 |
Second-grade baseball massacre
|
___Have you ever seen a second grade baseball massacre?
We just experienced one and lived to tell about it. By about the third inning, I was praying for rain--anything to stop the misery.
 |
MARK WINGFIELD
|
___ By the end of the fourth inning, even the umpire felt sorry for us and called the game despite the fact that we had not played the minimum amount of time required by the league.
___ You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to do the math on this one and realize there was no way we were going to catch up. The other team had scored the maximum five runs per inning, while we had scored only two runs. Yup, that’s a score of 20 to 2.
___ With two innings left in the game at most--and even assuming we were aided by angels in the outfield and the other team was smitten by a biblical plague--we still were doomed. The parents in the stands started quoting from old episodes of Hee-Haw: "If it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have no luck at all."
___ It was the first game of the league tournament, and we were happy just to have made it that far. But our opponents--it was obvious they had expected to be there and felt they were predestined to win. I don’t know about the kids, but those parents took the game very seriously.
___ I should have known we were in trouble when we drove up to the field half an hour early and their entire team already was there, lined up in perfect rows doing drills with the precision of a marching band.
___ We, on the other hand, were missing five of our best players. And the eighth player we needed to keep from forfeiting arrived just in the nick of time.
___ It was a stressful ending to an otherwise productive baseball season. This one playoff game produced more stress in me than all the others combined. Just as I was gritting my teeth for the 200th time and thinking vile thoughts about the other team’s coaches and parents, I realized I was becoming what I so much disliked in them.
___ Sometimes even adults can learn a thing or two at a second grade baseball game.
|
|
___Thank goodness our kids don’t take things as seriously as their parents do. After coming off the field from a nasty stomping and the fewest runs they’ve scored all season, their thoughts immediately focused on the all
 |
ALISON WINGFIELD
|
-important question: "Where are we going to eat?"
___ And my philosophical child, Luke, looked at the bright side by telling me, "Even though we lost the game, I played well tonight." And he had.
___ What a great attitude. He didn’t whine about what might have been if five players hadn’t been missing or say the pitching machine was off or that we had a run of bad luck. (Unlike his parents, I’m sorry to say.) He found the good and focused on that.
___ And we have had a good season. Our regular coach had to go out of town on business trips for half the season, and one of the other parents took over and shined. He encouraged the boys, working with them and giving them an opportunity to say what positions they liked best. When the other coach returned, we had a strong team and two good coaches working with them.
___ Every boy improved either in fielding or hitting or both. We got some kids out at first from throws at third base. One of our kids made a great foul ball catch for an out. I know I’m biased, but perhaps the most exciting fielding we had was when Garrett caught a hard line drive, threw the ball to second where the second baseman touched the base for another out and then tagged the player coming from first for a triple play. It happened so fast, none of us realized what was going on, and I’m not sure I even recounted it right.
___ But the best thing about the season was the smiles. Every one of the boys displayed the biggest grins when they knew they executed a good or even great play. You could tell they felt good about themselves.
___ Difficult circumstances often cause us to focus on the bad things happening around or to us and blinding us to the good.
___ Despite the great metaphors, life’s not like a baseball game in all ways. The score might be 20-2, but if we have done our best and set our eyes on Jesus, he will welcome us home.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly. |
|
|
PREVIOUS HE SAID/ SHE SAID COLUMNS: 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/14, 7/21, 7/28, 8/4, 8/11, 8/18, 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, 12/15, 12/22, 1/5, 1/19, 1/26, 2/2, 2/9, 2/16, 2/23, 3/1, 3/8, 3/22, 3/27, 4/3, 4/10, 4/17, 4/24, 5/1, 5/8, 5/15, 5/22, 5/29, 6/5, 6/12, 6/19
Send this story to a friend
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!
|