Annals of the Game

The "W" flag above the old Wrigley Field scoreboard this morning flapped proudly in the early fall north-easterly breeze, reminding those who passed it and cared, of the brilliant game played the night before by two teams who could possibly face each other in the World Series. On the other hand, depending on the whims of the baseball gods, last night's game could very well have been the final game played at Wrigley Field this year as the team who calls the ballpark home will be forced into a one game playoff, most likely against the Pirates in Pittsburgh. Win that game and there will be October baseball in front of the ivy covered walls which will have begun to turn a lovely shade of bronze. Lose and it's the chill rains of fall and the familiar Chicago refrain of "wait 'till next year."

However, knowledge that the last baseball game in September on the north side of Chicago wasn't a meaningless exercise filled with the strains of Auld lang syne, could be considered a victory all on its own. The winds of change have come to that part of town and all the talk of futility for the past God knows how many years, may soon become irrelevant, relegated as former President Bush once said, to the "trash bin of history."

I may be putting the cart before the horse, as the Cubs haven't won anything yet, but their fans have a lot to be optimistic about. In 2011, the organization that runs the Cubs made a commitment to build a successful team by hiring Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer as director of operations and general manager respectively. The two men gutted the team of all marketable mid-career players, then resolved to start from the ground up, by developing skilled young players in their farm system. That's exactly how it's supposed to be done, at least the way it's been for the past hundred years or so. Back in the nineteen-teens, Branch Rickey came up with the idea of a major league team buying up minor league teams and filling them with young players who would feed into the big time clubs when the time was right. By doing so, Rickey turned the woebegone St. Louis Cardinals into one of the most successful franchises in baseball, as it remains to this day.

The Cubs were in the advantageous position of being able to afford fielding a sub standard team during the re-building process as they had had a reliable fan base whom I always believed would show up to their ballpark even if they put chimpanzees on the field. Sure enough, between 2011 and 2014, the Cubs fielded abysmal teams who finished in last or next to last place in their division. Wrigley Field attendance suffered to be sure but not enough to be a deal breaker. This year the optimistic pundits were predicting that finishing anywhere around rhe 500 mark would be a huge moral victory. Well at this writing the Cubs are 27 games over 500. They have the third best record in the majors and would be on top of every division except unfortunately, their own, hence the wild card playoff.

Frustrated Cubs fans have been claiming their team has been cursed in one way or other since the last time they were in the World Series in 1945, but the fact is that management never bothered to seriously commit to developing young players, until now.

And we're seeing the results. Boyer and Epstein planned for the future, and the future is now.

Speaking of young players, those chill rains came a little prematurely for another group of Cubs, a team of 13, 14 and 15 year olds who were on the verge of winning their league championship. They say the major league team for whom these Cubs are named has found many creative ways to lose over the years, but they'd be hard pressed to find a more frustrating way to end to their season than the ending of my son's Little League team's 2015 season.

I said chill rains but this year it was warm summer rain, lots and lots of it that dampened the season and the hearts of the adults who administered their league.

If you've ever been a little league coach you know how frustrating it can be to organize enough kids to make up a starting nine, especially in the summer with vacations, camps and other family obligations. Fortunately for us, we only had to forfeit one game for lack of enough players, despite having eight games postponed in June alone because of the weather. All those cancellations and rescheduled games frayed the nerves of our head coach and the league commissioner who had to juggle the schedules of sixteen different teams in order to get all the games in. Somehow we got through until the bitter end when we found ourselves in the best of three championship series. In game one we had our way with our opponents who had to call up a few replacement players and perhaps a little overconfidence. Without either the following day they brought their A game and held us to one run in four innings, while we kept them scoreless. Then in the top of the fifth with the help of a couple of uncharacteristic errors from our better players, they scored two. It was a hell of a battle with both teams playing their hearts out. In the bottom of the fifth our lead off batter drew a walk and then the clouds opened. As the infield turned to quicksand, the umpire called the game.

And that is how our season ended. It's a little complicated and convoluted to explain in detail but in a nutshell what happened was this: first of all, the two teams couldn't agree on a makeup date to finish the series as players who also played on travel teams were committed to tournaments. Then the commissioner expressed frustration with our head coach regarding some of his tactics in re-scheduling our games making sure we had a full compliment of players. Finally, certain issues were brought up involving our team and rules violations. On that I'll just say this: one of the issues was petty, the other was somewhat legitimate, and both were entirely honest mistakes on the part of our team. The commissioner decreed that there would be no championship this year, no trophy, no nothin'. If the two teams in the finals wanted to make up the game(s) on their own, they would not be sanctioned by the league. We did try to get the other team to make up the games but we couldn't agree on terms.

Remember this is Little League baseball we're talking about, with absolutely nothing at stake except a ten dollar trophy, bragging rights for the kids, and the damaged egos of some of the parents. Perhaps in the end justice was served as we, the evil transgressors were punished. Never mind that it was the kids who got screwed while the adults did all the screwing up.

The experience was almost enough to disillusion me from the game and it's people. But something always brings me back within the fold. It could have been the great game between the LA Dodgers and SF Giants a few weeks ago. The Dodger ace Clayton Kershaw was coasting along until the bottom of the ninth inning.where he gave up a hit and a couple of walks. Then manager Don Mattingly came out and everyone at the ballpark, everyone watching on TV, and even the great Vin Scully who was calling the game knew, as conventional wisdom dictates, that the skip was going to pull Kershaw who by that time had thrown around 130 pitches. Very un-conventionally, after a few words with his pitcher, Mattingly went back to the dugout with Kershaw still standing on top of the mound, left to his own devices to finish the game, which he did.

This brought to mind the thing I liked the most about our Junior Cubs head coach, who insisted that all his players play every position possible, even the most difficult position, pitcher. It didn't matter if you could throw an 80 mph fastball or could barely throw hard enough to make it to the plate, everyone on our team got the chance to pitch. That strategy paid off as the confidence he instilled in our younger, less experienced players resulted in fabulous results; our bottom of the order players more often than not picked up the top of the order guys when they screwed up. That I'm convinced is what made us successful this season, if only...

As for the big boy Cubs, well, I think everybody agrees that anything positive they do from here to the end of their season, whenever that may be, will be gravy as they've exceeded expectations a hundredfold. The down side is that will definitely NOT be the case next year as anything less than a championship will be seen as a major letdown. That's the overriding feeling in Pittsburgh right now as their team has been rebuilding longer than the Cubs. It's kind of a shame the two good teams' destinies will be decided by only one game where anything can happen.

But that's baseball for you, the game designed to break your heart, not all at once, but one little piece at a time.

Being a White Sox fan, I know all about those little deaths.

Rules are rules

A couple years ago I wrote about the greatest act of sportsmanship I've ever encountered. It happened during a college softball playoff game when a batter hit the ball over the fence for a home run, the first (and what turned out to be the last) of her career. As she rounded first base, she tore an ACL and crumbled to the ground. Unable to stand up, let alone run the bases, her coaches conferred with the umpires who told them that in order for the home run to count, the batter without any assistance from her teammates or a pinch runner, would have to complete the circuit around the basepath. At that point, Mallory Holtman, the first baseman on the other team asked if there was any rule against the opposing players assisting the stricken batter. The umps said no, and Holtman joined by the shortstop Liz Wallace gingerly picked up their opponent and carried her around the bases, lowering her leg to touch each base and finally home plate. The run that the team in the field willingly gave up, ended up costing them the game and a chance for the championship.

Stories like this one should make everyone stand up and cheer because they define in the purest sense, what athletic competition is supposed to be all about. Baseball fans like to think of the game we call "our national pastime", as an institution that exemplifies all that this country is ideally supposed to represent: fairness, decency, and above all, in its rules that ensure every player gets his or her turn at bat, democracy itself.

In reality, when adults codified the rules of the game, thereby wrestling baseball from the domain of children in the mid 19th century, the overriding question on the minds of the majority of folks who have played the game since was this:  "How can I get around those rules?"

An early star of the game who later became an owner and big time promoter of baseball, Albert Spalding, described his game in typical nineteenth century bravado this way:

Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility.

You may notice that nowhere does Spalding mention honesty and fair play.

