Tell me how you really feel

The topic of baseball came up at our goal-setting Family Home Evening last night.  We told Wade that we'd support him in what he'd like to do athletically, that it was important to "do a sport" for many reasons, to learn skills, get exercise, make friends, and get away from electronics, ha-ha!  I enthusiastically encouraged Wade to try a golf clinic or basketball or soccer, sports he hadn't played with an organized team yet.  Jason gave Wade some wise counsel and told him that if he took a year off from baseball, he probably would never come back to it, and most importantly, to not let the last season keep him from signing up for baseball if he wanted to.

Ah, last season.  I've spent 7 months trying to forget about it, but I woke up at 4:30 this morning from a very vivid dream about it.  In the dream I was in a car with Jason and our home teacher Brother Robins and a couple other people, tearfully describing, in great detail, the "character-building" that Wade experienced with the Mustang Tigers.  I couldn't go back to sleep and decided to come down and type it out.

So, here's a pull-the-skeleton-out-of-the-closet, let's-get-real post, in letter format:

To whom it may concern, members of the Mustang division, the IWVYB league, and parents and Ridgecrest baseball coaches in general,

After 4 previous seasons of baseball, our son got his chance to build character in the 2013 spring season as a first-year Mustang.  His team finished with an 0-13 record and mercifully ended the playoffs early.  Despite the difficult season, our family appreciates the time, sacrifice, and efforts of his three coaches, who took time away from their own families and pursuits to coach.

One of the biggest set-backs for our team, in my opinion, was the unchecked egos and bad attitudes of several players on our team.  A valuable lesson--there is no "I" in T.E.A.M (together everyone achieves more)--was not learned. Early in the season one coach thought it would be a good idea to have our son start preparing to be a back-up pitcher.  We were quietly excited about this, but we admitted that he had very little experience except to be pulled from the outfield to pitch in an emergency, nail-biting situation at his Pinto team's final championship game the year before.  (He'd done well with that, too!)  You can imagine how our son must have felt, anticipating a chance to actually play something other than an outfield position, when other "more experienced" boys on his team put up a fuss to the coaches and didn't think that was a good idea for him to pitch.  Our son spent the rest of the SEASON obediently playing in the outfield after that night.

Our team had a lot of talent, full of good baseball players.  But game after game, we'd watch the team implode.  It was a cycle:

1.  The team would start out playing hard, excited, and they'd get ahead.
2.  Someone on the team would make a mistake.
3.  "More experienced" players would start in with bad-mouthing, cut-downs, tantrums, and the like.
4.  The team would implode.
5.  We'd lose the game.

We're proud of our son, though.  He never quit, he showed up for practices and games, he was respectful to his coaches, and he played his best and kept his head high at center field.  He also kept his mouth shut in the dugout and on the field.  But he admitted to getting a sick feeling in his stomach before every baseball outing, and tears were shed after many of them, on the way home in the van.

So, you can imagine how I felt to talk about baseball again.

At this moment, I don't know if our son will want to sign-up.  We've given him a couple weeks to think about it and decide before the final sign-ups deadline later this month.  We'll support him either way.  I know we're probably one of those families that coaches would rather avoid, the kind that digs out the baseball gear just before a season starts and hangs it up at the end, who declines summer ABL invitations to be an "alternate,"the family who doesn't spend weekends and nights at the baseball field, and who, heaven forbid, signs their kid up for baseball so he can have fun and learn how to play, not to groom him to be the high school/college star or the next J.D. Martin.

I get that baseball is the "other" religion in Ridgecrest.  But I'd love to see a different kind of baseball played, especially with these young kids, where parents' and coaches' and kids' visions of grandeur, profanity, and egos are checked at the door.  A type of baseball where kids are rotated through positions more and not groomed for the in-field, where they're allowed to have fun, make mistakes, and learn to love baseball.

Sincerely,
a somewhat disgruntled parent