WILL THERE BE BASEBALL THIS YEAR?

Missing Baseball? Strike Up A Story!

“Baseball right now is a national thermometer.” ~ Vin Scully

I wasn’t supposed to love baseball. I was, after all, a girl. In those days, girls were supposed to wear dresses and take ballet lessons. I did that too, but it didn’t compare with camping, hiking and baseball!

A new friend recently asked me, after hearing me say I loved baseball as a kid, what my experience was with the game. I thought about it and realized that although it was short, it had a big impact on my life, coming at a time when I was beginning to formulate my sense of self. I responded in the form of a story.

I’ll share it with you…to scratch your baseball itch until the real season begins. Because as Vin Scully, “the voice of baseball,” implied recently in the quote above, what happens with baseball this summer will give us a real good indication of the health of the nation. In the meantime, you have some time to find out who you are.

I grew up in the country. I don’t remember if I knew what Little League was or not, but we didn’t have such a thing anywhere nearby. All I know is that I loved baseball. I remember my dad, working in the yard with a baseball game on the radio, but I wasn’t much interested. I wanted to be playing the game.

I don’t remember the first time I played. Was it at school? I don’t know. Apparently, I wasn’t very good because my aim in life became learning how to hit. We owned two acres in a small town in Northern California. Most of it was in second growth Redwood, but our house sat on one side of two level side-by-side lots, giving plenty of room for baseball practice.

Every spare moment, and there were more of them in those days, I was pleading with my mom, dad or sister to pitch to me. I remember knocking the wind out of my poor six-year-old sister when I hit the ball into her midsection. After that, she stood further back to pitch.

When no one was available, I would throw the ball in the air myself and hit it. First thing up in the morning, I was out there. It was the same until I could no longer see the ball at night. Oh, how I loved daylight saving time.

There was also a recessed empty lot a few houses up the street where the neighborhood kids would gather for a game. I wasn’t normally allowed to wander the neighborhood, but my parents would let me go that far alone if there was a game going. I felt so grown up and special, playing into the cool evenings, and it was another chance to do my favorite thing when all my family members had lost patience with my endless pleadings.

Those were great times, but the best were at school. Every recess in the sixth grade I ran to the baseball diamond; I couldn’t get there fast enough. I was in a 5th/6th class with about eight sixth graders. There was one other sixth grade class and they had a male teacher, unusual in those days, who organized his class into teams and included us. There were enough of us to make two teams, but I was the only girl interested in playing. The guys on my team made me the captain.

It was a great year — playing baseball, getting fired up about politics for the first time and discovering boys — but the best was baseball. I had always wanted a brother and now I had a team full of them. I worked hard for them and they did the same for me. There was some kind of a respect that went both ways and wasn’t like any other.

Then, when the school year was almost over, Mr. Cochran told us about a team from a school in the next town. Their school went up through eighth grade so they had older kids on their team, but he thought we could at least make a good game of it. We had no inter-school competition in those days — we had always just played for the fun of it — so this was a major event!

We practiced and practiced and Mr. Cochran gave us some extra coaching. The big day came and we were playing on their field. My first time up to bat, I remember feeling very nervous. I was intimidated by the fact that they were older than we were.

We were behind, but it was early in the game. I swung at the ball and missed. I was mortified. I lost my confidence. I was a budding pubescent female trying to play a guy’s game (remember, this was the early 1960s), knowing the other team thought I was an easy out, worried about letting down my team and afraid I couldn’t live up to their expectations.

They were all lined up behind me in total silence, fingers grasping the wire as the next pitch came in. A weak, unsure swing hit a foul ball. By now I was a basket case, my knees so shaky I didn’t know if they would hold me. My teammates, however, knew this wasn’t me. They began to yell and scream,

“Come on, Dawn!” “Yeah, Dawn, you can do it!” “Slug her out there like you always do!” “Come on, show ’em your stuff!” “Hey, Dawn, we need you!”

And then they started to chant. No tears for this kid. They only come to me now. Instead, I was overcome with sheer determination. My team reminded me of what I could do, of what I loved to do. I knew I had to do it for them — and I knew I could. I got ready. I watched that ball. I could hear their yelling roaring in my ears. I smacked that mother into the backfield and made it to second.

I don’t remember my other times at bat. I don’t remember whether we won or lost the game that day. I remember that my grandfather, visiting from Los Angeles, took me to the store that afternoon to pick out any glove I wanted. I know that I did win something very precious that day that I have carried with me all my life.

Things changed when I went to junior high school. There was no recess. We had gym class, not baseball games. My mother told me I had to start acting like a lady and stop hitting the boys when they insulted me. I looked at boys differently and found they weren’t so easy to talk to as they used to be. I played varsity basketball in junior high, but it was never quite the same as baseball.

Then I became a mom — with girls. When Joslyn was old enough I signed her up in a local girls’ league. She stuck out the season — for Mom’s sake, I suppose — but just wasn’t interested. The most fun I had that year was the mother-daughter game at the end of the season when I finally got to play again. We beat the pants off our daughters. The other moms couldn’t believe it — I can still hit.

My second daughter was more into horses. She didn’t like balls of any kind at that time. But I remember the year she arrived in sixth grade. Late in the Spring she got the baseball bug. I was elated. I started to pitch to her. She wasn’t very good, sort of afraid of the ball, couldn’t hit. I started to coach her. She started connecting.

I loved the look of amazement on her face when she’d really smack one and send it flying. She started getting excited. I remembered the feeling, “Yes, I can do it!” when I didn’t think I could. I thought I had finally found a way to connect with this child with whom it had always been so difficult to find something in common.

We went on vacation when school was out. She took her glove and balls and we bought a bat when we got there. I smiled at the constant pleadings to pitch to her. I made time to do as much as I could. When we got home and her uncle visited, we all went to the school diamond and fielded for her. She even let us hit a little.

I guess that’s what did it. It aggravated a two-year old shoulder injury and I could hardly move my arm for three months. Then she started junior high . . . and junior high changes things.

There’s something about baseball. Our lives are busy today. It’s a slow game — one I never much enjoyed watching. But playing, now that’s something different. A long summer day seems over too fast when you’re playing baseball. Baseball brings us together — boys and girls, rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, the older and the younger. Baseball tells us who we are. Maybe we need it now more than ever.

I am Dawn Aegle, a transformation coach and writer with a soft spot for travel, tomboys, small towns and baseball. Meet me on Medium here.