Granted there were some magnificent players like Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants and "Gentleman" Dave Malarcher of the Chicago American Giants of the Negro National League, who were known for their scrupulous attention to good sportsmanship. Both players were documented overruling umpires' decisions in their favor when they thought they were the wrong calls. Needless to say, these two extraordinary individuals are in the minority in the annals of baseball history.

Commenting on the character of some of the most honored and cherished members of the baseball community, Bill Veeck once said:

Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils.

Veeck should know, he was probably as rowdy and raucous as the best of them. He made a career as an executive and owner of several clubs, by thumbing his nose at the baseball establishment, including their rules. One of the eminently quotable Veeck's most famous quotes is this:

I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.

In his autobiography, Veeck As In Wreck, Bill Veeck took pains to point out the lengths of his mischief. Probably the most famous and notorious of his stunts came when he was the owner of the woebegone St. Louis Browns. On August 19, 1951, as a gag, Veeck sent three foot seven inch Eddie Gaedel up to bat against the Detroit Tigers. Veeck's stunts indeed tested the limits of baseball rules, ethics and sometimes even decency.

There was one rule that Veeck actively sought to break, baseball's infamous color line. As owner of the Cleveland Indians in 1947, Veeck signed the first African American player in the American League, Larry Doby. The following year he signed the great Satchel Paige who at 43, became the oldest "rookie" in major league history. Aghast, baseball insiders claimed that had Paige not been black, he never would have been signed at that advanced age. Taking aim at injustice, Veeck replied, "Had Satchel Paige been white, he'd have been in the major leagues for twenty years."

For his efforts, Bill Veeck, "the game's enfant terrible",  became one of the most beloved, and at the same time, most vilified individuals to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Another colorful Hall of Famer who didn't have too many qualms about stretching the rules, especially when they pertained to him, was John "Mugsy" McGraw, the longtime manager of the New York Giants. In his playing days, McGraw, a third baseman, had a penchant for grabbing the belts of base runners when the ump's eyes were fixed elsewhere. One runner got wise to McGraw, and while standing on second base between pitches, he unbuckled his belt. When his teammate at the plate singled, the runner zipped past third base and scored, while the embarrassed McGraw stood at third base holding a belt.

One of McGraw's most legendary escapades took place in 1901 when he signed a second baseman named Charlie Grant to his team at the time, the Baltimore Orioles, (today's Yankees). Grant was a seasoned professional ballplayer playing for the black team, the Chicago Columbia Giants. As the player was light skinned and had straight hair, McGraw planned to pass him off as a Native American named Tokohama, a name McGraw made up. Blacks of course were not allowed to play "organized baseball" in those days, while there was no such restriction on Native Americans. Before the season began and Grant was able to become the first black player to play in the major leagues in the 20th century, albeit not in the open, his cover was blown in Chicago, as he was well known here.

It was "The Old Roman", Charles Comiskey, the owner and founder of the White Sox who famously declared: "If McGraw keeps this 'Indian', I'll put a Chinaman on third base." Comiskey was not being blatantly racist; he played with and against many black players in exhibition games during his playing career and would have loved to have been able to sign blacks to his team. But rules are rules and Comiskey was only stating the obvious; if McGraw was going to play fast and easy with baseball's color line, so would he. In the end, the sanctity of the rule barring blacks prevailed, and Charlie "Tokohama" Grant was back with the Columbia Giants in a matter of days.

In a sense, Chris Janes might be the Charlie Comiskey of today. He's the guy who blew the whistle on the Jackie Robinson West little league team whose national championship was stripped away last week.  In his role as vice president of the suburban Evergreen Park Athletic Association, Janes saw it as his duty to report his suspicions that JRW was fielding some players who did not live within the bounds of that league's territory, in violation of Little League rules. Incidentally, Janes's team was handed a 43-2 defeat by JRW in the tournament, which I'm sure had nothing to do (wink wink) with his decision to turn them in.

Well it turns out that Chris "Without the boundaries, it's not Little League anymore" Janes himself is not above accepting players in his league who do not live within its boundaries. The night that the ruling on JRW was announced, a Chicago woman came forward and claimed that Evergreen Park officials forged documents so that her son could play in that league.

Janes denied any wrongdoing. There are actually no rules prohibiting kids from playing in leagues outside their home districts for the majority of little league activities, only tournaments officially sanctioned by Little League Inc.who runs the annual Little League World Series. Janes insists that while his league does accept outside players whose parents come to them, they do not actively recruit players, nor do they play those boundary-busting kids in tournaments that prohibit them from doing so.

Would he if he could, play kids who weren't from Evergreen Park in Little League Inc. sanctioned tournaments? Your guess is as good as mine but honestly I think it's clear he would.

I haven't a clue how JRW comes upon its players, but I strongly suspect that, just as most little league programs like Evergreen Park's, parents and kids come to them, not the other way around. The organization has been around for a long time, and is very well known. It seems very reasonable that folks from all over the Chicago area would be thrilled to get their kids into the program.

That does not excuse the JRW administrators of willfully violating the rules of the tournament. In fact, there are so many loopholes and waivers enabling kids who live outside the boundaries to play on any given team, even in the Little League tournaments, that it's truly surprising to me that the adults who run JRW didn't go the extra mile to make sure that all the players already on the team could legitimately play in the big tournament. Unfortunately they didn't, and that's why they find themselves in the mess they're in. Perhaps they felt they were just too busy trying to run a little league program made up of hundreds of kids, not just the thirteen kids we keep hearing about. Perhaps in their over-zealousness to gain attention for their program and the contributions that would help out an institution that does a great deal of good in a troubled part of the city, they overstepped their bounds and broke a few rules. Maybe they just felt the good they did for the community overrode the tournament rules.

BUT THEY CHEATED!!!

I hear those cries coming over and over again from dozens of indignant coaches and parents of the teams that were vanquished by JRW in last year's tournament. One of those voices is that of Kristi Black who's the president of the Mountain Ridge Little League, who fielded the Las Vegas team that was the runner up to JRW in the tournament. According to Ms. Black, the tournament "has an asterisk on it like the one on Barry Bonds home run record." The coach of the Vegas team, Ashton Cave, compared JRW's misdeeds to those of cyclist Lance Armstrong, who like Bonds, was found to have used performance enhancing drugs.

I'll give you three guesses, who do you think Ms. Black and Mr. Cave believe should be crowned the US champion? Bet you won't need all three guesses to come up with the correct answer.

The voices of "reason" in defending the move to strip the championship from the kids who themselves did not cause this problem, claim that it's important to teach young people the value of respecting rules, and that a championship won fraudulently is no championship at all. In time they say, the thirteen members of the team JRW sent to Williamsport, PA, will learn a valuable lesson and be all the better for it.

I'm not so sure. My guess is that the lesson those thirteen boys will learn is that the world is an unfair place. What they will take away from this experience is that it doesn't matter how hard you work for something, there's always a chance someone out there will be willing and able to take what you earned away from you, especially if you're black.

WHOA, FOUL!!!, cry those same indignant voices, THIS IS NOT ABOUT RACE, IT'S ABOUT FOLLOWING RULES. WE SHOULD NOT HAVE A DOUBLE STANDARD, THE RULES ARE THERE FOR EVERYONE TO FOLLOW!!!

With this I agree, up to a point. The Little League does indeed have a precedent for stripping away championships for rule violations. It would be unfair of them to treat JRW differently than other teams simply because they're black. What does seem strange to me is their one-size-fits-all system of punishment for transgressions. There is no redress, and there are no considerations of the severity of the transgression.

Most systems of jurisprudence I know of enact punishments that fit the crime. After all, we don't get our driver's licences revoked for a single parking ticket. Not so apparently with the Little League where it's one strike and you're out.

So where do JRW's transgressions fall in the greater scheme of things? I can sort of understand Little League Inc's philosophy of limiting players on a team to a confined community. But as I pointed out in my previous post, we've become a highly mobile society, and the definition of a community is much broader and more complicated than it once was. And as I mentioned above, there are petitions to be filled out and waivers that can be signed, that allow the de facto expansion of a league's boundaries. In my opinion, this legal end-run around the rule contradicts the spirit of the boundary regulation, if not the letter of it. Many teams take advantage of these loopholes.

