Sports and who we were (II)

A father, son and t-ball.

The college football weekend mostly delivered, and Longhorn fans were able to sit back, get right, and enjoy (the hot take from last week’s Reheat proved correct and produced some delicious schadenfreude), but that didn’t stop my family from still experiencing a crushing sports loss. It wasn’t on TV, but it was more exciting than the vast majority of NFL games these days. There were huge momentum swings, roars from both fanbases in the crowd, controversial calls, and moments of euphoria where a victory felt so close you could touch it, but in the end, our hearts were ripped out of our chests. Yeah, what I am writing about is somewhat absurd, but it’s real: my son’s t-ball team was defeated in the championship game in heartbreaking fashion, in the bottom of the last inning.¹

This was his first season playing t-ball, and it was quite the ride from start to finish. The improvement he and his teammates made was really amazing to see. He went from not wanting to go to practice unless he was promised Chick-fil-A afterward and dreading the first few games to hitting the ball hard and confidently and being the wildest cheerleader for his teammates from the dugout. At the beginning of the year, he hardly wanted to touch his bat and glove during the week, whereas after they won their first tournament game, he immediately wanted to come home and play some more and hit balls into the street well into the dark. Also, his team was great and really bonded with one another, as did the parents. They smacked the ball into the outfield repeatedly and actually recorded a lot of outs, which is the key to winning in t-ball, where the ball usually ping-pongs around the infield like the most insane blooper reel you’ve ever witnessed. The only team they lost to in the regular season was also the one they faced in the championship. Now, my son talks about that team as if they’re the Murderers' Row Yankees, but in reality, they’re just little kids, all five and six years old, in the same way his group of friends are—they just got a few more bounces of the ball on the dirt than we did and became our bugaboo, twice. Such is sports. It’s not that I was particularly devastated about losing a 6U championship or that I would’ve thrown a parade if they won, because frankly, like all five-year-old boys, my son needs to learn how to lose because he’s terrible at it. I wonder where he gets that quality? His mom, probably. Thankfully, though the loss stung for him, they got big-ass rings and snacks immediately after, and he was over it. Finality hits fathers who are prone to wax poetic much differently than it does for sons who are blissfully unaware of the cruelness of time.

Like I’ve written before, teams root you to a time in your life and who you were in that moment. Why do we love college sports? The players might change often, but the name on the front of the jersey transports us back to who we were in the most formative moment of our lives, and we care just the same. The various iterations of the teams that wear our colors are mile markers on our journeys. That’s why its hard to say goodbye to certain teams, for me at least. I wrote in 2021 how saying goodbye to that Texas Baseball team with Ivan Melendez, Zach Zubia and Mike Antico was tough because it was the first team me and my son had a connection to, together. Same for this silly little t-ball team, it wasn’t that his team lost that crushed me, but knowing that I no longer have him at this moment, on this team, with these kids. There was the ridiculously fast kid who slides into almost every base and is always dirty, who will probably learn at some point he doesn’t need to slide into home when the ball is on the ground 100 feet away; the one who does a rock-on hand symbol to the crowd as his music plays when he goes up to bat. His team is going to try to come back together in the spring and hopefully they’ll get revenge on their rivals next time, but they’ll be different, and that team will provide its own connection to whatever moment in time we’re in then. For now, it’s saying goodbye to my son at this stage, with this jersey on, as he overcomes anxieties and fears and gets better. I don’t doubt that the next stage and the one after that will be better—that’s the progression of being a parent—but they’re all different, things you gain, things you miss.

In the last inning before our last out, when he came up to bat, the other team deployed a t-ball version of the shift and moved their third baseman into the spot where my son had hit his previous balls. It’s kind of a lame move to do in t-ball, but hey, it was the championship. Well, he ended up just hitting the ball clean over the third baseman’s head. The season felt so fleeting, time with him in this moment so ephemeral, I just want to grab it and bottle it up, but I can’t. So, when I want to remember him at this moment I’ll think of his first t-ball team with their royal blue jerseys on and World War 2 fighter plane on the cap, and there will be a piece of this time that’s alive and not faded. I’ve written this type of thing before, and I probably will again.

1. This article looks far more like an early 2010s Mom Blog than I ever intended, but maybe that’s the style I need to channel. Unfortunately, I don’t have any hot glue guns to raffle off or cursive script signs to give away that say something like: “This mama prays…with a glass of wine.”