BLOG RERUN: For it's money they have and peace they lack

NOTE: This post originally ran on the blog on September 7, 2017. I bring it back today for three reasons: (1) It is baseball season; (2) It feels even more relevant today than it did nearly seven years ago; (3) While I mostly don't love my own writing, I've always thought I did an OK job with this one. I hope you do, too.

There is a cult within America – populated largely by white, middle-aged males, but certainly not limited to them – that has romanticized the game of baseball beyond what it probably deserves.

I am perhaps one of them, but at least I know I am one of them.

The reasons for this idolization of the sport are varied. For many, baseball was their best (and perhaps only) connection with their fathers. Many of us root for the teams our dads rooted for because there is an indelible bond, strengthened ever further by blood, among those who live and die with the fortunes of a common athletic team.

For others, baseball represents a simpler time. In most cases, I think that simpler time for which they yearn was really no simpler than today, but it certainly seemed simpler in a pre-Internet age...and with the passing of time, of course, which tends to whitewash every flaw.

In the days before massive youth soccer leagues, baseball was the one sport in which most young men – it was softball for the girls – participated at one level or another. I played through the age of 13 until I could no longer keep up with the fastballs and had no hope of hitting a curveball. More importantly, I became a fan of the game at the age of 9 and remain one to this day.

It is a slow game, some will say, and I don't disagree with them. But "slow" does not equate with "boring." Watching a well-played baseball game is just about the best way I can think of to spend a summer afternoon, even if it takes 3+ hours to play and ends with a 2-1 score.

I bring this up because, as I type, my beloved Cleveland Indians have won an astounding 14 games in a row (the second consecutive season in which they've accomplished this feat). And tonight they go for No. 15 with ace pitcher and Cy Young Award candidate Corey Kluber on the mound.

So many people I come across these days (including my doctor as she poked and prodded me this morning as part of my annual physical) want to talk about the Tribe. Could this be their year? Will they stay healthy? What's up with Jose Ramirez's incredible bat? And his hair, for that matter?

They ask these questions with that note of restrained, even fatalistic, optimism that Cleveland sports fans have perfected. We have been burned in a variety of creatively cruel ways over the years, and there is a part of us that always assumes the worst will happen.

But the important thing is, talking about the Tribe is fun, and it makes us happy. It gives us a few minutes to stop thinking about hurricanes and politics and flag protests and everything else that makes us cry and worry and act viciously toward one another.

There are poor people in this country, no doubt, but as comedienne Marsha Warfield said about hunger in the U.S., "It ain't but so bad." The vast majority of us have the essentials we need to live. Most have roofs over their heads and some sort of food on the table. We have the things our wages can buy.

What we don't have, what perhaps we've never had, is peace. A sense that everything is going to be OK. Maybe that's impossible to have in this (or any) age, so we settle for small glimpses of it. We talk about the things that make us feel good and remind us that humans have the capacity to do meaningful, inspirational things.

And I include baseball in that. It's just a game, you might say, and you're right. But it's also an escape, albeit temporary, from everything else that weighs on us. It is a way to connect to the part of our collective consciousness that shuts down in the face of worrisome news and constant conflict and our own mortality.

There are bad characters in baseball as in anything. There is greed, there is selfishness and there is cheating.

But there is also purity and honesty and beauty that mostly eludes us as we slog our way through everyday life.

It's purity, honesty and beauty that can be had for the price of a ticket, or even the click of a TV remote.

If acknowledging that simple fact constitutes over-romanticizing baseball, then I can only plead guilty.

In the end, I'll be back season after season to watch and cheer and fret and fume. I follow other sports, but in the end, it was baseball that was my first love. And she never fails to deliver.

My wife and I have been sitting in the bleachers since 1999

All five of our children have participated in sports of one kind or another.

The result has been that, over more than two decades, Terry and I have watched countless soccer, t-ball, baseball, and football games. And don't forget all of the freezing cross country meets and rain-soaked track invitationals.