Because of that, the question of whether JRW's transgressions created an unfair advantage for their tournament team is debatable. Remember these are twelve year old children we're talking about, not "ringers brought in to create a super team", as they've been depicted. To hear the folks who support the stripping of the championship talk, you'd think JRW enlisted Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols to play for them.

To me, far more serious infractions, perhaps worthy of stripping a title, would include fielding players above the stipulated age limit, paying families for the services of their children, players using illegally modified equipment such as corked bats, the use of performance enhancing drugs, or any other transgression for which no waiver or loophole would ever be considered.

Obviously you can't justify infractions by saying that everybody does it, but I find much of the rhetoric leveled at JRW to be vindictive, self-serving, and dare I say, hypocritical. If it were up to me (which of course it isn't), a much more reasonable punishment for boundary infractions would be limiting sanctions to the administrators, in the form of fines or suspensions. I regard revoking the championship from the children of Jackie Robinson West to be draconian, if not unjust.

All the talk going on in the week since the championship was stripped, seems to miss the point of children's athletic programs. Any reasonable person would say that the purpose of such programs is to not only teach kids how to play the game, but also to teach values such as teamwork and sportsmanship. Winning and losing are of course integral parts of any game but in no way should they be front and center in children's sports. Critics claim that by their actions, the folks at JRW placed winning above everything else, but it seems to me that the other teams' fixation on cheating and unfair advantages on the part of JRW, places a far greater emphasis on winning, than do the infractions themselves.

If the coaches of the teams who lost to JRW were truly concerned with the spirit of the game and not only about winning and losing, they would accept the outcome of the tournament, not try to make excuses for losing. It's their responsibility as teachers and role models to understand that it's just as important to teach kids how to be gracious losers (as the JRW kids were when they lost the world championship to a team from Taiwan), as it is to be respectful winners.

Of course there would be no game of baseball without rules. But not all rules are created equal; some are integral to the game, others are not. If everyone slavishly followed every rule enacted since the game's inception, runners would still be put out by being hit (or plugged, which is the correct term) with the ball, pitchers would still be throwing underhand, and blacks would still be banned from the game.

It's far easier to tear down that to build. The folks at Jackie Robinson West have done a magnificent job over the years, building an important institution in the city of Chicago. Tens of thousands of kids have walked through their doors since 1971 when the league was founded. It's true that their administrators may have run roughshod over some tournament rules, but put into the their proper perspective, these transgressions don't amount to much, little more than bureaucratic neglect.

Players like Christy Mathewson, Mallory Holtman, Dave Malarcher, and Liz Wallace, all understood that the game was bigger than they were. Despite having the rules in their favor, they all chose to do what they considered to be the right thing, rather than accept a ruling against their opponents that they felt was unjust.

By insisting that JRW's championship be revoked, then reaping the spoils by claiming the championship for themselves, the adults of the Las Vegas team are doing far more to undermine youth baseball than the adults at Jackie Robinson West. As of last Wednesday, the Las Vegas team is now the US Little League 12U Baseball Champion. Talk about an asterisk.

Most of us within the game or without, fall far short of the moral and ethical credibility of Mathewson, Holtman, Malarcher and Wallace. Like the proverbial warning about throwing stones if you live in glass houses, those of us without the integrity of those four, had better be careful before we start pointing fingers at anybody else.

The Green Fields, Revisited

The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

-- A. Bartlett Giamatti

It was a difficult spring. Faced with the prospect of applying to high schools (the good ones being few and far between in this city), my son knew that he had to earn straight A's all year. On top of that, he needed to do well on the aptitude exams that would count towards his composite score, meaning the difference between getting into a good school or not. The pressure was intense but none of us were surprised; as every parent and child involved in the Chicago Public School System knows, seventh grade is a bitch. We didn't worry too much about the math, but his reading scores on practice tests were a little suspect. Much to our delight, he aced the reading test. But the evening we got the score, in the midst of our celebration, my son discovered a lump growing in his neck.

It wasn't the first time we found an unwelcome growth in our son's body, but it doesn't get any easier with each experience. It doesn't help when the nurse tells you to get him to the doctor's office immediately or when the doctor tells you he has no idea what's going on with your child, only that whatever is growing inside him, doesn't belong there. Combined with other family health issues, stress at work, and the countless other trials and tribulations of life, the situation did not bode well for a restful, peaceful summer.

At least there was baseball.

This would be our fifth year in the Little League program in our neighborhood park on the north side of Chicago. My son's been on the same team that whole time, and for all but the first year, I've been an assistant coach. You may recall that our team was called the Cardinals. As any baseball fan knows, the St. Louis Cardinals for whom we were named, has been one of the most successful teams in major league history. In that respect, our team bore more of a resemblance to the old St. Louis Browns. In case you don't know anything about the Brownies, let's just say that two of the most famous players in the history of that woebegone team were Pete Gray, a one-armed outfielder, and Eddie Gaedel, a midget who had one major league at bat. You can look them up if you don't believe me. In other words, we were the lovable losers who got no respect from the rest of the league.

That point became very clear to my son once he made the park's traveling team last year. The travel team as I've told you before, is an elite group of kids 13 and under, who have played against some very tough competition in the region, This year they won the State Championship in the Intermediate National Little League Tournament. Representing Illinois, they got to play in that tournament's Midwest Sectional held in Kalamazoo, MI. Unfortunately my son didn't get to play because his head coach decided to only play 11, and as an alternate on the team, he was an odd man out. It was a bitter pill to swallow, especially since the coach brought in new players from another park who leap-frogged over him to make the team. But my son handled the situation with grace and maturity well beyond his 13 years.

The silver lining of not being able to play in the tournament was that it would enable him to play with his Cardinals team, rechristened the A's, in the house league playoffs (which turned out to be scheduled at the same time). In Little League, everybody makes the playoffs in case you’re wondering.

It's not that the Cardinals didn't have their moments over the years. In our second season, as one of the older teams in our division, we had a respectable record with a kid who was a lights out pitcher. When he pitched we won, when he didn't, well...

This year we got a new head coach as our original coach decided to take over a younger team. The new coach, (from Oakland, hence the new moniker, the A's) is a passionate, intense man with good baseball chops. From the get go, the new blood, new players, and new spirit, still didn't spell success. In our Little League, players who aren't held over from the previous year are assigned a team in a player draft. To insure a semblance of parity, each team would receive no more than two members of the 13U travel team. Some teams it turned out ended up more equal than others as there were no such rules for 12 and 11U players. The team with the lion's share of those quality younger players turned out to be the team whose head coach also happened to be none other than the director of the travel program. Not surprisingly, his team won first place in our division winning all but two of their of their games.


For our part, in addition to six players held over from last year, we ended up with a bunch of great kids with a varying degree of baseball skills. One of the new players was my son's teammate on the 13U team, a very good ballplayer in all aspects, what they call a five tool player. At our first practice, our old head coach (who hung around as an assistant), asked the players what their goals were for this season. This boy's response was: "to win the championship." My immediate thought was: "sorry kid, you're on the wrong team."

As a member of the travel team, my son benefited from an off season training program, including one-on-one instruction with the head coach. He worked on a new swing and lost some of his bad habits. He now has a nice looking swing and good power, however a consequence is that he's having more trouble making contact with the ball and striking out more. He seems to have another problem that he didn't have last year: nerves.

Of course he had a lot to be nervous about. We visited a specialist about the growth. The doctor who proclaimed himself, "the world's authority on growths in children's necks", told us it was either a swollen lymph node or one of two different kinds of cysts, one of which carried a small risk of malignancy. We'd only know the answer from an ultrasound. If it were a cyst, it would have to be removed. With the very real possibility of surgery looming around the corner, our son quietly went on with his life, returning to school, taking the math test, and playing baseball.

On the two teams it was as if my son were two different ballplayers. He took on his role as one of the best players on the A's very seriously, and for the first time in his life, became a leader. With the help of his new swing and an expensive new bat, he hit a bunch of triples and even a few honest-to-goodness home runs. He excelled at all the positions given him, even the toughest in the game: pitcher and catcher.

