Between the Lines: A Father, A Son, and America's Pastime

We’re getting our pictures taken Saturday; I drive to the field to pick up our uniforms. We don’t have practice before then, so we’ll conduct the annual ritual of passing out jerseys and changing in the car on picture day. Sam joins me, because this is a very important part of baseball. Last year he received the number with the line and the circle and he wants to make sure he gets it again. This year it’s a “ten” and he knows how to “spell” it.

Practices are over for the day; so the fields are empty. Sam wants to hit some balls on the real field. After he swings at 52 pitches – 24 tee balls and 28 tennis balls – the sun is setting behind home plate. Sam can still see to hit, but I can’t see to catch the balls before they hit me. He thinks he needs a few more swings, so I throw 28 more pitches…all tennis balls.

As coach, I declare practice over. As dad, I say it’s time to go home.

We search the field for the balls, and drop them into the standard plastic five-gallon bucket that all real coaches keep in their cars at all times. We’re walking off the field when Sam says, “Look at the sky…green, red, orange, yellow, blue.” Silhouettes of the fences and bleachers of the big kids’ field hover in the distance, along with the occasional squeal of serious baseball players squeezing out their last bit of practice breaks the silence.

Sam walks up next to me and takes the bucket from me, because, he surmises, my pitching arm is probably tired. He reaches up and holds my hand, looks up from under the bill of his new gray real baseball hat with the “N” on it and says, “Thanks, daddy…I mean coach…coach daddy.”

If you’re lucky, baseball is a tradition your father shared with you. And if you’re really lucky, it’s something you pass on to your son. Baseball is a sport of history and tradition starting with the myth of Admiral Doubleday, wool uniforms, the Yankees vs. the Brooklyn Dodgers, Wrigley Field, Babe Ruth and Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, and the Negro Leagues. The players are different, but “baseball” hasn’t changed. Nor will moments like this, moments that baseball gives fathers and sons.

“Daddy?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
“Can we go to Starbucks?”
Perhaps a few things have changed.