Summer Baseball Mania
by Bill Simmons
As spring gives way to the heat of summer, so too the pure and democratic “Rec.” baseball season winds down and “Summer Baseball”—otherwise known as “Select,” “All-Star,” or “Tournament”—cranks up.
Oh, to be sure, the baseball is better. Fewer errors, crisper throws,
sharper pitching, etc.
But there is an edge to it that is not so attractive.
• Gone are the care-free weeknights at the ballpark where friends catch
up after the long, dark days of winter.
• Gone is a style of baseball played just for the fun of it.
• Gone, too, are your lazy weekends fishing or golfing or fixing up the
house.
That is all now past, my friend. It is “Time-To-Take-It-To-The-Next-Level” in youth baseball—and in stress. Get Serious. Bring Sunscreen. The first post-season matter is the Team Picking. Let’s just not go there. Then there is The Drive.
Sister and Brother snipe constantly about what DVD or game to watch.
Driving instructions gleaned earlier off the Internet guarantee a tour
of rural Mississippi towns—and sometimes whole counties. It seems that
each ballpark ought to have something like LoJack which would beep
faster as one got closer so as to offer hope and encouragement to
parents who for the 17th time have now heard, but not seen, Shrek 2.
Now the Ball Parks.
Oh, the goat tracks you will see. Base paths rutted as if Sherman’s Army
recently passed through. Crabgrass outfields with small meteor-impacted
craters. But sometimes you find yourself in a little park that is the
pride of a town, a little piece of paradise; and the moment, the sights,
the smells, will stay with you for life.
The Games. Picture a blue-sky, youth-baseball tournament in Itty Bitty, Mississippi, in June: the folding-chair sitters, the pacers, the fence-leaners, the silent, the loud, the mutterers, the gum chewers and seed-spitters—and that’s just the dads. They gather in twos and threes, assessing Johnny’s arm and Jimmy’s swing and the coaches’ calls, mystified at lineup changes. How can Bob Jr. be batting in the 8 hole? Is it strategy? Should I say something?
The summer baseball Dad is the Ultimate Skeptic. Why? Why? Why? would you try to steal second with a kid nicknamed “Global Warming”? (You know he’ll get there eventually but by the time he does it really won’t matter.) The more-social Moms are there to see and be seen, huddled in stands or under the all-important Team Tent, cheering everyone and deeply sensitive to the unfairness of it all. They dispense lotion and they support. They eye the skies and check their internal GPS for the nearest Coin Operated Laundry.
The younger Siblings run wild within the 200-feet wide “Psychic Mom Zone
of All Knowing Awareness.”
The Coaches just try to keep everyone batting in order.
The Boys are playing the game, building friendships and forging
character. They will win or they will lose and it will be great or
terrible, or simply okay.
And then there will be a Play, a screaming liner to the “Hot Corner” that your Little Ole Buddy goes horizontal for; or maybe a crucial bit of hitting; a moment in time that one day, when you are an old man, lying in a hospital bed and surrounded by family, will bubble up in your mind, causing you to smile.
And your kids will wonder why. SS
—billdsimmons@comcast.net