Imagine that the Dodgers and the Yankees are playing a game, and the Yankees think they’re winning 9:1, while the Dodgers have no clue what the score might be and are really just happy to be there, their white pants rolled over at the waistband, and jerseys dangling down to the knees. The game has no outs and no pitch count, and the first base coach has to yell at the batter “Here! To me to me!” or the batter gets lost between the plate and first. The third-base coach is there to sort things out when the team winds up with two runners balancing on third, stacked together like members of Earth, Wind, and Fire.
This is little league.
Japhy started playing when he was 4, not because we’re hardcore sports parents, but because he was really into baseball as an asethetic and costume, and the logical step was to get him a metal Louisville Slugger and gigantic batter’s helmet. When he first got his helmet, he wore it for three days—in the car, in bed, in front of the fridge as he snacked—as if he were some obscure Roman god. He saw the “Field of Dreams” game in Iowa between the White Sox and the Yanks, and ever since, we can’t pass a cornfield in the car without him watching for baseball players walking out of the stalks.
He’s 6 now and has gone from chopping at the tee like it was a stack of cordwood to swinging at actual live pitches with a patented Aaron Judge leg lift and bat waggle, thanks in part to a string of coaches. Dads.
Ninety-nine percent of coaching a Little League team is yelling, “Bats on the ground—Harrison put the bat down!” The kids can’t wait to pick up their bats: there is a tense innings where they are allowed to hold their bats, and then they have to look longingly over the grass and dirt to where that lethal weapon lies while they field. It is, no question, better than the World Series. I look forward to these games all week.
Consider how complex baseball can get: the times you can and can’t steal a base, the split-second double-plays, the philosophy of who to put as lead-off hitter versus power hitter. It is a game that becomes more meaningful the better you understand it. But again: complex. The coaches are out there trying to teach chess to a field of wiggly chess pieces who may or may not need to pee right as they get to the plate. They are, I think, the best of the dadly world.
Boys and men might be “in trouble” (why is so much dad media tinged with the Jordan Petersen and/or the religious?) but on the diamond, these dads are so gentle with the kids, giving high fives for every attempt to field a ground ball, and and showing eternal patience for every successful swing at the 20th pitch. I’ve seen Coach cop a ball to the nuts when his kneeling pitch resulted in a line drive point blank to the crotch—wince—then continue lofting in balls to the next batter. I’ve watched Japhy with a first base lead that took him almost to second—“when are we going to practice stealing bases?” he wanted to know, and the coaches told him oh, very soon, to the child who brought a hot dog into the outfield with him the last innings they were fielding. I’ve seen the kids puff up when the 6-foot-tall coach gives their helmet a little pat or announces their name in the official batting lineup, or when they catch a fluke pop-up and all the grandparents nearly tip out of their camping chairs cheering.
It’s gotta be meaningful to the dads coaching, too. It’s special to me, and I’m not even American. It’s like that line in Field of Dreams: “Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it like it was your child.” When they’ve got their gloves on, their Mariners caps, the kids are inside a game the adults are putting on just for them: they’re out of the cornstalks and under the lights. Eating a hot dog.
I watched the final game of this season as Coach waved the runners around to home and the kids took turns sliding into home base—stopping short, tripping over it, missing it altogether—then shouted “we WON WE WON!” A series with no score, where everyone gets pitches enough until they can get a hit.
The game isn’t real, but they’re right that they’re part of something good.
(AITI) Am I the Idiot
Speaking of primary parents and women getting a break from the uneven burden of child-reading, a mum asked me if I her kid could come over on Juneteenth because she had to work, and I said, uh sure. Then she asked if his little brother could come too, because his daycare was also closed, oh no, and at that point I replied that, ooooof, you know, I do have to work!!! So it’s going to be hard to watch four kids, but if you’ve got no other option then okayeee. And then the night before, I texted just to check what time the kids would be coming over, and she told me she’d drop them at 7:15 a.m. and pick them up at 5:45 p.m. I’m having heart palpitations just remembering it. I had to make them breakfast since they hadn’t eaten yet, a child split their forehead at 9:03 a.m. doing a somersault in the backyard, I had no success writing an article on AI while a child repeatedly tossed a Paw Patrol car down the stairs with the siren blaring, and I ended up texting her to come get them early. It’s a perfect little story either of a) how I’m a complete mark, or b) how our belief in mutual aid will, at some point, rub up against the reality that moms wind up offloading the burden to other moms, and not to dads. IT’S A THORNY ONE. I WANTED TO HELP AND I HAVE MORE MEANS THAN HER BUT ALSO I’VE WATCHED THIS CHILD NUMEROUS TIMES AND SHE HAS NOT RECIPROCATED ONCE.
Goodies
Thought this series on the “hidden cave” or fantasy sequence in movies (think: bowling in Lebowski, red lodge in Twin Peaks) was so interesting from Colin Dickey: “There is no narrative need for this, but it offers a sudden and explosive libidinal energy to break through the structure of the narrative.”
Helen Garner on the end of her friend, the German professor’s, life. (sneaky link)
If you want to write longform on a bog, I will read it.
That time when Ohtani hit a home run ball through the roof of the Toyko dome—boy I hope we can get there one day.
Another canonical moment in baseball: “Here comes the pizza” “Highly unnecessary”
I am humbly requesting an oral history of the “Fire Meets Gasoline” music video.
School: color these shapes
Japhs:
Helen!
If you hadn't confirmed the time, then she would have just shown up at your house at 7:15 am. Lady balls on that one.