Bad Father

From the moment we stepped on the Little League baseball field, I felt like a bad father. Gareth and I played catch underhand using the basket catch. The other boys and their fathers threw the ball over hand and caught the ball with their mitts in upright positions.

One little boy was dressed in baseball pants, baseball shirt, cleats, and wore two batting gloves. When batting he stood in the batter's box instead of on homeplate. He knew first base from third base, and when the coach hit a pop fly, he didn't run for cover.

That's it, I thought. From now on, we get up at 5:45, drink raw eggs, jog to the baseball diamond, where we will run drills until seven. I will buy Cal Ripken's book. I will buy Gareth the gear--you've got to look good to play good. When Gareth complains that baseball is too difficult, I will tell him that baseball, like life, isn't always fun.

I didn't want to be a bad father so I volunteered to help. My first assignment: help another father play catch with the boys. Which we did. A few minutes into it, the other father pointed to Gareth and said: “That boy is afraid of the ball.”

"Afraid of the ball?" I said. "My son is not afraid of the ball."

Then, to make my point, I threw Gareth a hard grounder. He fielded the tricky hop beautifully by blocking the ball with his upper body. The ball landed on his cheek before it dropped in his mitt. I was proud.

"Way to go, Son," I said.

"Is he okay?" the other father said.

"Did you see the way he blocked that ball?" I said.

"Dad," Gareth said, "my cheek hurts."

Gareth and I sat in the dugout for the next fifteen minutes while he recovered. I thought ten would have been enough, but he is only five so I relented.

Gareth and I rejoined the other boys and their fathers on the bases. I found myself complimenting the other kids no matter what they did and criticizing Gareth for anything he did. And this knowledge hit me in the side of the head like a fastball. I was a bad father. I had scarred Gareth for the rest of his life. He would hate what I wanted so badly for him to love.

At the end of the practice I was devasted. I didn’t want to ask Gareth how he liked it. The answer was obvious, I thought. He looked tired when he got into the backseat. His face was red and the spot on his cheek where the ball hit was redder. I patted him on the head and buckled his seatbelt.

"It's difficult the first few times," I said.

"Dad?"

Here it comes, I thought. This is the end of everything.

“Tee Ball was awesome. I can't wait until next week.”

For the rest of that day he would not take off his Tee Ball shirt and hat. He remarked several times how comfortable the hat was as a pretext for not taking it off. Later, after he'd fallen asleep, I found his shirt underneath his pillow and his hat in his hand.