This is for all the dads who will march their boys off to baseball tryouts at the local high school.
The dads - and moms - who have watched a little boy grow from T-Ball to Coaches Pitch and then to "real pitching" in Minors. The switch flipped about 10 years old and the boy realized the scoreboard was important. Baseball became a year-round obsession with travel-ball seasons thrown into the mix. There were $100 gloves, $300 bats, $50 batting gloves, batting helmet, Under Armour, Mizuno Nine Spikes, Easton Stealth catcher's gear, and the best possible bat bag to carry it all. Many paid someone - a former coach or local star - for private or small-group hitting and pitching lessons. Trophies and championship T-shirts measured the boy's progress as a player and a team-mate. It rose above the dad's simpler years - collecting baseball cards, watching the professionals live or on TV or hearing them on the radio, and pick-up games in the backyard. No, now, baseball was a family culture. No, now, baseball was a community culture. Mom or Dad didn't worry about comparing their home or car to the neighbor - now they needed to keep their boy in the neighborhood conversation: "Your son made All-Stars? Wow, my son needs to make All-Stars."
I didn't wake up in 1988, when I became a daddy, and suddenly become a baseball fan. I can't remember not being a baseball fan. I kept a scorebook for televised Friday night Braves' games when I was 10. I was a high school sports writer. I drove to Atlanta Fulton Stadium to watch Braves games . . . by myself. I created my own baseball game similar to the famous Strat-O-Matic. My season lasted from April to August. I started coaching recreation baseball in 1983 - three years before I married; five years before my first son was born.
And, when Andrew was born . . . I put a Rawlings MLB 108-stitch baseball in the hospital nursery with him. This boy was going to play. When he could barely walk, I bought three dozen Wilson baseballs and piled them around him in the front yard. I was going to teach him how to pitch and how to hit.
He started playing in 1996. He was 8. He played a bit of outfield and a tiny bit at short, and that 16-1 team won its championship. The league gave out championship T-shirts. I was gone, baby, gone. Hook, line and sinker. In 1997, he played short on a 500 team and Bruce Mackay chose him to play All-Stars. I thought we'd won the lottery.
In 1998, he moved to Minors where the boys pitch. We came within a game of the championship. He was our second most-effective pitcher and a decent contact hitter. The coach nominated him for All-Stars, but it was a talent-rich division and he didn't make it. In 1999, he led our team in hitting with a 545 batting average, and was our best pitcher. He made the All-Star team.
In 2000 and 2001, he moved up to 11 & 12 ball. He was on two championship teams, playing third on the first and second/first on the second. His pitching days were over, but he was widely known as a sure fielder, a strong arm, and a great contact hitter. In 2001, he came within 2 feet of a walk-off home run to win the championship, but it was a long single. Four batters later he scored the winning run on a tag-up at third. After the celebration the umpire said to me, "There's no way I would have pitched to Andrew, leading off the inning." He played All-Stars that year.
In 2002 and 2003, he moved to 13 & 14 ball, and got bigger. He played on two mediocre teams, but his second year, he led the team in hitting and played first base all season . . . with only one error. In 2003, he entered the All-Star season and his hitting just exploded. The ball must have looked like a watermelon coming toward him. He killed it.
In the 8th grade, he tried out for the high school J-V team and survived the first cut, but was cut in the final round. That fall, Pat Frawley assembled the boys who were cut at the final round and they played travel ball together. When he went out for J-V as a ninth-grader, everyone whispered to me, "He's going to make it. No problem."
He looked good. He picked the balls out of the dirt at first. He was encouraged by the older players. Dads called me and said, "Andrew had a great tryout. He's got to be in." He even felt confident about it. But, I had this nagging feeling - was he really one of the top 7 players in his grade? How was that offensive line speed going to hurt his chances? He was neither a pitcher nor a catcher.
I took him up to the high school that fateful morning. He made the long walk to the gymnasium to see if his name was on the list. I was ready to puke. I could tell, as he walked back to me, that the news was not good. "I'm okay," he said and my Honor Student went off to do what he really did best - excel in the classroom.
Well, I thought, at least we have football, where he was Most Improved on the 8th grade team, and played every down at center on the ninth grade team. I'm miserably ashamed to say - at that moment, it felt like a consolation prize. Mitch Hudson and Sterling Frierson came to the rescue. Both were assistant coaches in the football program. Mitch had already mentioned, to Andrew, that he should try throwing shot and discus on the track team.
By that afternoon, just hours after the heart-wrenching news on the gymnasium door, Andrew had shifted to the high school track team. Two days later, surrounded by other football linemen at the shot and discus, my freshman said to me, "These are my people." That season, he lettered.
I remember praying, "Lord, I am so stupid. This boy is yours. I'm just the steward of his childhood. Wherever you need him to be and whatever you need him to do - do it. Just keep me from messing it up."
As a senior, he won region in the shot put. That day at South Aiken High School, when he edged out a boy from Irmo, I swear to you it was more exciting that any baseball game I've ever seen in my entire life. His senior year, he won the award for highest GPA on both the football and the boys' track teams. He was the booster club's all-round male academic athlete of the year (2007).
He went on to the University of South Carolina. Lynette Washington, who had coached him as a thrower during his senior year in high school, helped with some introductions. He walked on to the Gamecocks' track team. They switched him to the javelin. They put a redshirt on his freshman year. In Spring 2009, he was an SEC Academic All-American, lettered in track and field, and competed in javelin at the SEC championships in Gainesville, FL. I can't wait to watch him throw that "spear" this spring in Columbia, Athens and Knoxville.
Oh, I still love baseball. I will always cling to the ballpark, encourage boys and families, and nudge my youngest along in it. But, all the pressure is gone. Put your children in God's hands. He has a plan for them. It may not be the plan that you or the neighborhood have for them. But, I can tell you that when you come to that sweet spot in life - when you know that God is in control of what is His - there's no peace like it. <^>< 2010.
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