Passed Ball
Connor ran to first base on an unintentional bunt single Monday–his first hit in little league in his first game, one that featured 47 walks, 111 passed balls in 3 innings spanning 123 minutes of yawns and parents asking each other, “seriously, are there any outs yet”? This was one of those games where the ump, my dad, used such a liberal strike zone that you basically needed stilts to reach some of those high strikes. Bridget perched herself in center field and complained about the ump until she realized it was her own father in law, at which time she probably complained even more. “Oh come on Papa, that was right there.” At least he didn’t ring up his own granddaughter although he didn’t have to, since she bailed him out swinging on a ping pong pitch in the 3rd. Say this, for a blind 68-year-old who left his glasses in the baseball bag, he did okay. Young Reid opened the game, throwing mostly strikes, just many of them 2-feet off the plate. Here’s a kid who is a pitcher, a quiet battler, who draws circles in the dirt between throws but is so close to breaking through. I wanted to use a kind of Luke Skywalker force to pull Reid in after each pitch to shift his stance, but this is little league baseball and the kids need to fail a bit on their own.
There was Cam who looked part statue, part ballerina pitching the ball, but when told to throw the darn thing actually fired a few strikes. “Where have you been all spring?” we said. He didn’t get it but it didn’t matter. There was young Jack, decked out in perfect Dustin Pedroia garb most days, who’s still learning that cut off man doesn’t mean he has a tag hanging from his shirt. Jack crouches at home plate and looks every bit the ballplayer up there, smiling, freckles on both cheeks, dirt on his nose. He wants desperately to hit it far and throw it straight like his idol does. He will have his moment. It took Connor maybe 14 seconds to make it to first for his moment, not exactly record time but for him and his parents it was Jessie Owens fast as they willed him to the bag. They don’t measure time like a lot of us. They measure it in how much dirt Connor kicked up running to first and how many times his glasses bobbled off his nose. They measure it in how when he got there he immediately found me on third base and saw the steal sign and then took off on the next pitch, fearless. Sure, the odds of the catcher throwing him out were 7 billion to 1, but Connor didn’t know that. Here’s the kid who’s been told for 9 years he doesn’t have the ability, that he has “limitations,” “challenges” – but I don’t really agree. Sure, he may need to swing the bat before the pitcher even winds up just to catch up to it and he may not run so fast but his brain is running laps around a lot of kids, and he used whatever force he could muster to make his way around those bases.
I think back to last night’s game and the relatively painful moments when the ball would trickle beneath the catcher’s glove and roll to the backstop with 2 kids on base. The catcher, weighed down by the gear, would fall over trying to get himself up, would adjust his knee pad and itch his behind and with the mask covering his eyes start poking around for the ball. He looked like a blind robot. We all smirk a bit, then sigh, twice.
I think of that and I realize like a lot of us that for all those lost moments and passed balls there’s one kid who probably only thinks of last night’s game as a win.