Boy Over Boys, Part I: Fudge

It was a little Texas Leaguer over the third baseman’s head.

It was perfect.

My younger son doesn’t quite have the brawn of my big boy.  Okay, that’s an understatement.

You remember what Steve Rogers looked like with his shirt off before he became Captain America?  That guy looks like a body-builder compared to my twiggy little fella.

But like that pre-serum Steve, Gunnar has a competitive fire that outstrips his two-dimensional frame.  He’s become an accomplished bunter, and we’ve worked together to compliment his blips with bloops; drawing the 3^rd baseman in with the bunt attempt and then slapping one by him.

I was watching from my perch as 3^rd base coach, already thinking that with a good bounce he might get a double out of the dunk.  And, out of nowhere, the shortstop hurtled in the air and made a spectacular catch; his little body sprawled right on the cutout between the infield dirt and outfield grass.

Shortly thereafter, a single word hurtled in the air from down the first base line:

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE”

Only he didn’t say “Fudge.” He said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word.

It was the 3^rd out of the inning, which was about the only thing that saved Gunnar’s bacon.  For the mix of players changing sides allowed a bit of distraction from his latest episode.

“Did you hear what he said?” The young base umpire, a college kid collecting a summer paycheck, seemed a bit bewildered by the language he likely heard about every 0.25 seconds in his dorm.  But timing is, of course, everything, be it comedy, tragedy, or in this case, an inextricably intertwined combination.

“Yep.  Hard to miss,” chuckled Dave, the burly veteran I’ve had behind the plate since my older one was hitting off a tee.

Dave flashed me a look as I jogged toward my flailing first-baseman, now flinging his helmet to the ground.

“Do what you need to do, Dave,” I replied.

“I think you’ve got this, Coach,” Dave said with a bemused grin.

He knew that this was my kid in full meltdown.  And he thought that it was a kindness that he pulled back on what should have been done—namely throwing my son out of the game.

It was not.  Because now we had to do the dance.

Over the past few seasons, I’ve needed to cha-cha between gentle support and tough love as Gunnar battled his competitive demons.  I myself toggled between an empathy borne from my own boyhood tennis temper tantrums and full-body rage over stolen home runs, to a frustration bred from repetition and the aforementioned familiarity with my own failings.

Of course, Gunnar was benched for the rest of the game.  Of course, he eventually felt terribly about what he did.  He told Coach Steve that he felt that there was a monster inside him that he couldn’t control.  He tearfully apologized to the entire team during our postgame talk.

It was heartbreaking.

Again.

As we prepared for the next day’s games, I knew that this time, he had crossed a line that needed to be addressed.  For the moment, I needed to put Dad aside, and put my coach’s hat on.  And so I consulted with Coaches Steve, Bill, Kevin, and of course Coach Nolet’s Dry Gin on the matter.  All were supportive and understanding (or at least helped calm me down a bit with intensely floral drinkability).  And everyone agreed—this time there needed to be consequences.

We settled on a one game suspension.  My first instinct was to bar him from the rest of the tournament, but my coaches talked me down off that ledge, reminding me how hard it’s been on Gunnar to be the “Coaches Kid.”  For while being in that role can lead to preening primadonnas when the kid is the best on the team, the role can also create intense pressure on the player who has had to work his tail off just to be middle-of-the-pack.

Gunnar had gotten that most reviled of sports taunts – “You’re only on the team because your Dad is the coach!” – on several occasions at school.  In his earnest desire to prove himself, he made each pitch, each swing, and each play in every single game into an unending death-spiral of a tryout.  Every failure reinforced the bullies’ jab, and, because this is baseball, by its very nature he failed more often than he succeeded.  The Monster, a creature he came by honestly (indeed, genetically) grew into something he could no longer control.

This Monster, however, had to be put in a cage.  And so my son…my player…my son…and I talked.  I let him know I was proud of the fact the apologized to the team after the game, and I understood this was a part of him he didn’t like.  But he had crossed a line, and both he and the team needed to know there were consequences to these actions.

And so father-and-son, player-and-coach stared at each other—eyes welling and voices cracking with guilt, love, and remorse—embraced, and accepted each other for who we were.