I coached many of those events, which meant that in addition to the natural nervousness that comes from hoping your own kid does well, I also had to worry about equal playing time and securing post-game snacks for other people's kids.

I wouldn't change any of it, of course, but lately I've marveled at how big a part of our life it has been.

It started with Elissa as the cutest little 5-year-old t-ball player you'll ever want to see, and it's likely to end in a couple of years on a high school track just before Jack graduates.

In between there have been some truly incredible moments. There have also been a few lowlights, including the time I told a portly soccer referee to "lay off the doughnuts" after I watched my son get viciously fouled with no call. (There should have been a whistle, but I wish I hadn't said that.)

Jack is our last student-athlete, and his specialty is distance running. He runs cross country and does the middle- and long-distance events in track. I think he's crazy, but then again, as a former sprinter, I think all distance runners are crazy.

I keep telling myself to savor every race and appreciate every moment we have left watching him compete. Everyone says it ends sooner than you'd like, and I can see how that will be true.

But I'll admit that sometimes, when I'm shivering my way through an eight-hour, 35-degree track meet, I allow myself to think for just a second that maybe it would be OK if we could fast-forward to Jack's senior year.

Then, of course, he zooms past us on the track and we cheer for him as loud as we can and it's all good again.

It's amazing how fast you warm up when you have the increasingly fleeting opportunity to watch your formerly little boy do his thing.

Fond memories of youth sports in the 70s and 80s

The photo above is not, it should be noted, one in which I or anyone I know appears. My little league softball/baseball career had just about ended by 1983.

But the one thing I share with the young men in this picture is the experience of having played dozens (maybe hundreds) of games wearing jeans. Not baseball pants, just good old Toughskins from Sears.

And, I should add, we were brilliant.

Or at least we thought we were. I played on some pretty good teams over the years and could hit the ball a fair distance, which is a good thing considering I had such a weak arm for an outfielder.

Here's what I remember about youth sports in the late 70s and early 80s:

• We were always coached by dads, many of whom smoked during practices and games.
• We wore those jeans but did have sweet matching t-shirts and hats.
• If you weren't a good hitter, no one on the other other team had any qualms about yelling out that fact when you came to the plate ("Move in, move in! He can't hit it out of the infield!") I'm not saying this is necessarily good, but it's pretty how much how it was.
• We got ice cream after games, but only if we won.

And I remember having fun. The whole thing really was a lot of fun.

I'm not saying it's radically different now, though I don't see the kids wearing jeans while they're playing. I spent more than a decade coaching and organizing youth soccer, T-ball, and baseball leagues, and the one thing kids of the 2000s shared with us Gen Xers is that they were just out there looking for a good time.

So that was always my philosophy as a dad-coach. Yes, I was going to make you work to get better, and yes, we were going to try to win. But if you're 9 years old and you're not out there having fun, then some adult (in this case me) has failed pretty badly.

You can go on your Old Person Rants about keeping score and participation trophies and all of that, but I'm not too inclined to listen. All I know is it's possible for young athletes to improve while still enjoying themselves. And if you're not doing both, you're not going to get much from the experience.

Of course, I still say sweating your way through a doubleheader in a pair of jeans in 85-degree weather builds character, but maybe that's just me.

For it's money they have and peace they lack

There is a cult within America – populated largely by white, middle-aged males, but not limited exclusively to them – that has romanticized the game of baseball beyond what it probably deserves. I am perhaps one of them, but at least I know I am one of them.

The reasons for this idolization of the sport are varied. For many, baseball was their best (and perhaps only) connection with their fathers. Addressing his dad, Sting once sang of a childhood in which "everything I did sought your attention." Many of us root for the teams our fathers rooted for because there is an indelible bond, strengthened ever further by blood, among those who live and die with the fortunes of a common athletic team.