As one of the weakest players on the travel team, he hit a few big drives too, including one that fell about five feet short of going over the outfield fence. But mostly he struck out. Playing almost exclusively in right field, he struggled with plays that were routine for him last year. Part of difference between the house league and the travel league to be sure is the level of competition; but I'm convinced much of his performance this year on the travel team had to do with the pressure to perform. The travel team is expected to win, and the coaches expect 100 percent out of each player. My boy was singled out often for mistakes, big and small. Small wonder he was nervous, had I been in his position at that age, I probably would have quit a long time ago. Much to my son's credit, he kept with it.

This year's A's picked up where last year's Cardinals left off, that is to say, we were bad. Either we put our best players in at pitcher and catcher and the kids in the field couldn't make the plays, or we put the best kids in the field and our pitchers couldn't throw strikes and our catchers couldn't hold on to the ball. Our hitting was no great shakes either.

 Sultan of Swat Jr.

After three losses we were able to scratch out a win against a team that was even worse than we were. Their one 13U player was a big, powerful, left handed 12 year old who looked like he had played since the time he was in diapers. The rest of the team was made up of inexperienced 11 year olds. It was like playing a team made up of Babe Ruth and eight Eddie Gaedels. In the first inning, with two men on base and Babe Ruth at the plate, I instructed our pitcher, our other 13U player, not to give him anything he could hit. My words went unheeded and the result was a monster home run that went about 350 feet. Later in the game my son faced the slugger and after I gave him the same instructions, he proceeded to walk the young Ruth on four straight pitches, none of them less than a foot outside. On his third at bat of the game with the bases loaded, the Bambino faced one of our pitchers who that day was having trouble finding the strike zone. I didn't bother to tell him how to pitch the slugger, as he wouldn't have been able to put the ball where I told him anyway. Wouldn't you know it, the kid probably threw his first strike of the day, and boy it was a good one, right down the middle. After Babe Ruth swung his bat, the ball left the field, the park, and possibly the neighborhood. Grand slam.

But that was all their scoring for the day, the young Bambino having accounted for all of their runs, seven RBI from the two home runs and one run scored after my son (un)intentionally walked him. We crept back, mostly on account of defensive miscues. Down by a couple of runs we tied it up in the last inning. Then with runners on first and third, our head coach yelled to the runner at first so the whole park could hear: "You're going on this pitch." He repeated it even louder. Yet again a third time he screamed as if anyone in the neighborhood missed it: "YOU'RE STEALING SECOND BASE ON THIS PITCH!!!"

Everybody in the park knew what our coach was up to, except apparently the other team's catcher and their coach. As if on cue, the ball was pitched, the runner broke for second, our batter took the pitch, the catcher threw to second base, and our third base coach, (yours truly) sent the runner at third, the winning run, home. Game over.

OK it was a cheap bit of subterfuge, perhaps a little bush league on the part of our coach, knowing full well the 11 year old covering second couldn't possibly make the throw back to the plate in time to nail our runner, But hey, a win's a win, and boy did we need it. For our head coach and me it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We returned to our losing ways after that game and the season seemed a wash. There were some bright lights, we played the better teams well, moral victories to be sure. However we were blown out by some of the lesser teams, putting us in our place lest we thought we had any chance of respectability.

Another post game - post mortem

The tide began to turn the next time we faced Babe Ruth and the Munchkins. One of our most dedicated players, the kid who scored the winning run in our only win to date, told me before the game that he was going to catch one of the slugger’s monster drives to center field. What the kid lacks in natural talent he more than makes up in self-confidence, joie de vivre, and pure intestinal fortitude. I once saw him at shortstop take a line drive to the face. Holding back tears as best he could, he mustered up every bit of nerve and temerity in him and was back in the field the next inning. The nickname I gave him several years ago was The Eagle, not for his soaring speed, but for his heart. When he told me about his plan, I patted him on the back and said something inspirational like: "that's the spirit Eagle." But he was serious.

In the middle of the game, with two runners on and the monster 12 year old at the plate, our coach as he did every time he came up to bat, kept saying "back, back, back" until our three outfielders were essentially playing in the next field over. Predictably, Babe Ruth hit the ball a mile to right-center. Had there been an outfield fence, the ball would have cleared it easily. Our youngest player was playing right field and probably would have had a play on the ball had he moved a little to his right. The problem was, he had yet to make a catch in the outfield up to that point, usually he would let the ball fall in front of him or stand like a statue trying to make a play while the ball flew twenty feet over his head. Fortunately the ball was in the air so long the Eagle (who hadn't made all that many outfield catches himself), had time to get to it.

In all The Eagle ran about 60 fee from center field, cutting in front of our right fielder to get to the ball which he caught just as he was in mid-slide, ending up on his butt. It wasn't pretty but it was the most beautiful catch I ever saw. Even the Babe's dad couldn't stop talking about it. We ended up winning that game as well, our first game won as I mentioned to the team, because we played better than the other team, not because we didn't play as poorly as they did.

Shortly after that game, my son had the ultrasound that determined the growth to be an enlarged lymph node. On a follow-up exam, the lump specialist confirmed what we thought, the lump was getting smaller. The doc's disappointment was palpable when he told us we were no longer in need of his services. With that load off our shoulders, we headed over to a travel team game. Indicative of the ups and downs of this past summer, my boy sat on the bench most of the game, and went 0-4 at the plate. Soon after he learned he would likely not be invited to play in any of the tournament games.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

With those words, the late A. Bartlett Giamatti began his beautiful testimony to the game he loved, called The Green Fields of the Mind. I asked my son if deep down he wished his team would lose for not including him in the big tournament, as his doting father did. Proving that his heart was in the right place, he assured me he did not. We were even planning to attend a few games as spectators but were prevented from doing so because we had better things to do...

The A's after all, were playoff bound, and showing real signs of improvement in the last few games of the regular season. Fielders were making plays, hitters were getting on base, and we were beginning to feel ourselves coming together as a team. Given that 11 of the best players from the league would be off at the State Championship, the complexion of each house league team would be different and all bets were off when it came to picking a favorite.

Just like all the teams, we would be missing a bunch of players, all of them with pitching experience. We were left with only four players who could pitch.

Given our team's record, 4-9, I would have been thrilled to have won just the first game of the playoffs, Had I been head coach, I probably would have gone the distance with our best pitcher to give us the chance to win that game and if, God willing, we were successful, count our blessings and hope for the best in the next one. However our coach was looking beyond the first game and even beyond the second. He carefully planned the pitching rotation using three pitchers per game with the fourth available if necessary. Each pitcher would be limited to 35 pitches per game so they would be available to pitch the next game, and a third if we got that far. Despite the loss of all those good players to the tournament, the mere mention of the unthinkable, possibly winning the championship, made me wince.

And yet I believed in this team. As the unofficial chronicler of the season, I've been looking back at some of the things I wrote to the players and parents at crucial moments during the year. I marveled on how the team improved after a difficult start. I wrote about how thrilling it was that the bottom of the order, almost non-existent at the beginning of the season, was now playing an important role in our games, often picking up the better players. Most satisfying, I was able to write an honest account of a game and single out each player for a significant contribution. I had a good feeling going into the playoffs, not because I thought we'd win any games, but because we'd be able to hold our heads up, win or lose.

You might say that attitude shows good judgement and maturity, after all, it's only a game. But in reality I was just being the son of my eternally pessimistic mother who long ago taught me that when you expect the worst in life, you're never disappointed. I've taken that to heart and after all these years, that philosophy has never failed me.

In truth I desperately wanted our team to win, especially that first game against a team that had been a thorn in our side for years. This was the team we always ended up facing in the playoffs; the team that prevented us every year from moving on.

This year, that team was in the same position we were in: four players missing, one 13U player on their roster, another, off playing in the tournament. With only eight players on our team, we had to call up a replacement player from a younger league. We put him in center field. On the first play of the game, their alternate 13U player led off with a drive to center, where our diminutive replacement player made a sensational diving catch. Our starting pitcher sailed through two innings allowing one run but having thrown less than his allotment of pitches, he would start the third inning. Already a feeling of dread kicked in. Things were going too well too early.

Our coach brought in a new pitcher in the middle of the third. This kid was the most stoic player on the team, deliberate in everything he did, and impossible to read. His idiosyncratic delivery belied his pitching skills; he could throw hard and accurately, most of the time, which is why the opposing batters were a little scared of him. He promptly got a ground out and a pop up. The next inning went by uneventfully for him, while we were slowly building up a lead.