I then loaded the trunk and headed down to the field.

Alone.

Only now do I realize that that was the beginning of the end.

Rooting for the Bully

“Ball!” shouted the umpire.  Blue was good tonight.  He had been consistent for both sides.  And even as he called a ball for what seemed like the 20^th time in a row, he maintained that slight, upward cadence that exposed neither frustration nor opinion on the pitch at hand.

The same, however, could not be said of our pitcher.  Walter, we’ll call him, was having the same sort of issues that we’ve seen since he was nine-years-old.  Back then, he was among the hardest throwers and biggest hitters in our youth league–without doubt a talent.  His father was the coach of our “A” travel team, and Walter during tryouts made sure to let all the new kids know who both he and his Dad were.  And his cabal ruled the roost, creating a social pecking order that at least in part led some players to join a competing travel system.

But now at 15-years-old, the small, warm pond of parent-coaches and prepubescent physical equanimity had both widened and cooled.  His father sat in the stands watching just as I did.  And while Walter’s arm still screamed talent, his mercurial control had become a real roadblock.

After having already walked in a run, Walter’s body language was there for the world (not to mention the umpire) to see.  Stomping, snatching the ball out of the air, eyes rolling like a slot machine.  Now, there were two errors sandwiched into his BB hoagie, but that was the classic pattern.  Pitchers set the tone for the team—for better or for worse.  And with Walter, a leadoff walk almost invariably led to a painful dance of fielders back on their heels.  Invariably, errors combined with walks would set the table for the occasional hit that would clear it off.

My boy had seen more than his share of this from behind the plate over the past few seasons as Walter’s teammate.  As I’ve noted, he wasn’t part of the club, only breaking through for a cup of coffee as an A/B player at 12.  He worked his way to the A squad at 14 when we moved to the senior league.  Now he and Walter were JV together, and my guy was stuck behind the plate.

Stuck, I say, because catching in the spring was tough, and the coaches made no bones about the fact my guy left something to be desired.  He’s an earnest kid; taking criticism to heart.  After the season was over he concluded that he really didn’t have what it took to get to that next level as a catcher, saying, “I worked as hard as I could, and I went from being a lousy catcher to being a thoroughly mediocre one!”

Having made the decision that it was time to leave the tools of ignorance behind, he delighted in the prospect of a fall season where he would be able to work on developing elsewhere.  With reps, he’s shown himself to be a solid first baseman, and has shown some potential on the mound as well.

But, alas, it was not to be.  The #1 catcher for the team plays hockey in the fall, and the main backup, a pal of his, developed a growth plate injury that ended his season early.  The only other backstop on the team struggled far more than Gus defensively with the pace of High School pitching, and also needed to develop elsewhere.  That left my guy…and only my guy…to catch for pretty much the entire fall.

This game was particularly frustrating, as rather than the usual teams, this was the annual series where the JV and varsity teams were “drafted” into two mixed squads and played each other in a best-of-three series.  I had thought this might give my guy an opportunity to get a break by being on a team with a varsity catcher.  But instead, he ended up being the only catcher on his team, while the other side ended up with three.

And so my son did the Dante Hicks, taking another beating both mentally and physically behind the plate, thinking all the while, “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today!”  But he also knew he had a responsibility to the team, and I taught him from early on that the most important part of being a catcher was to help his pitcher.  If the pitcher threw a 55-foot curve ball that bounced over the catcher’s head, it’s the catcher’s job to run get it and thump his chest, saying, “my bad.”  Why should a catcher suffer such abuse?  Because it’s his job to get the most out of the pitcher possible.  As I told him, “In the scorecard, the pitcher is Number 1 and the Catcher number 2 for a reason.”

It’s not fair, but it’s baseball.  It wasn’t designed to be fair.

But when my guy threw Walter’s latest wide one back to him, we were all privy to a pure primadonna moment.  Walter caught the ball and held it in place, starting Gus down.  In baseball parlance, the message was clear—I’m not getting the pitches called because you aren’t catching them correctly.

