Padre Day

Playing in a league, for the first time, is the first taste of adrenaline and competition for most kids. Well, I should give a disclaimer because now kids have energy drinks, video games and computers to compete with that feeling.

But for the purposes of this post we will pretend they don't have those mind numbing addictions.

That first time your name is on a roster, is a ceremonial rite of childhood and public passage for humiliation.


There is no video game or drink that can give you the rush of a ball, connecting with the bat, echoeing 'cuh-rakuh' to all the other Parks and Recreation Ball diamonds and ears of fans in the stands.

You cannot duplicate the unexplicable nervous, knot in your gutt when, your clipboard carrying coach says your name along with the terrifying words: "You're up to bat".

The safety of the wood bench, where you have been picking the orange paint off of is now suddenly the only place you wanna be. Ridin the pine at this time is nooo problem. The chainlinked fence fortress standing between you and the diamond comes into magnified view.

My first time at bat with a pitching machine was terrifying. I can recall that moment when Coach Brown non-chalantly called my name and suddenly the bright, happy shiny sun in the light-blue sky turned into a ball of fire somewhere in El Paso, Texas.

Like being part of a gun-slingin' stand-off in a Marty Robbins cattle drive song, an eery hush came over my body, the dust, I'd boredly been kickin', somehow made its way into my mouth, mixing in with the last remanants of saliva. With a lone whistle somewhere in the anals of cowboy movies I stood up and dusted off my pink Levi jeans Dad had purchased at Cal-Ranch feebly walked up to my trusty horse, I mean bat and me and him hung our heads round the corner of the fence toward El Paso cause we're wanted: dead or alive.

Suddenly, that Marty Robbins song is becoming a metaphor of this game. Mom asking me if I wanted to play pitching machine softball was like that guilty cowboy fallin' hard for some bewitching black-eyed Senorita, Felina. At the time, both options for you and our heady hero seemed harmless, innocent choices.





Until he sees another man eyeing his coqueta, had one too many cervezas and jealousy rises up in him like a ticked off bull from some cartoon. Ya know, where they turn red. Maybe it's Tom and Jerry, anywayyys, he has to bust it outta El Paso to some forsaken desert in Mexico, I believe. Of course he misses the girl that started the whole darn dilemma in the first place, stupidly he risks his neck for a kiss.

Speakin' of first places, we are waiting for the pitch feeling criminal-like for even walkin' into that Serengetti of a diamond field, what with the other team and their coaches and parents eyes borin' into the back of your head.

Not being able to swallow because your tongue has doubled in size, suddenly home plate has pulled you in like some contraption offa Star Trek and you freeze into batter position. Only your eyes can dart back and forth from the gun barrel aimed straight at you, first base and Lamb boy below you.

Finally, you can empathize with 'ol Marty's cowboy crush because like him, you'll risk dodging bullets (balls), heat, and dehydration to make it back to the safe arms of the bench.

Bat, pointing upward like the steeple of a white-washed Catholic church the symbol of divine pleas heavenward intervention, slightly sways. You follow the line your bat drew in the dirt (so as to help you find your ghost batter (Johnnhy Cash nod) comrades' encouragement and last minute coaching.

Not that you can hear the advice due to the bowling ball weighted helmet pulled over your ears as tight and low as sombrero wearin' bull riders musterin' up the courage atop a bull in the shoots 'bout to be given the gate at the words: "ready boyz".

Like that rodeo vaquero, you nod that you're ready; but he's doin' cause he is, actually ready, and your head's bobblin' because of the heavy helmet.

Either way, The catcher is kneeling down in the dust, squinting up at me from behind a horrifying mask that causes a deja vu because one day I'd see that it resembled the video cover for Silence of the Lambs from the black wire rack at Digital Doohickeys. That sick feeling I felt for takin' my wobbly purple banana seated bike behind my Steve Perry haired, Journey lovin', black parachute and vans wearin' shoulder hunchin' BMX ridin', older brother of Torment.

Well, he stared at me as I assumed my position; knees bent, elbows awkwardly spread, ready to fly.


The only thing that kept me from fainting in the imaginary box around home plate, was the smell of your silk screen T-shirt that is, now, officially yours and a symbol to young and old, that you, are part of a team.

Somehow, I made it back to the bench intact. I rounded the bases like my brother-in-low on a cattle round-up.

Now, I am that coach that casually tells 'em to go on out there and face a new kind of pitching machine that looks like an oversized sling shot, forgetting, for a moment what it is like to be a kid, batting for the first time.


But coaching is helping me recall those sweet memories I can recall what it felt like, standing in the backyard a few feet from the new Asn tree; my stiff, new McGraw mitt purchased from Sunset Sports with my dad. (I bet he has the receipt somewhere.)