Life Is Like Little League--Screwing Up Is Part of the Game

The Little League fields at the corner of Victory Boulevard and Winnetka Avenue in Woodland Hills are pretty typical.

The grass is sun-yellowed in spots but closely mowed. Colored pennants hang above the dugouts. The snack shack sells onion rings, chili dogs and ice-cream sandwiches. A woman with big hoop earrings leans over the counter and loudly asks the kids: “Whaddya need?”

The fields are home to the Woodland Hills Sunrise Little League. On game days, the bleachers fill with the boys’ parents, middle-class homeowners in tank tops and shorts. Fathers shout advice to their sons and scribble intensely on their score cards; mothers crochet and discuss the teams’ personnel changes.

Each summer, I pull over at a place like this to watch a game. I like the down-home feel of it: people eating Popsicles and razzing the umpire, 11-year-olds spitting and trying to act like Stan Musial, the way the diamond looks under the lights at night.

Also, it takes me back to a time when I lived in a small Massachusetts town and played Little League myself. Our team was sponsored by a window- repair business, if I remember correctly. I was a right fielder, the baseball equivalent of the Maytag repairman.

A lot of men who once played Little League will tell you it’s not just a game, it’s a training ground for manhood. That it builds character and teaches boys to be team players. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat and all that.

Whenever I hear some guy babbling about Little-League-as-microcosm-of-life, I feel like grabbing a can of Mace. Because the truth about Little League is much less profound.

The truth is, Little League is about not screwing up in front of your friends.

Sure, a few Little Leaguers really do become Stan Musials, the ones who seem able to defy the laws of physics, effortlessly stealing bases and belting triples.

But most kids sweat out their nine innings praying they won’t drop a pop fly or bunt into a double play.

For the average 10-year-old, playing in a Little League game is as nerve-racking as being center-stage at the Metropolitan Opera on opening night. Everybody who matters in your life is there, watching you like hawks: your parents, your teammates, your teammates’ parents, other kids from your block, maybe even (ugh) your little sister. If you make a mistake, there’s nowhere to hide.

Later in life, of course, we learn how to cover up our errors. We learn first to act like nothing happened and, if somebody realizes it did, to act as if someone else should share the blame. And if that fails, we act like it wasn’t that big a deal in the first place.

Let’s face it, our culture takes perverse delight in people who screw up. Screw up really big and you become famous. Take the football player who ran the ball into the opposing team’s end zone. Or the astronaut whose capsule may have sank because he opened the hatch too soon after splashdown. Or Jerry Ford.

Kids sense this, and they have no more wish to look like fools than adults do.

I was thinking about all this the other day, as I watched two Sunrise Little League teams, the Cardinals and the Athletics, slug it out.

I sat in the Cardinals’ bleachers, amid a covey of thirtysomething parents clutching Big Gulps and squinting at their boys on the field. The Cardinals clearly were struggling against the Athletics, who started strong and kept going. The Cards’ shortstop kept wiping sweat off his face. The pitcher kept throwing wild and was taken out of the game after only two innings by the coach, who happens to be his dad.

The Cards’ third baseman was a kid named Phil. He is 11 1/2 years old and lives in Chatsworth, a swift baserunner who had the best batting average on last year’s team.

I learned all this from his father, Dave, a computer-security auditor I happened to sit next to. Dave is a friendly, middle-aged guy who brags about his son in a quiet, affectionate way, the kind of low-key stage dad you find on every Little League field in America.

Phil is a tall, skinny kid with a serious face. He’s at the point in a tall kid’s adolescence where his body has the sweet ungainliness of a colt’s: legs that look too long and ears that stick out a tad. His red jersey hangs on him like a potato sack.

The Cards changed pitchers a couple of times, but the wild pitches continued. The coach, a paunchy man named Jerry, bellowed commands at the kids as if they were Army recruits on the rifle range.

“Lock and load, Anthony! Lock and load!” he shouted at one kid.

“C’mon, Matt. C’mon, buddy. You gotta pull the trigger!” he yelled at another.

Phil bounced up and down on his pony legs, coiled for action.

In the first inning, he bunted on a coach’s orders and was tagged out. In the second inning, he stopped a line drive and smoothly threw the batter out at first.

Later in the game, he reached third base and was poised to score. A Cards batter hit a grounder directly at an Athletics’ infielder. The fielder scooped up the ball and cocked his arm to throw. The coach hollered at Phil to run--a dubious call.

Phil hesitated, then flew for home.

By then the catcher had the ball. Phil, a bit halfheartedly, rammed him, hoping to jar it loose. He didn’t.

“Yerrr OUT!” thundered the umpire.

Phil’s dad shook his head in disbelief.

In the fifth inning, Phil knocked in a run. The Cards got clobbered anyway, 9-4.

It was a good game for Phil, though. He didn’t screw up.