Now, framing pitches has never been one of Gus’s strong suits.  He’s gotten better but he’s still a little too quick to move the ball and tends to “drift” with the pitch instead of getting around it and sticking it in the strike zone.

But as the inning ground on, Walter decided to make his silent protest on every ball thrown, with the exception of the not-infrequent balls to the backstop and the not-frequent strike.  It was on about the eighth held ball that my guy finally got a little relief.

Interestingly enough, it came from the umpire, who removed his mask, as well as his impartiality.

“Son, that ball was six inches outside.  There’s not a catcher on the planet that can make that look like a strike,” Blue barked at Walter.  Soon thereafter the coach came out to give Walter the hook, as everyone had reached their saturation point.  The next pitcher managed to get the final out of the inning, and my guy hobbled off the field as if he were an arthritic veteran at the close of his career.  30 minutes in a squat will do that to you.

As he gimped, a senior on the varsity team came over from first base and started talking, and continued the conversation in the dugout.  After the game, I asked my son what he said.  “He said I was a good catcher, but I should never take that kind of shit from my pitcher, ever.  He said next time he does that, I should tell him to cut that crap out or it’s going to get physical.”

My immediate instinct was to climb him down off that wall.  Indeed, that advice went against everything I had said about the importance of bucking-it-up and keeping the pitcher in his pocket.  That catching is about the pitcher (not to mention the whole non-violent conflict resolution thing).  The pitcher has control of the game, and no matter whether he is your best friend or your worst enemy, the fate of your team begins with him.

Indeed, despite Walter’s history, I found myself as a parent being consistently loud-and-vocal in rooting for him.  He has talent.  He can help the team.  And he’s not going anywhere.  And with any teen, there’s always the hope that his maturity could grow with this talent, and in the end he could be a real asset to our team on and off the field.  What was the point in doing anything other than cheer him on?

But I was forced to reconsider.  Yes, our team’s success will depend on Walter when he’s on the mound.  Yes, he’s the one with the ball.  But there is a line that must be drawn between supporting his ability to help the team and simply enabling him to continue to abuse his teammates.

There comes a point when the catcher needs to make a stand.

My guy got a break at the next game, as the coach realized the mistake he made in the draft (I might have said a little something) and put another catcher on our team.  Gus got a chance to play first and even pitch an inning.  In the stands, I was chatting with Walter’s Dad and felt I needed to make a stand of my own.  He was well aware of the fact that Gus wanted “out” from behind the plate, and I noted that Walter’s actions in the last game helped cement those feelings.

His Dad, who even in the days when he didn’t make the team was always encouraging of Gus and praised his work-ethic, immediately responded.  “I have no idea what that was,” he said, shaking his head.  “His pitches weren’t even close.  I told him to apologize to your boy in school.  He texted me and he said he did.” (I must note that independent confirmation of said apology has been hard to come by).

That next Sunday, my fella went from catcher to coach, helping me out with the 12-year-old team his brother was playing on.  It was a tough sun directly in the catcher’s eyes, and our guy was really struggling back there, much to the consternation of our pitcher.  And while I worked to temper our tempestuous hurler between innings, Coach Gus took our young catcher aside.

“You do everything you can to help the pitcher,” he said, “but you don’t take shit from him.  He needs to understand that just because he’s on the mound, that doesn’t give him the right to give you crap.  If you think he’s out of line, you let him know.”

And that, my friends, is how movements begin.  Bravery can be contagious.

Hmm.  Maybe there’s a metaphor in that.  I’ll give it some thought.

Post Election Stress Disorder

Frustration.

Powerlessness.

A feeling like your voice doesn’t matter.

Anyone feeling that way today?

Frankly, I’ve been feeling that way for the better part of a year now.  It’s why while I’ve been busy as Dad and Coach and certainly have some stories to tell, SHYB has been in a virtual shutter.

I’ve started dozens and dozens of posts.  On the need to rethink the way we teach kids baseball.  On how I reacted when a young player said to me—“You’re weird!”  On the demise of the Super Hero genre even as it rises.  On the exchange between my 15-year-old son and my mother when he linked his own experiences being bullied for his stutter to the actions of our President-elect.  Those and many more gathering dust on the virtual shelf.