In the top of the fifth, they got a run when the runner at third got aggressive and stole home on a lackadaisical throw from our catcher back to the pitcher, driving the coaching staff into a bit of a tizzy. Unfazed, Dr. Deliberate got the final out of the inning, and we were ahead by two. In five innings we had only used two pitchers. Getting more out of our first two pitchers than expected, we wouldn't need our closer, my son, until the last inning. He struck out the first batter, walked the second then promptly picked him off first, and got the last out on a grounder to second. Final score, 8-4.

I was ecstatic, although I hid my emotions as best I could.

That victory was for us a milestone, a rare playoff win against our arch rival. Much more than that, the team played some really good baseball, mistake free in the field except for that bad exchange between the catcher and the pitcher. Our bats came alive as well, most of the noise coming from the top of the order, with the exception of our young replacement player who walked three times and scored twice.

The best news of all was that our head coach's strategy worked better than even he imagined; all three of the pitchers we used pitched economically and would be available the next game. Never in my life was I so happy to be so wrong.

Same three pitchers, same batting order the next game, no reason to mess with a good thing. I strove to do everything the same as well: I wore the same shirt, (not washed of course), conducted the same pre-game drills with the kids in the same order, and convinced myself we were going to lose. This time we'd be playing the second best team in the league, a team we came close to beating in the last game of the regular season with their full compliment of players. Had I not been so aggressive coaching third base and having key runners thrown out advancing when they shouldn't have, I'm convinced we would have won that game.

Our starter was shaky at the start but settled down, retiring the bottom of the order 1,2,3 in the second. We brought our second pitcher Dr. Deliberate in to face the top of the order in the third inning, which turned out to be almost a carbon copy of the first, same batters, same result: two hits two runs. My son came in to pitch the fifth against the top of their order and this time, they went down 1,2,3.

In our half of the first inning, our starting pitcher batted second and got us going with a double. My boy was up next and promptly struck out. Coaching at third, I bowed my head in frustration both for him and the team. Consequently I missed the fact that the ball got by their catcher. By the time I looked up, my alert son was rounding first base and heading for second as the throw from the catcher on the dropped third strike got by the first baseman, allowing the runner to score and my son to reach third.

This game was more of a nail biter than the first. My boy tripled in the tying run in the top of the fifth. Then in the top of the sixth with the score tied, it was time for the bottom of the order to come through big time with hitters 7,8 and 9 reaching on base hits. Our lead-off hitter, the head coach's son, who had been silent in the game up to that point, walked, forcing in a run. My son, with the bases loaded and the opportunity to do some real damage, struck out again. But some terrific at bats from the next hitters picked him up, and three more runs scored.

Redeeming himself, my boy finished the game on the mound with a little drama, giving up a double and walking a hitter before he struck out the last two batters. The tee shirt I wore that evening wouldn't be seeing the wash anytime soon. Unbelievably we won again by the same score, 8-4.

We were in the finals.

I tried to conceal my emotions but needed an outlet so I threw my cap into the backstop. My wife caught me but I'm not sure if anybody else did.

Celebration after one of our playoff victories

When I met our head coach at the field on the evening of the championship game, he told me our opponent’s assistant coach (their head coach being at the tournament final), was full of excuses. He only had seven regular players plus three replacements, he used up his best pitcher in the previous game, (just like I had intended to do), and by the way, wasn't that kid, my boy, a member of the 13U team? How was he able to play in this game? "

Ask your head coach,..." was the answer, "it was his decision not to play him in the tournament."

Adorned in my zesty tee shirt, I took the team through the same pre-game ritual as in the previous two games. Same lineup, same pitching rotation, once again we were the visitors; all systems were go.

First inning we went down in order including yet another strike out of my son. Their pitcher, a 12U regular and part time 13U replacement player looked tough. In their half of the inning we dodged a bullet; two walks and two doubles yield only one run. We manufacture a run of our own in the top of the second to tie it up.

Then the bottom fell out. In their half of the second, our starter walked two. Our coach pulled him for Dr. Deliberate. Dr. D. struck out the first batter he faced but walked the next, then gave up three consecutive hits yielding five runs, an inexorable lead against this team and its stingy pitcher.

It was over.

We had a great run. We were facing the best team in our league, the team hand-picked to win it all. Without their big stars, they were still too much for us, even beating up on the redoubtable Dr. D. It was their destiny to win this thing.

All told it didn't matter to me in the slightest. We stood tall, took on all comers and held our own. Despite no one having any respect for us, we beat every team in the league, except of course, this one. There were so many bright spots this season. Even that devastating second inning of the championship game was ended by a brilliant unassisted double play by our new first baseman, the Eagle. I was so proud of our team, it brought tears to my eyes. It still does three months later.

All we could do was wait it out, play the best we could, hold our heads up, and allow the victor their spoils. After all, we knew how to lose gracefully; we did it so often.

Or so I thought.

To my eternal delight, it turned out our team wasn't ready to give up as quickly as I was. With one out in the third, my son with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove, manufactured a run all on his own with a base hit, steals of second and third, and a run scored on a ground out.

Despite the rocky second, Dr. D. was still on the mound in the bottom of the third. With two on and two out, their number 10 hitter hit a solid shot to right. Our right fielder, the same kid who long ago (so it seemed), let fly balls sail over his head, charged and scooped up the ball. With the entire coaching staff yelling at him to fire the ball home to prevent a run from scoring, he saw an opportunity and threw a bullet to the Eagle to get the hitter out at first for the third out. His heads up play saved us God knows how many runs.

Still down by four, our fourth inning depended on the bottom half of the order. The Eagle led off with a single and advanced on a ground out. After a strikeout, any hope for a comeback was on the shoulders of our mighty ten year old replacement player. He wouldn't fail us, coming up with a big time, two out base hit. Up comes the top of our order. The coach’s son responded with a double, driving in the Eagle and the ten year old. It looked like they'd be out of the inning still up by one run when my son hit a very high infield popup. Unfortunately for them, they misplayed the ball keeping us alive for Dr. Deliberate, who drove in the tying and go-ahead runs with a single.

This time my son was brought in early to pitch the fourth inning, having to face the top of their order, all three batters having given him fits in the past. Not this time; he struck out the leadoff man, then got the next two batters on ground outs. All that in seven pitches.

So here was the situation: we're up by one run with two innings to play, our best pitcher who hasn't allowed a run in the previous two games is on the mound. For the first time in five years, the thought that we might win the championship crossed my mind.

That thought was premature. We didn't score in our half of the fifth, they did, on a sacrifice fly after a hit and a walk.

In the end, the championship game came down to the last inning with the two teams tied at seven: "just as it should be" said their coach to me as I took my place in the coach's box at third. The two adult umpires who have seen it all both commented: "This is one heck of a game." Before we came up in the last inning, our coach told his team: "if anyone would have told me that after a 1-7 start, we would be tied in the last inning of the championship game I would have …" at which point our starting pitcher interjected: "called the police."

Who should lead off but our amazing ten year old who gets us started with a walk. The coach’s son then hits a rocket to the first baseman who can't handle it. After a double steal and a popup to first, my son comes up to bat. Warranted or not, I guess out of respect for his being a travel team player, their coach decided to intentionally walk him to load the bases for, Dr. D.

That turned out to be a fateful move. Just as he had done in his last at bat, Dr. D. hit a shot to right field that drove in our ten year old for the go ahead run. Meanwhile, the runner at second blew through my very discreet stop sign. Memories of the last game of the regular season where I sent runners to their demise haunted me as he headed home. But the runner, the coach's son, scored the insurance run on a very close play at the plate. My boy took third on the throw home. I told him that I looked like a genius for sending the runner home and swore him to secrecy, not to let on that he did it on his own.

There were no more thoughts in my head about wining the game and the championship at that point as their best hitters were due up in the bottom of the inning. First up was their dangerous number 10 hitter, a replacement player who also played on the travel team. He struck out. Next up was their number one hitter who had stints on both the 12 and 13U teams. The first time he faced my son this year, he hit a home run. Not this time, he struck out as well.

