The sweet gift of a too-early start to a youth baseball tournament
My first suggestion for surviving summer: Avoid any and all sports tournaments.
We were at one the other day, if not in the bosom of Los Angeles, then up near the larynx. Four games. Gravel parking lots. Melting flesh. With every close play at home, a cloud of dust would sweep the bleachers, until the parents wore the grit in their ears and teeth.
“Hey, Mom and Dad, thanks for everything. Now eat my dust.”
Sports tournaments always start too early, in a place you’ve never been. The first field was in Misty Valley, or some such, which wasn’t too bad, except the “valley” seemed to be a series of 100 strip malls, each with its own 7-Eleven and karate gym.
The houses were nice. But as with all residential streets on a Saturday afternoon, not a soul was in sight. It was spooky, as if someone had swiped all the boys and girls, their bikes, their scooters, their moms and dads and any signs of American opulence, except for the dwellings themselves.
Maybe they were all at sports tournaments?
On Sunday, which happened to be Father’s Day, we moved our operations to Banana Gardens, or some such, which didn’t seem to have all that many gardens. Or bananas.
What it had was Port-O-Lets, lots and lots of Port-O-Lets. By the time you’d leave the wickedly hot Port-OLet, your blood was the temperature of soup.
As mentioned, these tournaments always start very early, in order to maximize the good times for parents and participants alike.
It being Father’s Day, Posh stayed back at the house, to give the little guy and me extra bonding time. Plus, as she pointed out, “This is just &%$#@!(*&%^ crazy.”
So we rode along in silence, the way dads and teenagers do, each silently blaming the other for the situation we were in. He’s at that wonderful age, 14, where he eats as if no one is watching, even when someone is.
Me, I had a half-cup of coffee to go with my half-night’s rest. I don’t sleep much lately, on account of the 300pound beagle is suffering from belly problems and some sort of breathing disorder. Every night, at about 3, he waddles to the front door, gasping.
Then at 4, the beagle gets up again. He falls over, and I resuscitate him — not sure why. I breathe life back into him, and out in the yard he goes. Twenty minutes later, we are all back in bed spooning.
By 6 a.m., we are up and prepping for the tournament.
As is tradition, no one knows where the field is. The 60 Freeway is usually involved. If you see a body by the roadside, you’ve gone too far.
MapQuest, which really is a miracle till it isn’t, takes us first to the Banana Gardens Mall, then down a rabbit hole to our field — actually a cluster of fields, a peeling, dusty Shangri-La.
By now, I am out of coffee — where I had 5 ounces, I needed 30. I am dehydrated and barely cogent. My thoughts resemble ballpark pretzels, or Watson’s double helix. There is nothing linear about them. They might not even be thoughts.
Other dads look equally confused. Somewhat tentatively, we assure each other that this is absolutely the very best way to spend a Father’s Day.
Certainly, watching your offspring muff a ground ball is almost a profound experience, like seeing a great cathedral for the first time, or a Rembrandt in person. I once heard Ella Fitzgerald sing live, many moons ago, and the tingle in my skin feels exactly the same.
The moms, sensing that the dads are a little growly, set up a separate set of chairs, 20 feet away. The dads are clustered under pop-up tents, little blue man-caves of cynicism and sweat. You wonder, really, why you do it. Brad brings coffee, and that gives us a jolt of hope. He also brings a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which is what we eat in lieu of amphetamines.
Once energized, yeah, you really do wonder why you choose to do this. Could it be the parental camaraderie? God no.
What about the sheer spectacle of youth baseball? This is a beautiful game, until it is poorly played, and then it is a cursed, haunting, unpoetic undertaking that really kind of hurts. As with old beagles, it can suck the life right out of you.
Then, off to the side, you see your kid in the on-deck circle, and your heart rate picks up, and you sit a little taller in your beach chair. “He’s all mine,” you say to yourself, “the hawklike eyes, the pants that don’t really fit….”
He walks to the plate. Yeah, he’s mine, all mine, and he’s playing summer league baseball in a decrepit sports complex on the edge of nowhere, out where God left his shoes. A searing double-header, in fact, on Father’s Day. What could be a greater gift? Good eye, kid. Good eye.
This is a beautiful game, until it is poorly played, and then it is a cursed, haunting, unpoetic undertaking ...