I cannot finish them.  Any of them.  And I’m struggling to keep going even at this moment.  I’ve reached a point where I simply don’t like the sound of my own voice.  In the constant drone of social media, the endless chimes of incoming email, the explosion of availability of news both true and “truthy,” my words feel redundant and trite.  My voice does not feel special, or even valuable.

And last night didn’t help.

Or did it?

I started Stop Hitting Your Brother to take a look at parenting and pop-culture from a conflict-resolution standpoint.  And, in this moment when we face four years of an almost literal “Bully Pulpit” I have heard those like Van Jones say, “What do we tell our kids in the morning?”

I know this is hyperbolic, but the feeling I have today has a strange taste of 9/11.  I remember in the days after the attacks, I started looking online at potential jobs in smaller towns in the Midwest.  With DC as one of the ground zero locations, I worried for my infant child and thought perhaps it might be better to head elsewhere to better protect his future.  Given Canada’s immigration site crashed last night, I’m guessing others are dealing with a similar emotional déjà vu.

It was that fear of the unknown—the horrific prospects the Id of my imagination happily filled—that made me feel unable to ground myself in the reality of that moment.  I knew the world was profoundly changed, and in a way that dashed my dreams of a post-Cold War world where, while we still struggled with the complexities of ethnic hatred and economic disenfranchisement, was a world that was better than the one that we had left when the Berlin wall fell.

Ironically, we woke up today on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a President-elect who used the building of one as his signature.  And that 9/11 feeling of a diminished, depressing future – of a country not struggling to overcome its past demons, but one who would prefer to ignore them (and some even celebrate them) in favor of the illusion of past greatness sears my soul with a disturbingly similar dread.

Now, I’ve seen folks like me posting and writing inspiring and consoling lines from Anne Frank and MLK.  Believe in the good in people.  The arc of history bends toward justice.  This Huffington Post piece that tells us we should tell our kids that we will protect them from the big, bad, Trump first and foremost.  And with those yawps into the perceived darkness come the unsure retorts of those seized by it – we are simply not sure anymore: of the light in people; of the arc of justice; that we can or should tell our kids that everything will be all right.

I don’t buy it.  My belief in this country is profoundly shaken.  But this moment — at least for me — is saying something different.

For me, it brings to mind another profound philosopher, Ms. Rachel Dawes.  Don’t know who that is?  Well, of course, she’s the assistant DA and long-time friend of Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins (hey, it’s SHYB — of course there’s going to be a pop-culture reference).  As she said to an apparently vapid billionaire playboy:

“It’s not what you are underneath.  It’s what you do that defines you.”

To be honest, I’m not sure people in general have a “nature.”  And I’m not sure it matters.  The idea of recompense for good deeds is alluring, but it presupposes some kind of emotional payment that may never come.  Instead of proffering a better vision of a future I am entirely unsure about, what I feel like I can do is figure out what I think I can do today that will make our world a little more loving, a little more tolerant, and a little more understanding of others.

Obama told us to hope.  But maybe it’s better to just act hopefully instead, and let the chips fall where they may.

An election is a competition, and we get very caught up in the “winning.”  It’s understandable, given everything that is on the line.  But, as a coach, I get the fact that no matter how hard you work, no matter how well you do things, someone out there just might do it better.  Or someone might take a great pitch you made and flair it just over the infield for a game winning blooper (my best analogy at the moment for a candidate who won more votes but lost the election).  The result, however devastating, should not…cannot… invalidate the effort.

I am fearful today, I will fully admit.   I have less hope than I had 24 hours ago.

But I think I have found the power to act hopefully.

To show my children through my actions what I think the world should be whether it ever ends up that way.  That tolerance, inclusion, and love is how we should both live and give no matter what comes back to us in return.  That the value is in the effort, and that failure is part of the learning experience, and helps make us better people and our future actions more effective.

My first step in this process is right here, right now.  I will reclaim my words and my voice on this blog, and in my books.  I may still very much doubt who I am underneath, and what I do may define me in a way I don’t like.

But it is what I do.

I encourage all of you who feel like I do to go and do, too.

Well, what do you know, I finally finished one.