Up by two runs with two out in the last inning, our coach yelled to all nine members of his team from behind the backstop: "you have to want the ball to be hit to you and want to make the play." Then he began to chant: "I WANT THE BALL, I WANT THIS BALL."

At this point there's a little discrepancy over what happened next. What we all agree upon is the next batter hit the ball in the direction of second base. Playing second at the time was the little brother of Dr. Deliberate, who had made some big plays of his own during the season. All I remember is that the ball was in the air for what seemed an eternity.  Our coach remembers it a little differently. Since his account is more thrilling than mine, I'll give you his version:

...before you know it the #2 batter who had a single and two groundouts to second, drills a buzzing line drive right at (our second baseman), who reaches up over his head to snag the ball. 

This time I made no attempt to conceal my joy. I tossed my cap up in the air, I jumped for joy, I hooted, hollered, screamed and hugged everyone within armshot. As was his penchant, our taciturn former head-coach suggested the kids be more dignified so as not to show up the opponents. I shot back: "oh let them celebrate." After all, we may have known very well how to be good losers, but few on our team, myself included, had much practice at being good winners.

There have been many underdog, "Cinderella" teams in baseball history: the 1914 Boston Braves, the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, and this year's Kansas City Royals immediately come to mind. Heck even the lowly Browns won the AL pennant in 1944. That was when able-bodied American men, including professional ballplayers, were expected to go off to war. The Brownies just happened to have had more short-sighted, flat-footed, asthmatics who also happened to be bona fide big leaguers on their roster than anybody else that year. Just like them, we didn't get much respect for our accomplishment. "Well of course...", some people said, "if all the 13U players had been there it would have been a different story." At the awards ceremony, trophies were handed out to all the players. My son noticed that our championship opponents' trophies were bigger than ours. The plaque on theirs read "Major Division First Place Winners." On our trophies the powers that be, instead of writing "Major Division Champions," found it necessary to add the qualifier "Playoff" in front of the word champion, as if the playoffs were merely a separate, second season. Funny, but in all the other sports I know, it's the team that wins the last game of the year who's crowned the unqualified champion. The two teams who had the best overall records in the American and National Leagues this year (quick, can you name them?) are at this writing, sitting at home watching the World Series played by two wild card teams, that is, teams who didn't even win their respective divisions.

They say you don't make up your own schedule, you play the teams and the rosters given to you. In the playoffs we had the toughest route of all, playing and beating the three best teams in our league. They were missing players, so were we: one was our best all around player, another our hottest hitter and winningest pitcher, and the other two were solid infielders, both with significant pitching experience.

One of my favorite quotes about the game comes from the late manager Earl Weaver who once said:

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You' ve got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.

In other words, the other team may hand you runs you don't deserve, but in turn, you still have to get the outs all on your own, without the benefit of prevent or trap defenses or playing keep away.

In the end we won those games because we were the better team, pure and simple.

I think that point was not lost on the league, most of whom were rooting for us, as I found out after the fact. The point was not lost on our opponents either as only a handful of them bothered to show up for the awards presentation. We ended up with the last laugh when it came our turn to receive the trophies and our head coach wouldn't give up the mike (much to the chagrin of the organizers of the event), until he mentioned in detail the accomplishments of every single player on the team.

That wasn't the end of baseball for my son this season. As a member of the team that won the State Championship, he got to meet and have his picture taken with the mayor. The 14U team was constantly in need of players so he played with them on occasion. He was soon back with his 13U team as they played in a suburban fall ball league. That season wrapped up last weekend. He last played in the quarter and semi-final games last Saturday where his team won both games.

As luck would have it, he was forced to miss the championship game last Sunday as he was enrolled in a class to prepare him for yet another big test that will determine his future, at least the high school he will attend next year. The 13U team won that game too, meaning he played on teams that won three championships this year. In his last two ballgames played on Saturday, he made a couple of spectacular catches in the outfield. He also struck out six times in the two games, meaning he'll have the long off-season to think about it.

The baseball gods giveth, and they taketh away.

As of last Sunday, baseball is now officially over for us this year. As Bart Giamatti predicted, the chill rains of fall have come. Yet the game has not quite left us to face the winter alone. That spectacular run of ours last July will stay with us for a long time. Of all the wonderful memories of the event, the one that will forever be etched in my memory took place after the last out of the championship game, during the hug-fest. Through the crowd, my son and I found each other. He had no words to share, the look on his face said it all. We had been through a lot together these past five years. Baseball for us has been a never ending series of ups and downs, of failures and triumphs, heartache and joy. Through all that, it's the one thing that has brought us together more than anything else.

It dawned on me, as I'm sure it did on him as well, that we were coming to the end of a sweet chapter in our lives. Next year the 13 year old players will move on to other teams and our run with the Cardinals/A's was over. For five years my son and I worked hard together on this team; he learned to be a ballplayer, a teammate, and a leader; and I learned the patience necessary to be a coach. We had our frustrations to be sure, but I don't think either of us could ever say we didn't love every minute of it. It was beyond our wildest dreams and expectations that the Cardinals/A's would end up the way we did, winning our very last game as a team. Quite frankly, I don't think either of us knew exactly what to make of it all.

While I hug my children and tell them I love them every day, at that instant on our beloved Field 4 of Warren Park in Chicago, where my son and I spent some of the most unforgettable moments of our lives together, for the first time in a very long while, my stoic 13 year old hugged me back, long and hard. There was nothing needed to be said. The moment will stay with me as long as I live.

It so happens that shortly before the playoffs began, I wrote a blog post dedicated to another sport. I concluded it with a lovely piece written by a soccer player who wrote about those moments few and far between, that transcend the game and describe perfection itself. I ended the piece by saying we should all be so lucky to experience such a moment at least once in our lives.

Little did I know that in a few days, my son, his teammates, their parents, the other coaches, and I would experience that one perfect, fleeting moment, when the stars and planets align, when all the fielders are positioned perfectly, the batters "hit 'em where they ain't", each pitch finds the outside corner, and every member of the team is connected together as if they were one.

When we experience moments like these, the best we can do is hold on to them and cherish them, because we never know when or if they'll ever happen again.

The memory of those three beautiful summer evenings last July when all was right with the world, will provide us with enough warmth to overcome anything the harsh Chicago winter could possibly toss our way.

Those lovely green fields of the mind will remain, sustaining us at least until another opening day.

Warren Park 2014 Major League Champions, the finest group of gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure of knowing

Only a game

I'm not someone who usually comes up with the timely quip. Like many, I think of the perfect response to a situation perhaps a minute, an hour, or a day after the fact, too late for it to do much good. For example I could have used a good comeback the other day when I described the intensity of parents of some of the kids on my son's Little League team to my mother. She shook her head and said incredulously: "My God, it's only a game."

In a way she's right, in our day sports are inconsequential, unlike pre-Columbian America for example where participants in team sports really had something to lose if they lost the contest, usually their heads. To my mother, sports are uncouth, they have little value compared to allegedly more intellectual activities such as theater, literature, music and the visual arts. To put it bluntly, she's a bit of a snob.

Not that she objects to sports per se, they're perfectly fine in their place. As a schoolteacher and later a principal, she considered scholastic achievement to be the most important part of childhood. She made it clear that being a student was my job. My mother probably wouldn't have objected if I had expressed an interest in playing organized sports, but she'd never have thought of suggesting it herself and would certainly not have pushed me into it.

Which in a way is a shame.

I don't have any illusions that had I been encouraged to play organized sports as a child, I would have become a better, more successful human being. But I think certain aspects of my life relating to issues of self confidence, teamwork, and competitive spirit would have been much different.

Now it's all water under the bridge and we're making up for lost time with our son who has just finished his fifth year of Little League baseball. My wife and I did have to nudge him into it in the beginning but pretty soon (to borrow a metaphor from another sport), he took the ball and ran with it.

