Triple Play

The trophy still holds a place of honor on the shelf among the diplomas, knick-knacks, and favorite books I’ve collected since I was eight. In truth, it’s a silly, cheap thing: a rectangular base of chipped marble under a shiny, three-inch figurine of a baseball player dropping the bat behind him as he looks to the sky after a grand slam. The engraved plaque on the front, which has been glued back into place more times than I can count, reads “City League Champs – 1975.”

One: Player and Coach

From the first day of practice, Coach--a grizzled man with a gravelly voice--made no secret of his expectations for our team. “It’s spring training, Bulldogs! What a day for baseball!” He started tossing the ball around, I now realize, to see who could catch it. Most of us had never been on a baseball diamond before. I don’t remember ever learning to catch and throw, but I was one of a small handful on the field that day who could do either with any regularity. Coach nodded at me: “You’re our first baseman, Big Mike!” But it was hot and dusty, and chasing the overthrows to the backstop quickly frustrated me.

Fielding practice was no improvement. Coach didn’t even hit the grounders near us. We had to chase them down and throw them in to “the cutoff,” who then handed them to Coach so he could start again. “When do we get to hit?” I wondered.

A geological age later, the first practice ended when I heaved an ill-advised throw from the outfield and watched it arc neatly over the pitcher’s mound and land with uncanny precision on the top of Mark Heslop’s head. The ball bounced straight back up, Mark clutched and covered his head with both arms and went down in a heap, and every human being within earshot ran to his aid while I stood stupefied in center field.

I didn’t want to go back, but Mom got me there somehow. Mark forgave me. We finally got to hit. But despite these positives, I still wasn’t fond of the word practice. It meant work, which didn’t appeal to me. Practice, however, seemed positively gleeful next to the Coach’s favorite word: hustle. As the game began: “Hustle out to your positions!” Three outs later: “Hustle in to bat, boys!” During the next inning: “Hustle after that overthrow, Big Mike!” We learned to hustle. Everywhere. Whether we liked it or not.

Because we hustled, we won games. Somewhere amidst all that hustle and practice, we learned to play like a team. I trusted those guys to throw the ball at least close to my mitt. They trusted me to catch it. While other teams were haunted by overthrows that would turn a bunt into a home run, we actually got outs. We were well trained to “hit the cutoff” on throws from the outfield, so even their best hitters seldom got past second base. “Bring it in, Bulldogs! Hustle!”

After the championship game, Coach lined us up between third base and home plate, fourteen bedraggled fourth grade boys in dust-covered red jerseys and white pants. As our parents applauded, Coach shared a story about how each player had improved and then handed that player his trophy. I remember the catch in his gruff voice when he said my name.

Two: Coach and Dad

In early March, as I have done for the past four Aprils, I turned in James's registration for city league baseball. Because it was the first year of competitive play, I did not volunteer to coach as I had always done before. T-ball and coach-pitch leagues in which no outs or runs were tallied were okay for me. The league for 9- and 10-year olds was competitive machine-pitch. They used a real ball, and it came out of the machine going 50 miles per hour. It wasn’t up to the coach to hit your bat with his pitch; it was up to you to put your bat on that flying spheroid and run. They counted outs, and if you didn’t get any in the field, you didn’t bat. The kids played set positions that didn't rotate every inning. Some kids sat out. Some struck out. I didn't want to be responsible for all this potential heartbreak, so I didn't volunteer...but they got me anyway.

After two practices hitting pop flies to the second-string outfield while the coach worked with the first-string infield, he gave me the red cap with the big white C on it and put me on the first base line. Two practices and two games a week since the first of May left us undefeated with three games until the "playoffs." After our one disastrous loss the following game, I noticed that the word hustle became the punctuation mark to my every instruction. When I was throwing whiffle balls for batting practice: “Shag those hits, guys! Hustle!” At the end of any inning: “Hustle in, Reds!” From the first base line: “Hustle down, James! You can beat the throw!”

Kids who started the season barely able to get the ball from one base to another now understood what it meant to throw a “frozen rope.” Kyle, our littlest player, engulfed in his red jersey, couldn’t swing the bat fast enough and remained our only player without a hit, although we cheered frantically when he nicked a foul down the third base line. Braxton, whose two greatest liabilities were his mouth and a complete inability to focus his attention, somehow tamed his raging case of ADHD long enough to stop some grounders. Mitch, despite having a mitt so old that Babe Ruth might have used it, caught the most pop flies. I saw small improvements in every player and immense improvements in the team, so when we reached the “World Series,” I was more excited than most of the kids, many of whom were ready for the season to be over.

