That's My Kid
by Don Thompson
It was not a particularly good ball game. There were enough errors made by both teams to cause me to remember when the sixteen year old players on the field were ten or eleven. In fact, it wasn’t even a particularly good day for baseball. It was cloudy with the temperature in the sixties and a strong, gusty, wind blowing from right field. It was the kind of game and the kind of day when even bad calls by an obviously inept base umpire didn’t generate much excitement in the stands. He probably thought we were just good sports.
Nearly all of us were parents of the players. That’s the only excuse I can offer for intelligent people sitting in open bleachers, protected only by each other from the blowing sand moving by at about twenty miles per hour. There were only a few of us and we’ve spent other days like this because our kids have been playing together for several years. We’ve been through enough together that a common question, normally asked in a loud voice, is, “Who is that kid?”
The question comes after two kinds of plays. The very good and the very bad. Or, to put it another way, when you hope it will and when you hope it won’t. Sometimes it gets an answer and sometimes it doesn’t. I had answered, “That’s my kid”, a couple of times today when I was hoping the question wouldn’t be asked. You see, my kid hadn’t exactly distinguished himself at the plate. He’s primarily a fastball hitter and the opposing pitcher was primarily throwing breaking stuff.
Our kids were three runs behind in the late innings and there was no indication that their thoughts were any different from our. We just wanted to get it over with, wash the sand from our eyes, and silence the growl in our stomachs. It was just that kind of game and that kind of day.
But then it began to happen. We pulled within one run in the next to last inning and retired the other team in order in the top half of the last inning. As our kids came to bat in the final inning, we began to stir. Just a little.
Our first batter walked. At least with the tying run on base, we had a chance. The next batter flied out to short right field but our runner had stolen second while he was at the plate. So we had the tying run in scoring position with only one out and the small crowd in the stands began to show real signs of life.
The casual conversation we were carrying on subsided as we realized we had a real chance to win this one. But, when the next better grounded out without advancing the runner, we were cast back into the “get it over with” frame of mind. Except for me.
My kid and I have been here before but to me it always seems like the first time. Here we are. The game in the balance and he’s at the plate. Thoughts race through my mind. Like maybe he’ll walk. Or, if he gets a hit it could score the tying run and leave it up to the next better to try to be the hero. But, lurking way in the back of my mind, is the thought that if he really connects, which he’s capable of doing, he can win the game. The home run. I try not to think about it because I don’t want him thinking about it. Still, it’s there.
The first two pitches were breaking balls out of reach. With the count at 2-0, I was thinking the pitcher would probably go to his fast ball to find the plate and I was hoping my kid was thinking the same thing.
He was. Even before the ball reached the plate, I was standing. When he made contact, I knew it was gone, and, in a split second, I wondered if he did too. Later, at home, I asked him and he mumbled a barely audible, “Yeah, I knew.”
The left fielder started back a second or so after the ball left the bat, but after a half dozen strides reality took over and he slackened his pace. My kid’s ecstatic teammates and his grateful coach were leaving the dugout to greet him at the plate by the time he rounded second base.
I’ll never know for sure what he was feeling as he crossed the plate. I’m not even sure what I was feeling. But I do know that we shared a moment in time that we will each remember in our own way.
I hope he remembers it on a day like today when his time has come to answer, “That’s my kid.”
