[So, shoot me. I couldn’t resist dragging out a historical piece from when I was a humor columnist for the Vermont Sunday Magazine. I read this and sigh … another lifetime. SB SM]
Sports Dad
What shall henceforth be referred to as The Little League Era began in May, 1987 and extended through June, 1992. It is probably the most baseball-intense period of my life, but it also is the most personal.
Here is what has transpired in life for Clan Morris since the unforgettable triumph over the Guy Wilson Agency:
• I’ve retired from the Randolph Mens’ Slow Pitch Softball League.
• The Red Sox have still not won a World Championship
• Propelled by the 2nd Arab Oil Embargo, Vermont Castings is now the nation’s premier woodstove company. I am now sales manager.
• My literary career has been almost inadvertently kickstarted. After coordinating a staff written book on heating with wood called The Book of Heat, The Great Beer Trek has been published, followed by a satiric novel, Beyond Yonder.
• I now write a bi-weekly humor column for the Vermont Sunday Magazine, the state’s largest circulation Sunday newspaper insert.
We are now firmly ensconced in the town of West Brookfield, where an impromptu party ignites nearly every Friday night. It’s a blast, but looking back, it seems like several lifetimes folded into one. How did we do it?
Jacob and Patrick spend time in “the instructional league,” which is a euphemism for an unorganized collection of clueless kids in a grassy place with a backstop. The most notable moment occurs when the only hard hit ball of the season finds the crotch of a kid staring at a butterfly. As he screams in both surprise and pain, his mother storms out from the sideline, not to comfort him, but to drag him off the field by one arm for being such a wuss. I try to turn it into one of my humor columns under the title “A Ball in the Nuts,” but I abandon the idea.
The time has come, however, to pass the generational mantle. I am relegated to the sidelines, where my role becomes rooter-in-chief. I am now officially a Sports Dad.
SPORTS DAD (appeared originally in the Vermont Sunday Magazine)
And now it’s time to “Play Ball!” Baseball, we all know, is a year-round pastime, especially for Red Sox fans. In the North Country the fever become acute during mid-May, when for the first time temperatures are reliably above freezing.
I remember when I was top dog in this family. People talked about me in terms of potential. Even as I approached the so-called middle years there was no mistaking the alpha male in this household. He was the guy who played centerfield in the men’s softball league and who flirted with the forty minute mark in the Fourth of July 10K. He was the man on the windsurfer and mountain bike. He was first and foremost, an athlete.
All that has changed now. This same guy is now an athlete’s Dad. His time, energy, and income is devoted to the glorification of his offspring, ages 10 and 12. As you can tell from reading the first paragraph, he’s not real happy about it.
Like millions of American males approaching the peak of athletic prime (thank you, Nolan Ryan, for pushing this back a few years), I suddenly, find myself reduced to the role of support Dad. I drive the van, buy the equipment, tote the video camera, and maintain a stiff, yet nurturing, upper lip on the sidelines.
A generation ago a man in mid-life crisis went out and bought a the little red sports car. I can’t do this, because parents of sports age kids are required to transport up to seven Little Leaguers, soccer players, or wrestlers to various venues across the state in suitable comfort. This means tilt-back seats, air conditioning, and a stereo that can bang out M.C. Hammer at a hundred decibels. You cannot fit seven twelve year olds in an Austin Healy (although I’m sure they would be willing to try).
More importantly, I cannot afford the little red sports car because 40% of my after tax income is tithed to the sports equipment companies. Some call America the land of the free; I call it the land of the dedicated sports shoe. When I was a kid, we had a dedicated sports shoe called the sneaker. Now, sneakers are hundred dollar fashion statements with high tech, space age componentry that can only be worn enroute to a sporting event, where you then put on your dedicated shoes.
To make matters worse, at the growth rate of adolescent feet, the usable life of dedicated sports shoes is roughly seven-eights of one season. Isn’t it amazing what technology can do today? The final indignity comes at least once a season, when your child spaces out and leave his sneakers or cleats at the field, gym, lake, or pool.
Only one thing makes me angrier than a kid losing a pair of $50 shoes, that is … a kid losing just one shoe of a $50 pair. Am I telling it like it is?
I’m not alone in servitude. My wife, Vice President of Food, Flak, and Nourishment, must accommodate eating schedules dictated by games played at odd hours in distant parts of the state, and food whims not seen since the days of Henry the Eighth. Mom, this sandwich had Miracle Whip on it. Mom, you know how I feel about Miracle Whip. Mom, I can’t eat this sandwich, and if I don’t eat it will affect my performance, which will affect my relations with my peers, and my entire self-image and IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT BECAUSE YOU PUT MIRACLE WHIP ON MY SANDWICH.
Not that the sacrifices are without rewards. I remember a Little League game a few nights ago when my ten year old came to the edge of the dugout and motioned to me in the stands.
“He’s calling you! He’s calling you!” buzz the excited parents sitting with me in the bleachers. “You better go,” said one father, a touch of sadness in his face. “Once, when my boy called, I was a little slow getting there. He played out his option.” The other parents gasp. I trample three adults (two of them pregnant women) to see what the little guy wants, maybe a batting tip or a word of encouragement.
Yes, yes, my royal son, dost thou call?
Yeah, go get me some Gatorade.
But, but we didn’t bring any Gatorade, my liege.
Go buy some.
But your majesty, the closest store is twelve miles away
So? While you’re at it, get some bubble gum for the team.
He dismisses me with a wave of the hand. I scurry away. If I drive at breakneck speed, maybe I can be back for the final inning.
Maybe in future years, after he’s signed one of those multiyear contracts, he’ll remember that bottle of Gatorade that gave him the energy boost he needed to get that walk that drove in the winning run, and he’ll wonder where he got it, and he’ll think of a man, himself once an athlete and he’ll … nah.
At the end of the game as I am chauffeuring home the herd now devouring $54.60*** worth of fast food, I decide to try a new tact. I take them down to a part of town favored by local teenagers who hang out endlessly, sitting on steps, smoking cigarettes, and listening to devil rock on boom boxes while contemplating the next homemade tattoo.
“Look over there,” I say, infusing the scene with as much enthusiasm as I can muster,”Now, that’s really living! Maybe you guys should forget about Little League and sports. Don’t those guys look like they’re having fun?”