This year, in addition to his stint on a team in our local park's house league, he tried out and made the traveling team. As the name implies, a traveling team plays teams made up of the best players from other parks. For the first time in his baseball career, my son is not one of the best players on his team, in fact he's much closer to the bottom than the top. Much to his credit that doesn't bother him. I asked him the other day which he prefers, being the star of a bad team (which is the case with our house league team), or one of the worst players on a really good team. Without missing a beat, he chose the latter. Beyond the fact that winning is more fun than losing, I think my son is processing in his head that if he wants to get better at baseball, he needs to play with and against kids who are better than him. As far as that's concerned, he's way ahead of me. When I was his age, I would have taken the easy path, perfectly content to keep my dream of one day being a baseball star a fantasy, not having to deal with the grunt work of learning how to play the game correctly, and the pressure and humiliation that went along with screwing up in front of other kids who were better than me.

Baseball more than any other, is a game prone to humiliation and pressure. In team sports such as football, soccer, basketball and hockey, lesser skilled players can contribute to the team by mastering relatively simpler skills like blocking, passing off, setting picks, or hitting people. Kids playing those sports at a lower level can blend in with the better players by gleefully running up and down the field, not getting themselves open for a pass.

By contrast, there is no hiding in baseball; if the ball comes to you, you either make the play or you don't. In sports where there is a continuous flow of activity, if you make a mistake, you usually get the chance to redeem yourself pretty quickly. In baseball if you have a bad at bat, you get to spend a lot of time on the bench to think about it, if you make a bad play in the field, you may not get another chance at all as the ball may not get hit to you again.

I'd say that baseball is one of the most difficult games to master; not only do you need the physical skills to succeed, but so much of the game is played in the head. It's the head part of the game that can be devastating to so many players, professionals included. Imagine standing in the batters box with a pitcher throwing a hard ball at you at speeds that could reach 90 miles per hour or more. Not only are you expected to stand there stoically while that ball is coming within inches of hitting you, but you're expected to hit it with a bat that measures only about two inches at its widest. Or being a fielder having to place your body in front of the ball coming at you at even greater speeds, being expected to make a play that could be the difference between your team winning or losing the game. For most players, the biggest fear in baseball is not getting hurt, by far the biggest fear is, pardon the expression, fucking up.

One nice thing about playing on a bad team is that there is little expected of you. I eventually became a fairly decent player, playing mostly in beer leagues just for fun, never in very competitive leagues.  Even still, the pressure to make plays was always intense for me. Playing competitive ball where the stakes are much higher, on a team that expects to win, compounds the pressure exponentially. Frankly for me, just watching my son play on his traveling team is nerve wracking.

Fortunately, my son seems to thrive on the pressure. Yes he gets nervous, but I only know that because I've asked him, you wouldn't know it watching him take the field. He plays right field for the travel team, the position usually reserved for the worst fielder on lower level teams. At his level however, batters actually hit the ball to right field and it's just as important to be able to make plays in right as any other position. On the house league team he has played every position on the field except outfield, but he's adapted very well to playing his new position; as far as I know, he's only booted one ball hit his way. Batting is another story. Unlike his old man who couldn't wait to get up to bat, my son is a little tentative at the plate, still trying to get over an old habit of flinching as the ball comes toward him. In other words, he's doing something that any normal human being would do. But that hasn't prevented him from getting some clutch hits this season, often getting on base and scoring while the big guns at the top of the order have either popped up or struck out.

The travel team program began in our park about five years ago when our little league kept losing players to other parks with outlets for the better players. With a couple of exceptions, the kids on my son's team have played together for four years. It's a multi-sized, multi-ethnic, multi-racial group of kids. Two of the best on the team are girls. In this day and age, that last part shouldn't come as much of a surprise, however in all the games I've witnessed, I've probably missed only three, they were the only girls on the field on either team.

The travel team played in a couple different leagues this season, one a city league, another a suburban league. It's a little comical seeing the contrast between our city team and the suburban teams who are used to playing ball on pristinely manicured fields in their lily white hometowns. They show up at our park wearing freshly dry-cleaned and pressed uniforms, carrying matching equipment bags with the name of their team stitched on them. With attitudes to match their gear, they find a park filled with a highly diverse cast of characters the likes of which they've probably never seen in their young lives, except perhaps on the Discovery Channel. They take one look at our field, playable but less than perfect, no outfield fence (until recently), then notice our uniforms that don't necessarily match from player to player, and the two girls on our team. Then they snicker. The most satisfying part comes when more often than not this season, those snickering teams get beat.

Playing primarily to win is a controversial issue in kids sports. Some leagues, our house league included, hand out little trophies to every kid on every team at the end of the season. Some people have a problem with that but not me. For some kids it will be the only tangible reminder of their brief sports careers. Besides, winning has its own rewards, the desire to win doesn't need to be taught, at the end of the game, every kid knows, and cares about who won and who lost.

By design, a travel team is different. The team is built around winning. Unlike the house team, you have to earn your position. Beyond their skill level, there's not a discernible difference between the kids on the travel team, and their non-travel, house teammates. That's not always the case with the parents. For many of the kids who play only in the house league, baseball is just another summertime diversion. By signing your kids up for the travel team, you're essentially signing away your summer, committing yourself and your kids to baseball every day for two straight months. Small wonder then why these parents, myself included, get a little intense about the game.

There are different reasons why parents commit their children and themselves to such a rigorous schedule during a time that's supposed to be devoted to getting away from the stresses and commitments of everyday life. Cynics say that intense sports parents never themselves got far with sports and live vicariously through the exploits of their children. Others might say that participation in rigorous sports programs are good preparation for adult life, teaching children valuable lessons such as if you want to achieve something worthwhile in life, you have to work very hard for it. Some parents believe that participation in sports enhances a kid's chances of getting into better schools through sports scholarships and other incentives. Others may hold on to the faint glimmer of hope that one day their child may be able to play professional ball. Still others do it simply because their kids love the game. In my case quite honestly, I'd have to say that four of the five reasons apply, but don't tell my son, I see no point in deflating his dream of being a big leaguer someday.

That isn't to say there's not a great deal of personal satisfaction that comes from watching your kid play ball all summer. As compelling drama, few things compare to a well contested sporting event. In theater, the drama is contrived, the outcome pre-ordained. Not so in a baseball game where anything can happen at any given time. I can think of few things more compelling than watching a pitcher getting out of a bases loaded situation in a tie game in extra innings, helped along by a perfectly executed 6-4-3 double play. Or a late inning comeback from a seemingly insurmountable deficit. Or watching a player save the game for his team with a fantastic catch in the outfield.

Perhaps the sweetest moment this season came when our team participated in the district tournament to determine who would represent our area in the Sectionals and beyond, the ultimate winner making it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. The toughest competition in the Districts was our arch rival from a nearby city park, well known for its less than scrupulous penchant for recruiting players from all over the city. The tournament came down to a best of three game series between us and them and frankly we had little hope of beating them. But in game one we held tight, after the regulation six innings were played, we were tied at four runs apiece. Following that came four of the most compelling innings of baseball I've ever seen: hits, walks, errors, hit batters, stolen bases, everything imaginable in baseball except for one thing, no runs were scored. I was standing with some old colleagues who live in the neighborhood and just happened to wander past the game. While I was talking to them, one of the other team's batters with two runners on base, hit a ball that looked sure to drop in for a base hit. But our outfielder got a good jump on the ball and at the last second made a leaping catch to end the inning and save the game. Remarking on the catch one of my friends said: "Wow these kids are good." "That's my boy" I proudly told him.

We played ten glorious innings that day until it got too dark to play and the game had to be resumed the next day. The joy of the previous evening did not continue the next day as in the first inning of resumed play, three of our guys (including my son) went down in order and in the bottom of that inning, the other guys scored and won the game. But we got out of that game a sense that we could beat these guys and in the following game, we outlasted them in a slugfest.

The rubber match the following day started out as a wash, our guys and girls couldn't do anything right.  Before we knew it, our team was down 5-0 and it looked very much like it would stay that way. But the other coaches didn't manage their pitchers well and were forced to remove their starter because he threw too many pitches. They brought in a reliever in the sixth inning who couldn't get anybody out. In the end we scored five runs off the poor kid to tie it up to send the game into extra innings. Then it became another defensive struggle as both teams found themselves one run away from either the Regionals or elimination. This time we were the home team with the last at bat and with two outs in bottom of the eighth, one of our best hitters was up to bat. During the series their coach kept switching their first baseman and right fielder depending on who came to bat. Expecting our hard hitting left handed hitter to drive the ball into right field, he took the better fielder who was playing first base and sent him to right. His move backfired as our guy hit a grounder to first which their guy misplayed, making a throwing error which enabled our batter to end up at second. That brought up our best hitter, the Mighty Katie, who promptly hit a single up the middle to score the run and win us the championship.

