Thanksgiving - Part I: Baseball's Been Very, Very Good to Me...

Thursday is Thanksgiving, so this week’s musings will focus on oddball things I’m thankful for. First, I’m thankful for knowing I should’ve written that last sentence as “…oddball things for which I’m thankful” to avoid ending the sentence with a preposition, but could choose to write it the way I did. But that’s not the oddball thing…

It’s baseball…yes, baseball, that I’m thankful for. I love the game; started playing when I was seven or eight. We didn’t have T-ball back then. Just like the pros, not everyone got to play, we faced a pitcher, swung wooden bats, wore stirrup socks, and the uniforms were wool, so it was the real thing. The smell of oiled leather gloves, the sound of a ball popping into the pocket, the sting of making contact at the plate, the rituals, the superstitions, the stats, the strategy, I loved all of it.

I played until I was fifteen. At fourteen, I realized my playing career was coming to an end, that retirement was imminent. I remember the exact game when that fact became apparent. It was my first year playing Babe Ruth League and most of the teams were “community” or grade-school based. I played for Shiloh. The game was against Indian Trail. Tim Stokes, who was a year older, was pitching, and we’d all heard about Tim. He could bring it. My first at bat against Tim, I learned three things: 1) a baseball could be thrown so fast that you could actually hear it, 2) I couldn’t hit the hook, and 3) that meant I’d play one more year, at best. It wasn’t his fastball that got me, though. Tim’s curve ball looked like it started somewhere around third base, head high, which had me bailing out toward the third base dugout and beyond as the ball snuck across the outside corner of the plate for a strike. I got to know him in high school. He was a great guy, great sense of humor, and a helluva an athlete.

But yep, that settled it. That I couldn’t play at a higher level didn’t change the way I felt about the game, though. Years later, I ended up coaching rec ball where I met several life-long friends and a lot of fantastic kids. I coached AAU ball for several years, too, for the Charlotte Royals. Won a state championship, went to a couple of National Tournaments, and had friends become family. Had a ton of laughs. Watched Jake “The Snake” Rayner, who years  later married one of my favorite students, hit his mom with the ball while he was warming up to pitch. Didn’t hurt her, she was probably forty or fifty yards away. On a hill. Okay, technically she was still in the parking lot. Got to experience a perfect game when Joe Cox (yep, same Joe Cox who went on to quarterback the Georgia Bulldogs) faced the minimum and allowed no one to reach base, not even a walk. I could go on about other players, parents, tournaments…on and on…

So yeah, I’m thankful for baseball. I still love the game itself, but what I am also thankful for are the friendships, the love and laughter shared, and the memories baseball provided over the years. And the baseball gift I’m most thankful for is what else it taught me that summer I faced Tim Stokes—you didn’t have to be really good at something in order to appreciate the intrinsic beauty of that thing. And that, I’m happy to say, has made my life all the richer.

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