In Softball as in Life, Hit It While You Can
Coaching Little League is great, except of course for all these kids. Kids are ruining Little League. And I’m not the first one to notice.
“You know, this would be a lot of fun,” Coach Bill tells me, “if it wasn’t for all these kids.”
“Ever get that ceiling fan up?” I ask.
“Took me twice,” he said.
“Pretty good,” I say.
This is how Bill and I coach. We’ll talk first about softball, then digress to something really important, like home repair or the pleasures of working with Lorraine, our assistant coach, who becomes more lovely and charming with every passing spring--unlike Coach Bill and me, who age like milk.
“Your new kitchen, is it done yet?” Bill asks.
“Not till 2010,” I say.
“That soon?” he asks.
“Strike three!” yells the umpire.
Each spring, Coach Bill and I reunite like this, with a dozen players and Coach Lorraine, too. We’ve been doing it for four years now. Even so, there are always new things to learn.
“What just happened?” Lorraine asks after some bizarre play.
“Beats me,” I say.
“You see that new restaurant on Foothill?” Coach Bill asks.
Yet, we’re 3-0 this season, one of spring’s better surprises. You have your Boston Red Sox off to a fast start. Your Montreal Expos, too. Then there’s the Blue Bombing Patriot Babes. Team payroll? Zero.
Yes, the Patriot Babes are undefeated, and as suspicious as we are of winning and what it does to people, we’re still enjoying it a good bit. Enjoying it while it lasts. Because nothing really lasts. Not even second childhoods.
“Anybody got a hairbrush?” the little girl yells. “Anybody?”
Our secret? A merciless work ethic.
Before each game, I make a special stop for gum and sunflower seeds. Coach Bill hauls around all this gear to every game. Coach Steve even brings his hitting machine, a strange, multi-winged apparatus that resembles a pterodactyl.
So we’ve taken this season pretty seriously. For two practices in a row, we worked on grounders.
Still, there’s this feeling that we’ve been blessed. Twelve times, to be exact. Nine starters. Three reserves.
“Just throw strikes,” one of the dads hollers to our pitcher, who’s out on the mound, cool as a Hitchcock blond.
“Yeah, just throw strikes,” says another dad.
“Duh, Coach,” the pitcher must think. “What else would I try to throw? Duhhhhh.”
“Just throw strikes,” someone else hollers.
Funny how the dads get into softball. We all scoffed two decades ago when Title IX attempted to give girls an equal shot at sports. Equal facilities? Equal spending? Yeah, right.
In time, we had daughters, and if having a daughter doesn’t change your view on Title IX, nothing will.
“How did a girl like you get to be a girl like you?” Cary Grant once asked Eva Marie Saint.
These days, the answer’s Title IX.
Now the fathers stand along the dugout doors, popping sunflower seeds and yelling the same cliches dads used to yell only at their sons. Nice cut! Good eye! Great scoop! It makes for great afternoons. Well, most of the time.
“She’s out!” the opposing coach yells.
“No, she’s not!” I yell back.
“Yes, she is!” he screams.
Of course, Title IX has now come to this, too: two coaches hollering across the infield at some $25-a-game ump over a rule no one could be expected to know, let alone a 10-year-old girl. Hollering.
In the stands, the mothers are horrified, but only briefly. They quickly go back to discussing fish marinades and the tricks to getting accepted to a top state school.
“At UCLA, no one gets in anymore. No one,” one mom says, and the acoustic rhythms of our little suburb quickly return.
Behind the plate, the little red-haired girl kneels down in her big brother’s old catching gear, infield dirt under her nails, sweat on her freckled brow.
“Timeout!” she yells at least once an inning.
“Timeout!” echoes the umpire.
All game, we have these little conferences, the little girl and me.
She’ll call timeout. I’ll go, “What’s wrong?” She’ll go, “Nothing.” And the game will begin again.
In softball, timeouts are unlimited. It’s the slowest game since chess, yet you can call timeout a hundred times.
“What do you think they talk about?” Coach Bill asks me as the little girl chats with the pitcher in front of the plate.
“Ceiling fans,” I say.
Meanwhile, the other team’s big hitter approaches the plate. Each team has one or two big hitters, for whom the bat seems lighter and gravity not such a burden.
“Two outs!” screams the little girl, holding up two fingers. “We’ve got two outs!”
The batter takes practice swings like Barry Bonds, the artisan of the home run, sweeping swings that fan the grass beneath them and alter the flight paths of sparrows. The dreaded uppercut. The swing only a sports agent could love.
This will be part of Bonds’ legacy, corrupting the swings of 10-year-old children. Frankly, I think that’s a coach’s job.
“Two down!” screams the little girl.
“Two down!” screams the shortstop.
Behind the plate, the little girl settles into her catcher’s stance. She fits her brother’s catcher’s gear the way a canary fits its cage. If she spun around quickly enough, her gear might never move.
“Timeout!” she says.
“What now?” I ask.
“Dad?”
“What?”
“Do your knuckles ever fall asleep?” she asks.
“Every night,” I say.
“Play ball!” yells the umpire.
And the Blue Bombing Patriot Babes march on.
*
Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes. com.
