Little League Lessons

My son, who we call JJ for short and who is nine, is half-Japanese. Some say he looks like a Japanese Mendelsohn. I tell you this because it has from the beginning forever been obvious to me that this boy is mine and not mine. And not just because his skin tans beautiful and mine most assuredly does not.

My son is at that age when on playdates he refers to his friends as bro, but back home remains … well, a really sweet little man.

Sorry, hock, spit. On to baseball.

This here is a wee story of a fast-growing little guy, and his first time pitching in only his second ever game of house league baseball. In his first game, when he learned the league’s rule called for a different pitcher for each of the five innings of those pee wee games, JJ asked if he could pitch. Dad chimed in suggesting he maybe practice the skill a little first before taking it on. From when JJ was young I’d take him out to kick soccer balls, or hit tennis balls against the school wall, not in any kind of necessarily consistent or certainly hard-core way. But I did take him out. I tried. Granted it took him joining the baseball league for dad to suggest we go play catch in his school’s yard, not exactly a field of dreams, but a field at any rate.

Speaking of one of my all-time favourite movies, I had a catch with my son because, in part, these were things my dad never did with me. I don’t know that JJ is destined for Shohei Otani heights, I just wanted to help protect him from choking the way I had as a kid playing baseball. Let’s be honest here.

At his school diamond, creaky knee dad attempted to get on his haunches, while son attempted to throw effective strike-like pitches. He did well. Dad was impressed. Son satisfied. Two days later, game day and JJ finds out he’ll get to pitch, in the final inning of the game. Bit of a tall order for a kid who’s never done so before, but it’s house league. It’s not so very competitive at all.

I wasn’t keeping close track of the score; we were winning, by a large margin. Did the actual score matter? None of the parents around me had kept track. When I called from where I was standing - I could not sit - behind the fence around home plate, the teenager acting as ump, he too hadn’t a clue. Only the coaches knew, apparently, and I wasn’t moving to ask, my boy up on the mound, I was there to support. I had work to do.

I’d been careful to ask JJ before he went up: Do you want me to cheer? Call out any advice? JJ thought for a moment: A bit he said, but not too much. That made sense, I nodded. This all new to me. My dad hadn’t been much of an athlete and I hadn’t been much of one for team sports.

So JJ’s in the game. On the mound. Facing down the batter. The wind-up. The whole shebang. Final inning. Here we go: It started pretty well. His pitching was erratic but could be effective. Strikes were thrown, cheers from me and a few of the parents on the bleachers. Soon, however, it got dicey. Though we were up by a good number of runs and had but these three outs to get through, JJ started missing the plate entirely. Throwing behind players. Throwing into the dirt long before reaching the plate. Walk after walk. It was getting ugly. But daddy, and the super supportive mother in folding chair beside me, kept cheering JJ on.

By now he’d walked the bases loaded. Then he walked a run in. One run, two runs. The score was getting close. Worse still, when finally he got the occasional pitch near home plate he was tired and the ball was moving slower, and so he was getting hit, and badly. The other team now just a couple runs away from tying it up and dad was very nervous, ‘You can do it JJ!’ dad yelled. ‘You got this, JJ!’ the mother beside me yelled. That alone. That she used his name.

But he’d thrown many pitches to at least eight batters. How much longer could he last? Dad rushed to the dugout, to the coach. To ask. Could they switch pitcher, mid-innning, if need be? Coach, calm and not fussed, said they could. Because JJ’s arm might be getting tired, I explained, irritated I even had to verbalize it. Wasn’t it obvious? C’mon, Coach! It wasn’t looking good and JJ should be taken out. If winning the game was the goal. If protecting my son from the shame of losing the game mattered to anyone (other than dad (and son)). Either the coach didn’t care, or had wisdom well beyond me, because no one was being asked to warm-up. JJ still out there on the mound, all alone, yet another batter to face.

JJ’s story has a happy ending. But that wasn’t clear until the very end. Like parenting a toddler over a long, wet weekend with nowhere to go and not nearly enough to do, time can grind to a painful halt when your kid is on the mound and he still has two massive outs to get. What it must feel like for the kid themselves.

It’s a game, dad. Relax! I knew. No big deal, just JJ’s entire sporting future hanging in the balance. His self-confidence, who he’d become as a man. Had the coach (or his nearly meddling father) chosen to pull the boy from the game, JJ might never have believed in his ability again. Worse, had he stayed in and lost the game as the pitcher he might have quit the sport entirely. Dad perhaps catastrophizing a little here, but then I never pitched a game in my life. The only team sport my parents ever signed me up for was soccer. I was little enough that only my late father’s recollection remains: Apparently, the ball would go one way and I would be off looking at butterflies the other. In my defence, I don’t remember much sideline guidance either. Had my dad ever even played soccer?

My dad repeated to my sisters over and over, like a mantra, how not athletic he was — a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. For my turn at the parenting plate one priority for me was to help JJ avoid my elementary school fate - the kid at school picked last, put out in the outfield deadly afraid of the ball when it came and all but destined to drop it every time it did. Grown up in an era of superb baseball movies — most all of which starred Kevin Costner — in the 1980s and Malcolm Gladwell philosophies in the 2000s, I remain a big believer in the 10,000 hour rule and to this day believe that a little catch with my dad would have gone a long way to helping with my self-confidence and ability to catch those pop-flies.

Now before we cue the Rocky music and JJ’s inevitable triumph, I have to say it wasn’t my dad’s fault I was off chasing butterflies during the soccer game or daydreaming bored out of my brains in the outfield in grade four. I wasn’t into sports at the age JJ is. I wasn’t up for things as he was. I resisted. JJ goes right for it. He’s up for it all. He’s also a team player, the way his father can only journal about from afar.

The next batter. Have we seen this kid already? JJ winds up, throws it hard as he can. A strike right down the middle! Next pitch and he’s done it again, yet another strike. “Go JJ go! “Two pitches later JJ has struck the kid out, getting the second out that had so eluded him. Me and the mother beside me going bananas, “Eye of the Tiger” starts playing, at least in the soundtrack in my mind. The tide had turned. His belief in himself returned. One more batter. When I asked later how he did it, JJ said rather matter-of-factly he just recalled when we’d practiced at the school. Pretending there was no batter there. Like it was practice.

When he got that final out, oh the tremendous smile on my son’s face, the cheers from his father, the mother, the team, it was a big thing indeed.

To overcome that mental hurdle — to believe in himself again — what JJ accomplished is the essence of great athleticism, of any real success in fact. Pushing through when it gets tough. I never had that in sports as a kid. It’s tempting to lay blame on my own father, but then, in the end, what did I really do to help JJ? The bit of practice helped, I’m sure, and dad on the sidelines, cheering, offering advice, whatever impact that had. For in the end, you can bring a horse to water, but out there all alone on the mound, the only one throwing strikes, at least in my family, is JJ.