For others, baseball represents a simpler time. In most cases, I think that simpler time for which they yearn was really no simpler than today, but it certainly seemed simpler in a pre-Internet age...and with the passing of time, of course, which tends to whitewash every flaw.

In the days before massive youth soccer leagues, baseball was the one sport in which most young men – it was softball for the girls – participated at one level or another. I played through the age of 13 until I could no longer keep up with the fastballs and had no hope of hitting a curveball. More importantly, I became a fan of the game at the age of 9 and remain one to this day.

It is a slow game, some will say, and I don't disagree with them. But "slow" does not equate with "boring." Watching a well-played baseball game is just about the best way I can think of to spend a summer afternoon, even if it takes 3+ hours to play and ends with a 2-1 score.

I bring this up because, as I type, my beloved Cleveland Indians have won an astounding 14 games in a row (the second consecutive season in which they've accomplished this feat). And tonight they go for No. 15 with ace pitcher and Cy Young Award candidate Corey Kluber on the mound.

So many people I come across these days, including my doctor as she poked and prodded me this morning as part of my annual physical, want to talk about the Tribe. Could this be their year? Will they stay healthy? What's up with Jose Ramirez's incredible bat? And his hair, for that matter?

They ask these questions with that note of restrained, even fatalistic, optimism that Cleveland sports fans have perfected. We have been burned in a variety of creatively cruel ways over the years, and there is a part of us that always assumes the worst will happen.

But the important thing is, talking about the Tribe is fun, and it makes us happy in a way. It gives us a few minutes to stop thinking about hurricanes and politics and flag protests and everything else that makes us cry and worry and act viciously toward one another.

There are poor people in this country, no doubt about that, but as comedienne Marsha Warfield said about hunger in the U.S., "It ain't but so bad." The vast majority of us have the essentials we need to live. Most have roofs over their heads and some sort of food on the table.

We have the things our wages can buy us. What we don't have, what perhaps we've never had, is peace. A sense that everything is going to be OK. Maybe that's impossible to have in this (or any) age, so we settle for small glimpses of it. We talk about the things that make us feel good and that remind us that humans have the capacity to do meaningful, inspirational things.

And I include baseball in that. It's just a game, you might say, and you're right. But it's also an escape, albeit temporary, from everything else that weighs on us. It is a way to connect to the part of our collective consciousness that shuts down in the face of worrisome news and constant conflicts and the mortality of this life.

There are bad characters in baseball as in anything. There is greed, there is selfishness, and there is cheating.

But there is also a purity and honesty and beauty there that mostly eludes us as we manage our way through the mundane details of everyday life.

It's purity, honesty and beauty that can be had for the price of a ticket, or even the click of a TV remote.

If acknowledging that simple fact constitutes over-romanticizing baseball, then I can only plead guilty.

But in the end, I'll be back season after season to watch and cheer and fret and fume. I follow other sports, but in the end, it was baseball that was my first love. And she never fails to deliver.

Getting back to youth sports coaching and why anyone would do it in the first place

I am, for the first time in more than two years, a youth soccer coach.

"Coach" used to be one of the ways I identified myself. Between 1999 and 2013, I coached a long string of youth t-ball/baseball and soccer teams, and also ran our local soccer club as league president for a couple of seasons.

During that time, my life was a blur of game and practice schedules, post-game snacks, making out lineups, etc. Coaches at the youth level have to coach their actual sports, of course, but they also must play the role of administrator, organizer, psychologist (to kids AND parents) and ball pumper.

Good Lord, I pumped up so many soccer balls in that decade-plus. With tiny little handheld pumps that require 5 minutes of hard exertion in order to blow up one size 4 soccer ball. How is it that we as a society are incapable of designing a soccer ball that will hold air for an entire season? Why do they all go flat? Why?

Anyway, through it all, despite the occasional hassles and inevitable calendar conflicts, I loved coaching kids. Just loved it. You build a special bond with them, and even years later when they're in high school they'll see you, wave and say, "Hi Coach!" Such a cool thing.

