I started playing tee ball in the Maplewood rec league when I was
six years old. My team was the Maplewood Tree Experts and our jerseys were
bright red.
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| I can't remember whether or not we wore helmets. I can't imagine why we would have, but that doesn't necessarily mean we didn't. |
Tee ball was essentially the same as baseball, but with a much
softer, plastic ball, an abundance of players on defense (as many as had shown
up for the game), and the presence of a tee, a plastic stand for the ball,
instead of a pitcher. I had never seen a baseball or a tee ball game, and I
don’t believe I knew the rules of either one yet. (I think I was, for some
reason, under the impression that the defense had two shortstops on the
diamond.) I knew I wanted to play third base though, despite not knowing what a
third baseman actually did, because the Red Sox’ best player at the time was their third baseman Wade Boggs. At least that's what my dad told had told me. Having no way to verify this at the time, I took his word for it. When I told
grown-ups that I was a third baseman, they told me I must have a good arm and
sharp reflexes. A third baseman needed to have both. But in tee ball, such
skills certainly weren't necessary, and probably weren't expected. As far as I
remember, my main responsibilities included standing near a rubber base marker
for an hour or so, and occasionally touching the ball.
For my ability to remain standing in one spot for the duration of
the season, I was awarded a certificate at the end of the season bearing the
words: Most Valuable Third Baseman. This despite not successfully helping my
team to record a single out. My tee ball career coincided with the heyday of
the much-maligned participation trophy. Even then, I felt my award was a little
contrived, but it was my first athletic award I had ever received, and I
certainly wasn't going to complain about it.
Otherwise, I don’t remember much of the actual games themselves,
except for two specific memories. In the first of these, my team was batting
and I had made it to third base, which was not a particularly notable
achievement in itself, since the defense almost never recorded outs in these
games. The ball was tapped softly back to the pitcher (whose job wasn’t
actually to pitch but merely to cover his position), and with no consideration
for the situation, how many outs there were, who was on base, etc., I blindly
broke for home. The pitcher’s understanding of the rules was thankfully as
limited as my own: he fielded the ball cleanly and ran to tag me out before I
could touch the plate. He beat me there, but he tagged me with his left hand,
and the ball was in his right. I was called safe, though I didn’t understand
why until my dad explained it to me after the game.
In my other memory, I was playing my usual third base position, (although
why the third baseman was apparently supposed to stand a few feet to the left
of the bag instead right on top of it was beyond me). A ball was hit a few feet
to my left and came to rest on the grass just past the infield dirt, a few feet
away from where I had been standing. I nearly stepped over to pick up the ball,
but then the gears inside my six-year-old brain started turning. Wasn’t someone
else supposed to relay the ball to me from the outfield? If I went to retrieve
it myself, wouldn’t third base be vacant? And wasn’t it my duty to guard the
base at all costs? In the end, I did nothing but look at the ball, paralyzed,
while two opposing runners scored. It was a decision that I'm sure baffled my
coaches, my parents watching from the bleachers, and any of my teammates who
happened to be paying attention.
This was my initiation into the world of sports, a place governed
by a byzantine set of rules that demanded to be mastered. I was already
learning that the price for ignorance of the rules, or for failure to adhere to
them, was a palpable sense of confusion or even shame. I’m sure this wasn’t
actually true – in fact, my memory of the pitcher failing to tag me out at home
basically proves that there were other kids as ignorant as I was – but to
my mind, I was the only person in the world who didn’t understand the rules of
the game I was playing. And more than any specific moment from any tee ball
game, I remember the feeling that I was being left out of a group that I
desperately wanted to join. I would recall this feeling years later during
a trip to Costa Rica, as I tried to communicate using my high school Spanish.
My parents had to remind me of a third memory from my tee ball
career. Apparently, I would race over to them after each game and ask,
breathlessly, “Did we win?” There was no scoreboard in kickball, and the
numerous runs scored in each game meant that I soon lost track of who was
winning and who was losing. The advantage was that the confusion over scoring
made it easier for my parents to lie to me. “It was a tie,” they would tell me
every time. This answer was enough for me, and a postgame stop at Baskin
Robbins would quickly divert my attention to other matters. But after one game,
in which the Tree Experts had been thoroughly outscored by the opposition, my
parents figured they couldn't get away with lying once again. “You lost,” they
told me, after I asked my usual question, “The other team was just better this
time.” I immediately burst into tears – and I didn’t stop crying until a mint
chocolate chip cone was in my hand.
