or, as an alternate title, Heckling Etiquette for Baseball Fans.
This year, my son was eligible to try out for "All Stars" with our local Little League, only they didn't call it All Stars, just "Summer League," and rumor had it that all of the kids would make teams. Given Tucker's obsession with baseball and his natural athleticism (at least the seven year old version of athleticism), we were happy to let him try out.
The night of try outs arrived and we reached the ball field ready to watch our kid show his stuff. We soon realized that this wasn't just an itty-bitty "show what you can do" kind of evening. Around 60 kids were quickly being shuffled from one drill to the next - stop three grounders, catch three fly balls, figure out where the play is in a game situation, go, go, go. At each station there were men, I assume coaches, taking down every awesome save and every grievous mistake on little clipboards. This was serious business.
Tucker was not the best kid out there, and he's kind of small for his age, so I left the tryouts happy that all the kids would make it because Tucker wasn't one of the top players, and I just flat out don't believe he's old enough to be told he isn't good enough for anything. He's seven, and he has lots of rejection to live through - it's part of life - but at seven he should think he is physically capable of absolutely anything. I disliked the experience as a whole, and I suddenly hated baseball.
That Saturday we were supposed to get a call about what team he would be on, but no call came. Sunday, no call. Monday, no call.
Finally, I got an email from a dad we knew pretty well. His son and Tucker had played on the same soccer team when they were five, and we loved that team. All of the parents were nice and the kids were good - it was probably the best sports season Trey and I have had, and I feel like we've had quite a few. The dad, Brandon, said that Tucker would be on his team, and he gave some instructions about when they would practice, etc. The boys would practice Monday through Friday for the first two weeks of June. This sounded a little miserable to us, but Tucker was in absolute heaven.
When the roster of all the kids came, I realized that they were ALL seven. The age group was seven and eight year olds as of April 15th, so I knew there were nine year olds playing on the other teams. I knew immediately that our team was made up of the youngest players from tryouts - some of them barely seven.
But they were scrappy little seven year olds. They worked so hard in practice, and we saw them improve so much. There were several really good coaches, and the practices were almost as serious as the tryouts, meant to make the boys better skill-wise. I was happy that Tucker had made this team, even if it looked like they might go two-and-out in the tournament. I loved baseball again.
The night of the first game finally arrived, and Tucker proudly wore his black jersey - the first uniform he's had with "Hickman" on the back. From the time he got up that morning, he was focused and pumped and excited. He was so excited, in fact, that we made it to the ball field around fifteen minutes before the designated arrival time because I couldn't listen to him beg to leave the house for the game anymore.
Just after I took my seat in the bleachers and opened the book I was reading as my pre-game warm-up, the other team - and their parents - swarmed the field. I was aghast! This couldn't be the team we were playing. The kids looked twelve. I double-checked to make sure we were at the right field, and I started hating baseball again.
The parents from the somewhat local team (a small town nearby) moved in on the field like troops going to battle, rolling up their coolers and unloading their lawn chairs right in front of the bleachers. In a matter of minutes, the entire fence behind home plate was lined with parents in their blue team shirts, creating a sea of intimidation for our young, hard working team.
Now, I must say that I've never understood the phenomenon of putting lawn chairs against the fence in front of the bleachers. Clearly, the bleachers are there so people can sit in them and watch the game, so the chairs in front of them eliminate the view from the entire first row. This makes no sense to me. And it wasn't the only thing that didn't make sense.
These parents were loud. Annoying loud. I can deal with shouts of encouragement, but I can only describe what they were doing as heckling their own children. It began in pregame warm-ups and continued throughout the game. If a kid missed the ball, his dad would shout "What are you doing? You should have had that!" On and on it went, and it made me a nervous wreck. I whispered to Trey that I had the most self-control of anyone in the whole world because I wanted, so badly wanted, to scold them.
Here's how it played out in my head:
Crazy Parent (jumps out his chair, screams at his own kid): Get your glove on the ground! It went right by you!
Me: Sit down, ya loony! None of us want to see the sweat crease running down the crack of your shorts!
Crazy Parent (disgusted): Aw...why did you swing at that?
Me: Maybe if you wouldn't spend all your money on chaw and Lone Star, you could buy your poor kid some glasses.
And on and on it went in my head. They yelled, and I came up with hilarious, witty insults to throw back at them. And I chose to keep my mouth shut. My husband was very proud.
I think it goes without saying that the other team "drilled us" in Tucker's words. I don't remember the score, but they had somewhere around twenty, and the game was called for run-rule in the fourth inning. It was probably their parents never-ending heckling that made them so good. Our formerly excited, baseball-loving kids were dejected and, I think, a little embarrassed.
And because the tournament was double-elimination, we had to play again the next night.
And I hated baseball.
No comments:
Post a Comment