Three: Dad and Son

At the first practice of the season, before I’d been recruited and could observe comfortably from the bleachers like the other parents, the coach started with some stretching. “This is our spring training, guys! It’s baseball season!” Fifteen boys in shorts and old t-shirts flopped into the calf-deep grass of centerfield, contorting themselves into impossible positions while counting out the stretch in unison. Then they had to run two laps around the entire field. The fourth graders, back for their second year in the “minor league,” were halfway to home plate by the time the uninitiated third graders, among them my son James, had figured out what was going on. Although (or maybe because) he was the tallest player on the team, James was not a particularly graceful runner. He was all scrawny knees and awkward elbows with a mop of neck-length California-boy hair cascading from his old baseball cap. James has allergies (maybe asthma), and he doesn't particularly like to run, so he finished last. Cheeks red with exertion, he hid behind his overlong bangs. At the second practice, he looked at me after finishing last again and said, near tears, "I don't want to do this."

It was not my pep talk that convinced him to return. Hayden missed the first practice, so the coach, standing on home plate in the pool of eager upturned faces, asked for volunteers to be catcher. Despite his initial frustrations, James’s hand was first in the air. I didn’t know he wanted to play catcher, but over the next six weeks he became almost as good as Hayden. Strapped into the chest pad and shin guards, that outrageous hair exploding from under the catcher’s helmet, James was (forgive me) more at “home” than he had been running laps. When the machine-pitched ball skipped his mitt, he hardly blinked as it smashed into his facemask, and when the runner beat his throw to second base for a steal, James got him going for third on the next pitch.

The last game of the regular season was a "must win" if we were to make the playoffs. After three uneventful innings behind the plate, James moved to centerfield, where he single-handedly made the first legitimate double play of the season.

Shpunk! The metal bat connected solidly with the pitch. This was no pop fly, but a line drive. James ran forward (fast) into the path of the red-stitched comet. Mid-stride, mitt outstretched, he caught the ball—one out—and the first satisfying pop of leather into leather was quickly doubled as James turned, still on the run, and fired the ball straight to first base to get the runner who had failed to tag up—two outs.

In the dugout, I stood stupefied. Like a chorus of red and white, the team ran in, many of them slapping James's back and congratulating him. I realized then what I had just seen my kid do: A) He caught the ball! Laugh if you must, but in little league that alone is cause for celebration. And he did it easily, with confidence, as if he actually knew what he was doing! After watching kids poke at pop flies all season, poor Dustin catching one with his face and getting swept away to the emergency room the day before the team pictures, I was especially proud that James, my son, caught that ball. But it got better! B) He had the presence of mind and the strength of arm to throw the ball back to first base to get the runner who didn't tag up. And it was no rainbow, this throw. It was a rope, frozen solid, all the way into that glove. Again, a rarity in little league, especially from the outfield. “That’s my kid!” I roared.

The Rangers were the toughest team we played all season, certainly better batters than our Reds, but they didn’t “hit the cutoff,” so one good inning put us ahead 5-2, a lead we never relinquished. James had a good hit but no opportunity for further personal glory. Our finest moment of that championship game was when Kyle, in his knee-length red jersey, smacked a solid double that had me screaming myself hoarse as I waved him to second. “Go two, buddy! Go two!” That was when I heard the gravel in my own voice, a byproduct not of anger or frustration as I once believed, but of sheer joy.

After the award ceremony, when my players again became little boys and JT again became my son, the head coach called me to home plate: “Hey, Coach! There’s one here for you, too.” He handed me a trophy just like James’s: a rectangular base of freshly cut marble beneath a shiny flare of decorative metal on which was engraved a white ball with red stitching and the word BASEBALL in bold red, white, and blue. The plaque on the front said “Layton City Champs – 2006.”

As proud as I was of the trophy I won thirty years ago, this new one--silly and cheap though it is--means even more. It represents not only the lessons I learned as a player in 1975 but also those that I shared as a coach in 2006 and those I hope to pass on as a father in the years to come.