Children of Spring No More

     In just three short days, my twin boys Jacob and Josh will play their last Little League game.  This thought snuck up on me quickly, like a small child with a water gun waiting stealthily just behind the corner, spraying you with a cold jet of reality when you least expect it.  You see, I’ve been busy coaching the twins on their travel baseball team, and oh yeah, in between travel baseball and little league baseball practice and games, I’ve been working on these things called having a “life” and a “job”, so sometimes I miss the forest for the trees.  
     Possibly the fact that the boys’ team has had a wonderful season…a thus far undefeated season…and the fact that they’re playing for the Championship on Monday has also blinded me to the bigger reality that this is the last game they will play on a little league field.  
     As my mind worked to process this fact tonight, memories flooded back from the beginning of their baseball days.  
     Their first catch with Dad was around the same time they took their first steps.  I would sit on the floor or the couch with Jacob or Josh just a few feet away and toss a hacky-sack type ball to them underhanded.  The ball would bounce off their belly more times than not, with their hands a second or two too slow (sometimes that still happens at the age of 12).
     We progressed to their first work on a “diamond”, which was actually our family room and kitchen, with the refrigerator at the far end of the kitchen substituting as second base. First base and third base had not entered their minds yet, so upon hitting a pitch they’d run straight for the fridge, touch it, turn around and run straight back to the family room where they’d safely slide home.  
     Eventually, that fateful day came when the twins “got the call”.  Baseball people know what this means.  Yes, they were on their way to T-Ball!
     This is where things got interesting and my life really changed.  The mistake I made was thinking that I was simply taking them to their first T-Ball practice and dropping them off.  Little did I know that this fateful decision would seal my fate for the next 7 years of thousands of hours of coaching during hundreds of practices and hundreds of games.  
     You see, as we arrived at the “ballfield” (more on that in a moment) and it came time for Jacob and Josh to shuffle off with their brand new (read: strangers!) team and coaches, they decided to have a nuclear meltdown.  My wife and I reluctantly acknowledged that the antidote to these disastrous fits was for me to stay with them, so I walked up to the coach’s team huddle with the twins.  
     Walking up to the huddle turned into having catch which turned into throwing BP which turned into coaching which turned into coaching travel ball which turned into Little League which turned into……
     ….their last Little League game in 72 hours.
     In the Fall, the twins will move up to a Big-League sized field.  Bases 90 feet apart, pitchers’ mound a precise 60 feet 6 inches from home plate, outfield fences around 330….I have been saying for some time now, “It’s time to move to a big league field, we’re ready” about my travel baseball team. And the truth is, they are ready.  It’s just me who’s not.
     I want to hold on to the precious memories of a T-ball field that really was just a field.  A field with no dirt, no dugouts…a field with trees in the middle of the goddam field.  I want to see a ball (very gently) hit to short, with the entire infield and outfield going for it like the ball is magnetized with a positive polarity and all the fielders are negatively charged.  Here was proof that the great magic and allure of baseball had already quickened in them. 
     I want to see their hats on crooked and their gloves falling off their hands because their glove is too big and their hand so small.  I want to see a kid hit the ball off the tee and run to third base for Christ’s sake.  I want the third baseman to point to the kid running the wrong way and tell him to go the other way while all the parents and coaches are yelling the same thing, so the kid gets confused and keeps running to third.  And I want the pitcher to field the ball and throw it not to first, but right at the runner because wiffle ball rules was all they knew until then. 
     It was only a slight step up from backyard ball, and only because many of the instrumentalities of “organized” baseball were there:  there was a full team, and coaches, and equipment.  But organized it was not; it was more like controlled chaos.  
     But I have to face the inexorable truth that this is ending.  While there’s no time limit on a baseball game, there are limits on games, and in once sense, my boys have reached theirs.  It is sad and wondrous and melancholy and joyful all wrapped up together.   
     We are now headed to that in-between time, that vast wasteland of baseball where most players languish and die, that time between “little” and “big” leagues.  I do not know what good or bad this will bring for my children, me, and our family, but I do know that it will bring baseball, and that is good enough.  The game of baseball is not perfect, the game of baseball is hard, and the game of baseball can be brutal and unforgiving.  But, it is like life in that way, and in many other ways, because the game ultimately gives much more than it takes through memories and friendships and teammates and shared sacrifice and fun and yes, winning.  Let there be no question: while the beauty in baseball lies in its arcs and shapes and sounds, at the end of the day, the game of baseball is about winning.  But it’s not always about putting the “W” in the win column, it’s more about persevering.  Because those who persevere are always winners.  
     So, this is how it ends.  And I’m ok with that.  Because you can’t have new beginnings without an ending.
     Boys of Summer.....time to Play Ball.