Then, in 2013, I had to step aside from the coaching ranks because there just weren't enough hours in the day. My then-new job at Vitamix was demanding in terms of time and travel, and I just couldn't swing regular attendance at practices and games from August through October (and then again in April and May) for another season while still surviving at work.

But now I'm back coaching my son Jack's U10 soccer team. We're well into the season and I'm excited about it. I love coming to the field and helping the kids have fun and become better soccer players. Win or lose, I love the post-game team talks. I love congratulating them on a job well done as much as I love trying to lift their spirits when things don't go so well.

Because that's why coaches do it, of course. Not because they're looking for any sort of recognition or monetary reward. You won't find either of those things at the rec soccer level anyway. It's for the equally selfish reason that it's fun. It's just fun. I get as much out of it (or more) than the kids do.

Like good teachers, good coaches stick with you for a lifetime. You remember them. You remember what they taught you. You remember catchphrases they used. You remember how happy you were when you made them proud, and you remember how crushed you were when you disappointed them.

Which is an awfully big responsibility for any coach to take on, I realize. And I don't want to be presumptuous and assume I'm making some huge difference in these kids' lives.

But even if you just teach them a little bit about responsibility, teamwork and all those gee-whiz concepts we attach to team sports because we want them to have redeeming social value, then you've done OK – both by the kids and by yourself.

And that alone is reason enough to hang a whistle around your neck and volunteer to help out. Assistant coaches are always welcome if you don't want the responsibility of being a head coach, and you don't necessarily have to understand the sport all that well. Just be willing to organize, teach and set a good example, and you're more than halfway there.

This isn't a post about baseball, it's a post about me being an emerging curmudgeon

According to this article from The New York Times, fewer and fewer people score baseball games by hand anymore.

The funny thing is, many reading this post have no idea what the phrase "score baseball games by hand" means.

For the uninitiated, one scores a baseball game by recording the result of every at-bat on a cardboard scorecard. Or at least they used to be cardboard back (say it with me) IN MY DAY.

There's a whole intricate system involved in scoring, the idea being that afterward you can relive the game by following the symbols and abbreviations that represent runs, hits, errors, strikeouts, fly outs, ground outs, line outs, and every other possible outcome.

One might justifiably ask why one would want to relive a baseball game one has already watched in person.

And I have no good answer.

Other than when I used to be a sports writer, I don't think I've ever gone back and retraced a baseball game solely by reviewing a scorecard. The real value of doing it, I always thought, was to really immerse and engage yourself in the game as it unfolds.

I learned to keep score from my dad. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the only good way to learn. It's a skill that must be learned from your father.

I taught Jared to do it a few years ago, though it isn't something he has practiced much, so he's probably a little rusty. But given a scorecard and a pencil, he could get by.

Anyway, like I said in the headline, this isn't a post about baseball. This is a post about me lamenting the slow death of yet another great American tradition.

I generally get bored when people talk about sinking moral values and the fall of Western Civilization as represented by the loss of some old-fashioned habit or pastime.

Yet here I am doing exactly that. Guilty of hypocrisy as charged, your honor.

I guess the fact that most people don't keep score anymore shouldn't have much of an effect on me. If I want to do it myself, I still can.

But finding fewer and fewer people in the stands with their scorecards brings home to me the reality of baseball's declining popularity. It used to be the American Sport. Now it's largely The Old Person's Sport.

Baseball is slow. Or at least it's slow compared to football, basketball and hockey. It's a game of strategy and thought. Yes, a certain amount of pandering and posturing has infected baseball in recent years, but for the most part, it's still a very 19th- and 20th-century game.

I love all sports, don't get me wrong. But to quote Mike Tyson, if baseball "fades into Bolivian," it will mean a large part of our culture has gone out with it.

