Practice

March 13, 2023

It was around 6:00 P.M., the sunlight was fading. The batter crouched, awaiting the pitch. It was outside. He swung at the second one, which was high and again outside. The third was in the dirt. He swung at the next one and connected with the dull clunk! of a metal bat on ball. It bounced sharply past the pitcher and through the infield. A runner on first advanced to second then to third as the center fielder chased the ball to the fence.

Fourteen nine- and ten-year-old boys showed up for practice. They didn’t have uniforms, those would come next month when the season started. This was their second practice together. Drills started in the infield, the coach tapping ground balls. Three boys took turns at each base, a couple at shortstop and between first and second, and one caught throws back to the coach.

This was Country Club Road park, a complex of kids’ baseball and soccer fields off Country Club Road on the fringes of the city. With some effort, the kids’ parents had found the place for the first practice. They sat on the uncomfortable metal bleachers along the third-base line, hunched forward, arms folded against the early evening chill.

The boys started practice horsing around, the coach got them focused. Most fielded the grounders cleanly, more or less, some were muffed or rolled to the outfield. The boy at third who caught the ball threw to the fielder at second, who pivoted and threw to first. Some of the throws were sharp, most were high, looping tosses that didn’t quite get there. These were nine-year-olds, after all, this was their introduction to baseball.

The coach was alone. I guessed he had an assistant who didn’t show up or was alternating with the coach at the twice-weekly practices. Maybe the guy leading the practice was the assistant. He called the players’ names as he knocked the balls toward them and, pointing with the bat, motioned them around their positions.

The kids all had gloves, cleats, batter’s helmets, and metal bats. I recalled faintly that kids in my hometown Little League decades ago wore sneakers, the league provided the helmets and the bats, which were wood. Now the boys are expected to be fully equipped. I wondered what ten-year-olds’ baseball cleats cost. Part of the investment, I guessed. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed on TV that many major league ballplayers are wearing ordinary running shoes.

The sunlight lasted after 6:00, highlighting the deep green of the outfield and the forest beyond the chain-link fence that enclosed the field. The boys playing outfield shaded their eyes with their hands, although several wore caps. The shadows slowly extended out from the infield. Around 6:30 someone switched on the field lights. The boys paid attention. They caught more ground balls, their throws were more accurate. The coach waved his bat like a baton, a conductor in front of his orchestra, moving them to one position, then another.

The parents in the bleachers, mostly moms, watched their sons engaged in the boys’ baseball ritual, chatting a bit about kids and sports. Kids and sports, I’m guessing, now is almost a compound noun. What kids aren’t in something? Soccer—in the fall more than a thousand boys and girls from ages four to 14 play on teams at our local YMCA. The basketball league, in season, has games every weekday evening and all day Saturday. Then football, gymnastics, swimming, softball, tennis. Then the newcomers, hockey, taekwondo, judo, golf. Kids’ sports cost money, the sign-up fees and the gear, the gloves, bats, rackets, shoes, helmets, the hockey sticks, helmets, pads. I’m leaving some things out.

One mother talked about kids’ football in her home town in Alabama. The coaches, she said, made the boys run until some of them threw up. “It’s awful,” she said. “and some of those kids are massive. At least here they play flag football.”

So it’s not all fun and games. I recall some of the fall soccer games, when a few parents shrieked at their kids and at the refs. Some of them, standing on the sidelines as their kids run around the field or sit on the bench, are replaying their own imaginary stardom.

But then the kids are having fun, most of them. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the boys (maybe the percentage is higher than that) we were watching won’t become major league ballplayers. “He’s not going to be the next Sammy Sosa [or other big-league star]. If he’s just an accountant, I’ll be happy,” the mom from Alabama said.

But then there’s the dream. Of these kids running around, throwing, catching, swinging at pitches over their heads or bouncing in front of the plate, some will return to play next year, their skills a bit more advanced. Then maybe the middle-school team. Then high school, where they face the prospect of not making the team, for some, their first real disappointment in life. Do they give up and get back to their schoolwork—or do they practice harder? They’ll hear the stories of high-school players who got to the minor leagues then were called up to the majors and became stars.

Still, as we shifted our positions on those hard-as-rock bleachers, feeling the evening weather close in, the parents relaxed in the moment. Except for the voices of the kids and the whack of the bats against balls, the place was mainly silent, peaceful, almost. Most of the pitches by the boy taking his turn on the mound went over the catcher’s head or through his legs to the backstop, as the batters swung wildly.

A few parents checked their watches. It was after seven, a school night. Some of these boys probably still had homework, most had not yet had dinner, then would need a bath before bed. They were elementary-schoolers, after all. But for that 90 minutes at that ballfield on the far outskirts of town, the world retreated a bit. For the kids, the tests and homework, the bells starting class, the lines in the lunchroom, were replaced by fun outdoors in late-day sunshine.

For the parents, too, practice was a few moments of light-hearted pleasure that suspended the daily parenting drill, the chores, the commuting, the bills, the job—the rest of life. It was, or it seemed, in this corner of this southeastern state, a bit of the “Boys of Summer” when, in their memories, on a warm, sun-drenched afternoon at some big ballpark, the shirt-sleeved crowd roared as their star homered, driving in runs, circling the bases. It’s baseball