Praying for a Rainout

baseball season

My daughter is a star hitter. She’s learning her way around the field, but right now, she owns the plate. Last night, she hit a single and a double during two at bats and scored two of her team’s three runs. She’s the only girl on her team, and, when I listened to some of the moms on Saturday, yelling, “Show those boys how to hit,” I couldn’t help but feel even more excited about my daughter playing sports.

Fast forward to last night’s game. Mommy wants her to quit.

We paid $65 to join a league, and our girl was “scouted.” During baseball tryouts, her fielding, throwing, and hitting skills were measured and rated from 1-4. Afterward, the team selection process goes like this: all the kids’ names are written on the fronts of cards, their numbers on the backs, and the cards are turned facedown so that only the numbers are showing; each team coach picks a four at random, then a three, then a two, then a one; the selection process continues until all of the kids are chosen; afterward, a random few players get traded to be on a team with a friend.

We weren’t notified of the first practice because our coach forgot to call. Fortunately, we heard from our daughter’s buddy. But after two practices, the coach split town, apparently to the chagrin of his son, who plays on the team. Tyrone is a depressed little boy who wants nothing less than to play ball. He looks down, kicks the dirt, and does little else. He holds the bat with both hands, but lets go of one with every swing.

Since the coach is gone, three of the fathers—including my husband—have agreed to help in the interim, until a new coach is found (and afterward, too). No one else has stepped up to the plate, so to speak. One father, of a severely ADD-disabled child, has neither offered help nor thanked those who have taken over the burden. And he has done nothing to help his son, Perry (who is now in his second year of baseball, though he plays as though he has never seen a ball before), learn the game. Like Tyrone, he kicks and throws dirt and looks everywhere except at the ball and the batter. If a round sphere happens to come hurtling toward him, he stands there. Last night, he progressed to fighting for the ball with one of his teammates, finally winning the tug of war long after the batter had cleared second. And then he walked from left field to the pitcher’s mound, to cries of, “Throw it! Throw the ball!” which Perry did, just as soon as the other team’s player scored.

A new kid showed up last night. His sister dropped him off and left, even though we told her we couldn’t be responsible if something happened. She wasn’t going to return until 8, but I put my foot down (and would not take her cell phone number) and told her to be back by 7:15. This is not, after all, a babysitting service. All the parents stay. The new boy, nicknamed Darling (because he has a multi-syllabic, difficult-to-yell-in-the-field name, and this is the nickname he uses, which his sister didn’t even know), wasn’t wearing a cup, didn’t know what a cup is, and didn’t bring any water. The moment his sister left, he was dying of thirst and ready to spend the game on the bench.

We have a few good players on the team, one of whom, Rick, has a dad who’s taken a starring role in the coaching. Alas, he was out of town last night, when my husband was stuck doing this alone, while Perry’s dad and another boy’s father sat on their asses with nary a thank you. (Rick’s mom was very thankful; she even offered me an alcoholic beverage camouflaged, of course, by her cooler and plastic cups; I think she’d had quite a few already.)

Our first baseman is a good player, and his dad was supposed to help out last night. Alas, he had some work to do around the house.

But thank goodness little Tommy’s mother showed up! Last week, she and her posse stood against the backstop, blocking the views of other proud parents and grandparents, one of whom asked her very nicely if she would mind moving over or sitting down so they could see their grandchild. She gave him a filthy look and moved an inch. Eventually, though, she sat down. Until there was an altercation at first base. Her son tagged the base to get a runner out. She and her husband and their friends began shouting, “He’s out! He’s out!” The coach of the other team, whose batter had not run to first because he thought the ball was foul, was arguing with the umpire.

play ball

The umpire is a nice guy—a little long-winded and far too patient, perhaps, but nice—and asked that the parents please stop arguing! “We are trying to teach these kids how to play baseball, not how to argue!”

Tommy’s mom responded, “Stop tryin’ to teach ‘em how to cheat!”

The umpire then explained to the coach that he announced the ball was in play, which meant the runner had to run. And so he was out. Everyone understood and agreed. And most of us recognized that this was the parent who would kill the joy of team play for the rest of us. We weren’t wrong.

After the game, she approached her son. “They tried to tell you he wasn’t out.”

