Casey at the bat: A rite of passage for grandfather and grandson at baseball camp

Our 8-year-old grandson Casey stayed at our house a few days while he was attending the Manny Mota Baseball Camp at Scholl Canyon Playground, in the hills above Glendale.

He was my responsibility, man to man.

The camp started at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning. The playground has three baseball diamonds and a green field on a plateau high in the hills. It is surrounded by eucalyptus trees. To the south the spires of the downtown skyline arise from the smog.

We stood in line to register. There were about 30 boys. As they signed in, the man gave each a blue T-shirt with a picture of Manny Mota on it and the words “Manny Mota Baseball Camp.”

A stocky man in T-shirt, shorts and a baseball cap gave a talk about the camp. He sounded sharp, firm and gentle. He said, “I’m Coach Paul,” and, nodding toward a young man at his side, “this is Coach Gary.”

Coach Paul said every boy would have to wear an athletic supporter and a cup, because of the danger of injury. “Not today,” he said. “We’ll take it easy today. But tomorrow.”

The two coaches and two assistants led the boys out to the green field and formed them into two groups according to age: 7, 8, 9 and 10-year-olds; and 11-year-olds and older.

All of a sudden Manny Mota himself was standing out in front of them, like a knight in his white Dodger uniform with the big 11 on back. He gave them a talk.

Then the coaches lined them up and made them do calisthenics. This was the hard part. It reminded me of boot camp. The coach explained that the exercises were to limber them up so they wouldn’t get hurt.

“What you learn here,” he said, “will help you prevent injury all the way up to the pros.”

It was out. The magic word. The impossible dream. The pros . There was always a chance. You might make it, even though the odds were about 50,000 to 1.

Coach Paul made them do two laps. They were soon straggled out with the little guys far in the rear.

Then the boys paired up and began playing catch with their partners. The older boys threw harder, faster, more accurately, and with the easy athletic grace that most boys achieve in their teens. Life is unfair.

Mota came off the field and slapped hands with the few parents who were still standing around. He had charisma, and he knew that it was important to spread it around.

Manuel Rafael Geronimo (Manny) Mota, out of Santo Domingo, played 20 years in the major leagues, 12 years with the Dodgers. Lifetime batting average .304. In three league championship series he got three pinch hits in five at-bats.

I went home, satisfied that my grandson was in good hands. I phoned his father and asked him if Casey had a jockstrap.

“A jockstrap !” He laughed. “Does he need one? I didn’t have one until I was in high school.”

I went to a Big 5 in Glendale and asked a young clerk if they had jockstraps. “I need a very small size,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“It’s not for me,” I said.

We picked out one, with plastic cup, that was labeled Young/Small.

I went back to the park about 2 o’clock. Casey’s group was at batting practice, half lined up to bat, half out in the field with their gloves on. Casey was in line to bat. Coach Paul would toss the ball toward the plate from the side and the batter would swing at it. Sometimes he missed the ball entirely, just like Pedro Guerrero.

Casey came up. He swung at the first ball and missed. He swung again and missed. Manny Mota himself, now wearing a Manny Mota Baseball Camp T-shirt, walked over and moved Casey’s feet. Just so. He told him how to hold the bat, how to keep his elbows in.

“Keep your eye on the ball!” he exhorted.

The next ball Casey belted over second base. He obviously had been metamorphosed by that laying on of hands.

Before dinner we played a game he had brought from home. It depended purely on luck and he beat me. “Haven’t you got any games that require skill?” I asked.

He got a word game out of his satchel. It was a circular box in which nine letters were displayed at random. Each of us wrote down whatever words of four letters or more we could make of those nine letters.

The first group of letters was g, x, c, y, d, e, r, b, e. A few minutes later I had 10 words: bred, reed, deer, gyre, beer, cede, reedy, creed, dreg, breed. He had reed, deer and beer. He challenged gyre, cede, creed and dreg, but we looked them up in the dictionary and he conceded.

I think it’s important to remind them that you know more than they do.

“How about Scrabble?” he said. I agreed. He won, 57-30.

When my wife came home I told her about the athletic supporter. “Do you want to show him how to put it on?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “That’s your job.”

I asked him, “Do you know what a jockstrap is?”

He shook his head.

I told him what the jockstrap and the cup were for and how to put them on.

It was a rite of passage for us both.