And I'm pretty sure I hate that. Or at least I dislike it intensely, which is just about all the emotion I can muster these days.

Is this what it's like to get old? First your music goes out of style. Then the clothes you wear. Then the people you saw as vibrant adults growing up start to go away. Then it starts happening to your generation.

Somewhere in there is also the decline and fall of the things you thought were eternal. Like baseball.

Your own mortality looks you square in the face and laughs.

And the only way you know to fight back is to grab a scorecard and a pencil and take in a ball game on a warm summer afternoon.

Just remember, it's a backwards "K" when the batter strikes out looking. A regular "K" when he goes down swinging. The rest is pretty easy to figure out.

At the old ball game

Getting emotional about baseball is one of the worst cliches of the middle-aged man. Many of us get all blubbery about it for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is that it was the one thing that connected us to our fathers.

That's very true for me, though it wasn't the only thing my dad and I bonded over. We shared a common love for electronic gadgets, stand-up comedy and boxing, among other things. But baseball was pretty high on the list, too.

My dad played years and years of softball, both fast pitch and slow pitch. I was bat boy for a team in the 70s for which my dad was player-manager. Emphasis on "manager" there, as he would only play when absolutely necessary. He also spent years as a softball umpire and fanatical follower of the sport, so he and I spent a lot of time at softball diamonds.

One of the great things about going to softball tournaments with him was the concession stand. He would pretty much buy me whatever I wanted from the concession stand, though fortunately for him I was usually more interested in playing in the dirt or exploring the park.

This, you understand, was back when no one really thought twice about letting an 8- or 9-year-old run off on their own in a public park. You couldn't do that now, and maybe my dad shouldn't have done it then. But he did, and I was fine. And the memories are incredible.

When it comes to baseball, what I really remember about my dad is going to Cleveland Indians games with him. We went to quite a few Indians games back in The Day, and they were almost all bad. Seriously, the Tribe was horrible in those days. Going to a game and seeing them win was a rare and enjoyable treat.

Like a lot of guys (and girls, too, I'm sure), I have especially vivid memories of my first major league game. It was May 1978, and the Indians were playing the Baltimore Orioles. Getting the chance to actually go to old Cleveland Municipal Stadium was exciting, but the undisputed highlight was walking up the tunnel and seeing that field for the first time.

Oh my, was that something. TVs weren't exactly high-definition back then, so I had no idea how green and neatly kept the grass was. And the dirt was so well-manicured. And there was Andre Thornton, my favorite player. HE WAS ACTUALLY STANDING 50 FEET AWAY FROM ME. So were Duane Kuiper, Buddy Bell, Rick Manning and all of the other players on what was, for most everyone else in the world, a mostly forgettable team.

But they were MY team. And baseball at the time was MY game. And I was there with MY dad, who of course bought me a hot dog and a soda. I had such a great time.

You're probably expecting this story to end with an Indians loss, which in the context of my career as a Tribe fan would make perfect sense.  But they actually won. If I remember correctly, Kuiper had a couple of hits and the Indians chased Baltimore starter Dennis Martinez from the game early, like in the third or fourth inning, and we won, 7-5.

Ironically, Martinez would come to Cleveland and pitch for the Indians an amazing 17 years later as a 40-year-old veteran. He was key to the Indians' 1995 World Series run. But that particular night in the spring of 1978, Dennis lost, and there was at least one 8-year-old boy and his father in the stands who couldn't have been happier.

I still love baseball, of course. The Indians still are, and always will be, my favorite team. They haven't won a World Series since 1948, but year after year I put my faith in them, thinking the Law of Averages will serve up a championship at some point in my lifetime (when in fact that makes no mathematical or statistical sense at all...there's no guaranteeing the Indians will EVER win another World Series, in my lifetime or otherwise).

