Play ball (maybe)!

And now the baseball talk shall commence … and because I have a gazillion female readers and, like, two male readers, I am hopeful that there are lots and lots of ladies out there who enjoy the game, for, if not, I fear that, in the weeks and months ahead, the traffic to this here blog is going to dry up and blow away like a tumbleweed.

Big day over here at Casa de Scratches. BIG. MUY GRANDE (possibly).

It’s opening day for the Red Sox (perhaps) … which is a big deal to us ’round these parts. We loves us some Red Sox, I tell ya. I don’t exactly know why, but there is just something joyous and uplifting about the onset of baseball season. (I think one of the minor but still significant reasons is the fact that baseball season is perhaps the only period of time during which I can turn on the television in the evening and find a program that doesn’t cause me to spontaneously vomit.)

But that’s not all. Something even bigger is afoot.

“Bigger than opening day for the Red Sox? Do tell!”

OK: It is also opening day for the White Sox (weather permitting)!

“The White Sox? Like, the Chicago White Sox? Since when do you give a shit about them?”

Great question: I began giving a shit about them the week before last, at which time I was told I would be coaching them this season—“them” being a group of 5- and 6-year-old tee-ball players, to include my son.

Sadly, the inherent humor of the previous paragraph will largely be lost on most of you, because you are unaware of just how disinterested and inept I was when it came to playing baseball—or any other team sport, for that matter—during my childhood. Had you conducted a poll of my public-school classmates on things I might be called later in life, you would have received many answers—probably to include “clown” and/or “convict”—but I can assure you with great certainty that the word “coach” would not have been among the replies.

And, unless you’ve already read the letter I wrote Zan last summer, you also are unaware that my involvement in coaching tee-ball began last year after Wonder Woman volunteered me to be the assistant coach for Zan’s team—and then informed me after the fact that she had done so.

I had always pictured cheering on Zan from the sidelines with the rest of the parents while some former high-school jock coached him on the fundamentals of the game. I most definitely had not pictured being the guy standing out there on the field answering to “coach” for a dozen kids who were looking to me as the Supreme Authority on the game.

And yet, last year’s tee-ball session ended up being one of the best father/son bonding experiences Zan and I have ever had.

His involvement in tee-ball last year is something I credit with facilitating the largest and most positive developmental leap thus far in his short little life. Before tee-ball, he was the kid clinging to my or his mother’s leg on the sidelines of whatever group activity he was supposed to be taking part in, be it a sport or a birthday party or a school recital or whatever. Tears often accompanied the clinging. I feared he would spend his childhood getting picked on, and would grow up to be a maladjusted, socially inept misanthrope. (Yes, I tend to blow things out of proportion.)

But baseball is a game he knew and liked and was interested in playing … and I’m not a detective, but I’m guessing that having me as his coach made him a lot more comfortable about participating in the sport.

So, when it came time for people to volunteer this year, I stepped up to the plate [and a collective groan rises from the audience at the writer's use in this context of such a totally clichéd and weatherworn baseball analogy metaphor] and volunteered to be a full-fledged coach. Zan is psyched, and I am thrilled to do something with—and for—him that is so significant and meaningful to both of us.

Coaching Zan’s tee-ball team and watching the Red Sox on TV with him and taking him to Fenway Park and playing catch in the backyard and bringing him to a nearby ball field for some batting practice are great and rewarding things in and of themselves … but I feel even more value in them because, for the most part, I didn’t have those experiences when I was his age. (It is what my social-worker wife would call a “corrective experience.”)

Should he decide someday that he doesn’t like baseball, or following the Red Sox with me, or both, so be it, that’s fine. But, for now, I must admit, I do have this romantic vision of he and I being able to bond over baseball for years to come. As someone who never had a close relationship with my own father while growing up, I suddenly feel like, in baseball, I’ve found a second language … one tailor-made for strengthening the bond between father and son, regardless of whatever else might be happening in each of our lives as the years go by. (Ironically, my interest in the Red Sox has caused my father to become more interested in them as well, and because we have massively differing opinions on almost everything, talking about the Sox has proven to be a most welcome safe haven for us.)

Beyond the whole father-and-son thing, Wonder Woman, the kids and I have a great deal of fun following the Sox together. Sure, being only three years old, Jayna is more interested in Wally, the team’s mascot, but, even still, she gets excited when she sees the Red Sox on TV, or when we all go to Fenway together, or when she sees a Red Sox logo somewhere, and I know that it is largely because she relates those things with us having fun together as a family.

Did I mention that I’m really, really thankful that I finally became a diehard Red Sox fan and baseball enthusiast?

SO … the Red Sox are scheduled to play their first regular-season game at 2 p.m. today, and my White Sox are scheduled to have their first practice at 5 p.m. … BUT … it is 40-some-odd degrees out and raining, which means that the Red Sox might not be playing, and that my White Sox almost surely won’t be practicing … all of which is fine with me, because it’ll give me more time to finish reading “The Baffled Parent’s Guide to Coaching Tee Ball”! (No, I’m totally not kidding. It’s right here beside me.)