Baseball: 1HN Normalizer

For much of my elementary schools years and the first of my junior high school years, I often felt like an outsider, different from most kids. I don't think it was my affinity for Dungeons & Dragons or for video games that set me apart, or my taste in music (Def Leppard!), or my love of school and learning. Deeper than those things, I didn't talk or act like "normal" kids, whatever "normal" means. Maybe it was my vocabulary or maybe it was my eccentric interests after all... I couldn't put my finger on it. I'm sure some of you can relate, but there was always that notion that would emerge from deep within my psyche whenever I was around people: "Why don't I fit in?"

Interestingly, this seemed to change sometime in eighth grade: I started collecting baseball cards. At first, it was something to do with my cousin Mark, who was a collector himself; we would go to Price Club (now Costco) and buy a box of Topps cards... 1987 Topps cards, to be exact. I remember opening the packs with a petrified stick of pink that left an oily residue on the unfortunate piece of cardboard that happened to be placed next to it. I often ignored the gum. I would then organize the cards by teams and look at the Team Leaders card -- the one that listed the home run, RBI, and batting average leaders of each team on it. Then, I would trade for those players with my cousin. At the time, I didn't really think I was swindling him, but I was. Around that time, my interest in baseball cards caught the interest of my friend Ed, who was himself becoming a collector. We used to trade with each other, go to baseball card conventions, and laugh about the Walt Terrell rookie card that we almost acquired (I don't know why, but it was funny at the time to want to labor so hard to buy the rookie card of an OK player).

Inevitably, collecting baseball cards led to an interest in watching baseball, which led to a more profound interest in playing baseball. Throughout my eighth-grade year, I played baseball almost every day in the street in front of my house with two kids much younger than I was, a tennis ball, and a street reflector serving as home plate. We used to practice switch-hitting; to this day, I still marvel at the fact that I was able to hit the ball over a distant lightpole left-handed. Sure, it was against an 11-year-old pitcher, but it was still awesome to a 14-year-old.

Honing my skills on the mean streets of my hometown compelled me to try my hand at organizing baseball; Little League, that is, or at least "little" for 15-year-olds. I played one season of baseball with the A's and played first base, second base, third base, and all three outfield positions during that season. I was a decent hitter (I hit over .300, I think), I could steal bases (which was a surprise because before ninth grade I was officially slow), and I had a cannon for an arm, but I was also hot-headed and hated to make mistakes. Nobody was harder on me than me, and that was my greatest obstacle in baseball: I had a hard time overcoming my own mistakes. Sadly, though that baseball season wasn't a bad one and my team placed second in its league, the luster of the game was lost on me because I was not happy with myself. I'll come back to this point later.

After that baseball season, I turned my back on baseball. In high school, I ran cross country and swam on the swim team. In college, my favorite sport was basketball, mostly because I was good at fighting for rebounds and I could always make up for a mistake on one end of the floor with a key play at the other end of the floor. I did play intramural softball, though, and I even felt the buzz of baseball enough to play a few practice sessions a couple of co-workers at a local park. Besides lofting pitches over the Little League fence of that field at which we played, I still remember making a nice diving catch of a line drive over second base, which earned the applause of my buddies. I know it was just practice, but it felt good to know that I could pull out a spectacular play once in a while. After college, I rarely, if ever, played softball or baseball. Basketball, and then running, became my favorite sports and I enjoyed playing them.

However, recently, I've been watching (for the third time) Ken Burns' superlative documentary series, Baseball, which was originally released in 1994. As I watch that series, I am not only reminded of how much I liked baseball and how fascinating the figures of yore are, but I also remember the greatest impact baseball had on me: it normalized me in so many ways. First, I have come to realize that that some skill in a sport can earn the respect of other boys and men much more than intellectual or social talent can do. As a socially-awkward seventh-grader, I had few friends, and the friends that I did have were just as fringe as I was. Yet, as I made it to ninth-grade, I began to earn the respect of other boys because I could play baseball. In fact, one of my Little League teammates once vouch for my skills in front of some popular boys; of course, those popular guys didn't heed his endorsements, but I could certainly hit as far as, if not farther than, they could hit. Secondly, I had something "normal" to discuss with other boys; it was definitely more accepted to talk about Kirk Gibson's dramatic home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series than it was to talk about Armor Class or saving throws (D&D references here). However, beyond the physical skill and the ability to discuss a "normal" subject, baseball not only gave me access to guys who were not so academically-inclined, but it made me more accessible. To this day, I can talk baseball with some of my running friends and I actually have something to discuss; without baseball (or sports knowledge, in general), many guys (Americans, at least) are inaccessible. By this, I contend that the most noteworthy power of sports is that it allows us to reach others, hopefully with the hope of Christ and as an encourager.

There is one more aspect of myself that baseball normalized: the epiphany that mistakes are a part of the game and of life. As a ninth-grader on a Little League team, my love of baseball was diminished because of my inability to recover emotionally from my own mistakes. For much of my life, I had trouble overcoming the fact that I had deficiencies and that I would lose games. That was why I often avoided playing board games, video games, or even sports against people; I didn't like losing. Sadly, it took years of experience to comprehend that I cannot be afraid to lose or make mistakes, and that I learn best from mistakes. I try to instill this in my sons, hoping that they would not be paralyzed by the fear of failure. Every sport presents experiences of failure, particularly baseball because if you make a defensive error early in a baseball game, that error may be the reason your team loses despite your best efforts.

Yet, instead of backing away from failure, I tell my boys to rise to any challenge, and that it is okay to fail or lose because you can learn from it and be better in the future. To most of us, this is sententious and trite because we hear it in so many ways from so many inconsequential people, but one thing I rarely heard as a child was that failure was okay only if I learned a lesson from it and strove to not replicate the error. In this sense, baseball normalized me because it made me confront failure, embrace its lessons, and be diligent about moving past it instead of dwelling on it or, even worse, giving up altogether. I pray that my sons will step forward willingly to meet every challenge, every ground ball, every line drive, and catch that ball or make that play. Win or lose, we can grow from the moment and revel in the idea that we never backed down. To me, that is "normal."