I interrupted. “That’s not what happened at all! You weren’t listening. The umpire was trying to explain to the coach that it was a fair ball as long as the ball was in front of the plate. The other team’s coach hadn’t heard the cry of ‘ball’s in play,’ and the ump wanted to explain without parents screaming.”

“Well, we were told to watch out for this league. It’s very cliquey. Everybody knows everybody, and we’re new here.”

“We’re new here, too. And we don’t know anybody. And I haven’t found it to be cliquey.”

“Well, it is. And the coaches and umps are all friends, and they do each other favors.”

Imagine: a parent who is so concerned about her child’s team winning a baseball game that she is already accusing the umpires of cheating, before any evidence of cheating (the game was a tie) has been established!

Last night was a tough game. It was apparent that our team’s opponents had amazing skill and dexterity. They were good hitters and fielders. At their first at-bat, the other team went through all nine players. (There’s a nine-hitter rule because these games take so long.) In fact, in 27+ at bats, their team struck out only six times—to our ten strikeouts for fewer than 20 at bats.

Before the game started, Tommy’s mom was concerned that her son wouldn’t be playing first base. Tommy approached my husband in the field with this: “My mom wants to know if I can play first base, the position I’ve always played.”

I told him, “We are short of players, so I’m afraid you’ll have to play where the coach thinks you will best serve the team.”

As it turns out, he best served the team at first. He’s a pretty good player. He catches well, though he doesn’t move quickly to get the inaccurate throws. His mother’s a great fan: several times during the game, she shouted, “You’re doin’ great, number 12. You’re doin’ great!” And, “How can you catch it when your team ain’t throwin’ the ball right?!” That’s right; this mom is actually dissing her son’s teammates.

But that’s not the worst of it. During the game, Tommy’s mom paid a visit to the ice cream truck and returned with a chocolate ice cream bar for her son. When she tried to pass it through the fence to the dugout, my husband, coach for the day, told her no food was allowed in the dugout. I backed him up. And then she said, “Come on out, Tommy.” But I reminded her of the other rule. “No players are allowed to leave the dugout.”

She shot me daggers, then went to the dugout gate, opened the gate, and told her kid to come eat his ice cream. Much to everyone’s surprise, he refused. The mom then told him that she was “not wastin’ two fifty!”

Tommy’s mom returned to her spot far afield to tell her posse what that bitch (me) had done. She was loud and rude and obnoxious. She and her group tried to stare me down, while I was out in the field trying to help my husband help her son to have a ball team. And after the game, she complained loudly to the umpire, who told her that no food was allowed and that no players could leave the dugout.

“My son had a [sic] upset stomach!”

“Then he needs ice water,” the ump replied.

No matter how many people tell this woman she’s wrong, she will always think she’s right. She’s an adult bully. I haven’t met too many of them, and I hope this is the last one that I will meet.

My husband asked Perry’s father, after the game, if he had ever played T-ball. Perry had. Then came the request that he take his son out to practice, because Perry doesn’t know how to swing a bat. “I don’t have time! I work! That’s the coach’s job,” Mr. Perry’s Dad replied.

“But we don’t have a coach,” my husband said, “And I have a job, too. Perry is your son.”

When they had gone, the commissioner of the league and the umpire came to talk to us. I told them I would not be bullied by parents, and one recounted the experience of being chased by a one wielding a lawn chair, which he planned to break over the commissioner’s back.

And Perry’s father returned to the field in the dark having lost his keys. He refused to ask anyone for help, even though we were eager to offer it (and did). So we left. And we found his seven-year-old, ADD-stricken son wandering the parking lot and heading out into traffic. His father had left the boy who can’t sit still alone, in the car, in the dark.

I watched the other team tonight, with their coach and their additional five fathers helping out, keeping those boys focused and not fidgeting. They were a beautiful, well-oiled machine, despite their newness to the sport. And then I looked at ours—our single mothers forcing their boys to take an interest in a game no one’s taught them, our dads forcing their boys to be boys but without ever showing them anything beyond how to stand and pee, our nasty adult bullies setting bad examples for our kids—and I wanted to cry.

I’m ready to pull my child out of a sport she loves to keep her from being ruined by the bad attitude of her teammates and their parents. And I’m afraid that, if this doesn’t improve this Saturday, that’s exactly what is going to happen.