My dad passed away 12 years ago, so it has been a long time since I got the chance to go to a game with him. I miss him. And come to think of it, given how relatively few Indians games we get to these days, I miss baseball, too. Which I suppose is OK. The best games are always the ones with the best memories attached to them anyway.

Put me in, coach (or at least give me a brownie)

For more than a decade now, I have been a volunteer youth sports coach. This is an important position in which parents and kids alike rely on you to teach valuable qualities such as teamwork, discipline, and sportsmanship.

I'm kidding, of course. Not about being a youth sports coach, but about what parents and young athletes care most about. What they care about can be summarized as follows:

PARENTS: Winning, their child's playing time, and the soaring cost of youth sports participation

KIDS: Snack

I can understand the parents' priorities, because in addition to being a coach, I'm also the parent of young athletes. But I've never been able to explain the kids' fascination with their postgame or post-practice snack.

This is especially true with my U8 soccer team. These are kids in kindergarten, first and second grades. My halftime instructional/pep talks usually go something like this:

ME: "OK, guys, gather around me! Good job in the first half! We did a lot of good things and I really like how you guys hustled out there. Just a couple of problems, though. Let's watch our passing, and let's make sure we keep good spacing between us and our teammates, OK? Any questions? Yes, Johnny?"

JOHNNY: "Who brought snack?"

ME (taken aback even though I've been asked this question 8 bajillion times during my coaching career): "Snack? Um, I don't know. I'll have to check the list."

At this point, one of the other kids raises his/her hand and volunteers that his/her mom is, in fact, the one who brought snack today. This is followed by a barrage of excited questions from the other kids: What did your mom bring? Is there enough for us to have seconds? Did she bring those little packets of Oreos, too? And on and on and on...I quickly move to restore order:

ME: "Hey, hey, hey! Guys! Pay attention! Listen, we'll all get snack after the game is over. But right now we have another half of soccer to play and we need to work on our defense." (Johnny raises his hand again. I eye him warily before acknowledging his presence.) "Uh, yeah? Johnny?"

JOHNNY: "How come Mackenzie's mom forgot to bring snack last week? I was really sad that I didn't get any snack."

MACKENZIE (clearly offended by this attack on her mother): "She just forgot, OK? Don't YOU ever forget anything? You're not so perfect! She felt really bad that she forgot to bring snack. She said something about having all these darned kids and not being able to remember which one is supposed to be where at what time, and that my stupid soccer coach keeps signing her up for snack when she has no time to go out and buy anything because she's a single mom and works three jobs. And then she cried. She does that a lot. Anyway, I'm telling her you said that!"

ME (again attempting to restore order): "GUYS! GUYS! GUYS! Can we not talk about snack now? Anyone who mentions snack again before the end of the game won't get any snack at all, do you hear me? Now let's get back out onto the field and have some fun!"

JOHNNY (more to himself than anyone else): "I just really wanted snack, is all."

What I've learned over the years is that when kids show up for, say, a soccer practice or game, the last thing they actually want to do that day is play soccer. They would rather play on the playground. Or try another sport. Or look at dandelions. Or stand on their head. Or anything else except play soccer.

So therefore you have to keep things moving and interesting. Instead of boring drills, we engage in a variety of games and activities that are tangentially related to the sport of soccer but surreptitiously teach them the necessary foot skills. We move from one to another in rapid-fire fashion, because no matter how well-behaved the kids generally are (and they really are good kids, almost every one of them), the minute they put those shin guards on, they all suddenly have the attention span of Corky from "Life Goes On."

The parents are actually good people, too. Understandably, they are concerned that their child derives the highest possible benefit from their soccer or baseball experience, and they can be touchy if they perceive the slightest injustice in the amount of playing time allotted to the little tike. Many of them firmly believe their 7-year-old has the talent to earn a Division I college athletic scholarship, and that you as the volunteer coach are the only thing standing in the way.

But parents really are integral to the world of youth sports, fulfilling a variety of useful functions.

The most important of which, of course, is bringing snack.