pick up the ball and throw it to the next base, this child ran them all, the ball arriving at each base within ten (or so) seconds of when he’d passed.
The boy eventually scored and was directed to take his seat. The ball somehow found its way back to the T and another child stepped up and the pattern was repeated. The swing. The screaming. The fielders running in semi-specific directions. The ball being picked up, thrown, chased and picked up again. Ten children batted in the top of the first and ten of them scored. Then the home team A’s got their chance. More and more parents were invited to take positions on the infield to help with directing the fielders and base runners. Once in a while a child or two was stopped on a base and waited to be hit in by the next batter.
A few of my favorite plays were the little boy who hit the ball and ran straight to the pitcher’s mound to take up his position for when he was in the field. He was directed back to first base and eventually scored a run that inning. Another was a little girl who dribbled the ball in front of home plate and, responding to the shouts of “Get the ball! Throw it to first!” did so before she then ran there herself and proceeded to stretch her throwing error into a double.
Ozyas’ first-ever at bat
Another time, the next batter for the A’s stepped into the batter’s box and hoisted the bat to his shoulder as he’d been previously instructed. There he stood, waiting. Only hitch there was that the ball was still in the field and runners were still rounding the bases. As they ran around him and scored, the ball rolled slowly to the plate. A coach yelled to Ozyas to “Get the ball!” but both boys heard the command and the batter threw his bat over his shoulder and he and Ozyas scrambled to get the ball.
I turned to one young mother and laughed, “How can they possibly know what to do with everyone yelling like this?!”
“I know!” she said. “I played my first and only T-ball game on that field over there. I hit the ball and started running and everyone was screaming at me. I stopped half way to first base and started crying! I never played another game.” She then returned to screaming at the next batter to run!
In the midst of rising dust and flailing arms, screaming parents and scrambling children, everything took on a slow-motion, surreal quality to me. I saw smiles and laughter. I saw concentration and effort. I saw fathers wearing neckties exchanging high-fives with fathers who had so many tattoos they looked like gang members. I watched these same fathers offer high-fives or hugs to any player from either team who needed that hug or encouragement. I saw tears of laughter and chests swelled with pride at watching their kids; and I felt they, too, realized the significance of their child’s first ballgame. I saw our national pastime being handed down to another generation. I saw baseball. I saw America. I saw life. And it touched me.
PS: Final score: Yankees 30 – A’s 30. Only a few parents were injured in the playing of the game.