Since I'm writing this from my home in Chicago and not Williamsport, you can probably infer that we didn't get very far after that. It just so happened that at the beginning of the season our head coach signed the team up for a tournament in the resort city of Wisconsin Dells which would have taken place exactly at the same time as the state finals in the town of Beardstown, Illinois. This placed the team in an odd situation. Had they won the Reigionals, they would have next played downstate in a town best known for its slaughterhouse. If they lost, they would get to play in a place famous for its water parks. A glaring difference between the big leagues and the little leagues is this: the fact that they didn't advance beyond the Regionals didn't really seem to disappoint anybody.

My son's game face.

A fine time was had by all in the Wisconsin Dells tournament, lots of fun in the water, and the team finished second place in the tournament. The only bad part came during the last game when less than desirable officiating resulted in some truly bad behavior from a few of our parents, inspiring the comment to my mother mentioned at the top of this post.

Despite it ending on that sour note, this season was a fantastic experience for my son and me. All the years of playing catch, pitching, and hitting grounders and pop ups to my boy, have been taken to a new level. Having experienced baseball at a level previously unknown to him, he's now a bona fide ballplayer, his future in the game is now in his own capable hands.

While it's been exhausting, it gives me great satisfaction to hear these words coming out of his mouth: "Best summer ever."

Still I'm kind of glad it's over and I have some time left this summer to enjoy the thing that probably gives me more joy than anything else in life, playing catch with my boy, just for the fun of it.

It took me a while but finally I came up with a comeback for my mother's comment. She'd probably appreciate it too, coming as it does from a literary source.

So is Little League baseball really only a game?

Hardly...

To quote the great film director/screen writer John Houston (by way of Dashiell Hammett):

...it's "the stuff that dreams are made of."

Annals of the game...

The 2012 Cardinals celebrate a hard earned victory, photograph by Carmen Sierra Rodriguez

The outlook wasn't good for the Warren Park Cardinals. We had a great season last year when we were a senior team in the Rookie Division. This year we've moved up a division and now are a Freshman team in the Minors. We lost our star pitcher to another, more competitive Chicago Park District Little League, as well as some of our stalwart players who couldn't move up with us because of their age.

On the plus side, we got back a star player from two years ago who has developed into a great pitcher in his own right, and is also a better all around player than last year's model. When he pitches, we are competitive, when he doesn't, well not so much. We also gained some promising 11 year old additions from other teams that didn't advance into the Minors.

My boy's sheer enthusiasm for baseball more than makes up for whatever skills he may be lacking up to this point. He's often the first player to show up at games and practices and is always the last to leave. This is his third season in little league, all of them playing for the Cardinals.  He may not be the best player on the team but he's good enough to have played all the positions, even the most difficult ones, catcher and pitcher. What would become the last game of last season was a playoff match between the Cardinals and the Reds. My boy was the starting pitcher.

Baseball is a game played mostly in the head, no matter how good you are at hitting, fielding, base running and above all pitching, if you can't get it straight upstairs, you're sunk. My son naturally was nervous to start the big game. But he and I worked hard to develop his mechanics and accuracy to the point where he could get the ball over the plate often enough and hard enough to be a fairly respectable pitcher at his level. Of course there's a big difference between pitching a baseball to your dad in the park with no one around, and pitching to a live batter, several spectators, and most importantly your teammates all counting on you, in the biggest game of the season.

Things went pretty smoothly in the big game, that is until his very first pitch, which hit the batter in the foot. It went downhill from there quickly. Pretty soon my son was just tossing the ball to the catcher in the hopes of it somehow finding the strike zone. When it did, which was not often, the batters were able to pounce on it. Mercifully in the Rookie Division, there is a five run limit per inning, which came quickly. Our head coach replaced my son, also mercifully in the next inning and his replacement (the little brother of our current star pitcher), pitched magnificently, shutting out the Reds for the rest of the game.

Redemption time came in bottom of the last inning with our team down by only one run, and the heart of the order coming to bat, my boy leading off. Unfortunately, he feebly grounded out to the pitcher. The following two batters also grounded out, one of them in spectacular fashion having been robbed by the first baseman. That was how our season ended.

There is a famous line from a popular movie called A League of Their Own. If you recall, it goes something like this:

There's no crying in baseball!

But it's not true. The late A. Bartlett Giamatti who among other even more impressive things, was once the commissioner of Major League Baseball, wrote this about the game:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

The chill rains of fall came for us by mid-July last year, and there were tears.

But kids are resilient and all was forgotten by everyone, well almost everyone. At our first practice this year, our head coach took me aside and said: "Does that bad performance in the final game last year still upset your son?"

"Not in the least," I told him truthfully.

This year we're facing much tougher competition and in the higher division we have new aspects of the game to deal with, namely leadoffs and base stealing. At our level that means a batter who reaches first base will almost certainly reach third after the next two pitches. In some ways it's much more fun to have low expectations for your team because the good things are great and you're never disappointed by the bad.

Our first game was against the champions of our division last year, who also moved up to the minors. Behind our fire-balling star pitcher, we eked out a victory which was helped along by the game being called early because of rain.

The second game would be a rematch against the Reds who are now in Cubs clothing. My boy was the starter. A little shaky at first, he got some help from his fielders in the first inning and got out of the inning allowing two runs. The second inning was a different story. He managed to get the first two batters out and it looked like smooth sailing. The third batter fought him tough, fouling off a bunch of pitches, and eventually walked. After that, one batter after another reached base, either by virtue of a walk, an error, or another new aspect of the game for us, the dropped third strike. That one is especially cruel for a pitcher whose strike out is erased if the catcher can't hold on to the ball. The catcher then has to spring up, find the ball, and throw out the batter at first in order to record an out, not an easy task at this level. Soon my son was back to carefully tossing the ball instead of pitching. In our division, the maximum number of runs is now six, a number that was eventually reached in that inning, all coming after two outs.

Then came the rain and that game was postponed for a later date.

The next two games were against a new team in the division, the Pioneers, an all girl team. I joked to people that this was a lose/lose proposition for our boys. If they lost, they'd have lost to a team of girls. Sexist as that may sound, if you've been an eleven year old boy at some point in your life, you understand. If on the other hand they won, they'd have beaten a team of girls. Big deal.

As soon as I saw the Pioneers, I knew I was wrong, it would be a big deal to beat them. They took the field with poise and confidence, during warmup the players fielded, threw and caught the ball with the ease of seasoned athletes. In short, unlike our rag-tag squad, they looked like ballplayers. Not only that, half of them were bigger than me, they were 12 and 13 year olds but looked like they could be in high school. Their coaches also had a very calm, professional demeanor about themselves, making the Cardinal coaches especially me, look like greenhorns.

The game went as could be expected. Their first few batters pounded the ball, stole bases at will on every pitch, and the team took a decisive lead from which they never looked back. Their fielders made all the plays they needed, while our fielding was a comedy of errors. To add insult to injury, between plays, their runners took advantage of every lapse of concentration from our infielders who were unaccustomed to such brazen base running.

In other words, they gave us a clinic. I told our guys before the next game to watch the Pioneers closely, and learn from them.

Game two against the Pioneers was two days later and our number one pitcher got the start. Anyone who doubts that pitching is at least 90 percent of baseball, has never been to a little league game. I warmed up our pitcher before each inning as our catcher that game, my son, put on his gear.  Frankly I was a little scared for my own safety, this kid throws hard. I estimate his fastball's speed flirts with 70 mph. The girls were no match for him, he allowed only one or two legitimate hits. Only with the help of some errors and dropped third strikes from my son, were the Pioneers able to score three runs in five innings. I had a sneaking suspicion that was confirmed by our coach's score card, that every Pioneer out was by strikeout. That's a better percentage than Kerry Wood's record setting 20 strikeout performance against the Houston Astros in 1998.

Unfortunately, our pitcher reached his pitch limit of 85 pitches after the fifth inning, meaning that the coach would have to bring in a reliever, my son...