Put me in coach, I'm ready to play.

Sports with kids are an interesting thing. You toe a fine line of being supportive to your child's curiosity and interest to try something new while attempting to innocuously teach them the value of working at a craft while having fun with it. During the summer of 2020, in the midst of staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the few recreational activities we were able to get our oldest son involved with was karate. The classes were able to be held outdoors with social distancing. It was a low contact activity centered on consistency, focus, and discipline, all things that had gone by the wayside as everyday life for all parents of young children was turned upside down in 2020.

Our 6-year-old took to it with joy and determination, we saw him working toward something with a goal set in mind for the first time aside from sports clinics and camps. He was in a regimen with goals and accountability, and there were moments of frustration for him and us, but he found something he liked going to several times a week. Amidst the chaos of our world turned upside down, we stumbled on a rewarding and character-building routine that helped him focus in a year out of focus, where routines for every parent got thrown in a tinder box, covered with gasoline, and lit up like the towering inferno.

Of course as we watched his progress and growth, we fell into those bittersweet moments parents always run into endlessly where you're proud of your kid’s development, but devastated at the rapid passage of time. How was this 6-year-old kid breaking wooden boards when some days it felt like just yesterday I was gagging at the smell of his crapped-in diapers? Maybe it was because I was still gagging at the smell of his little brother's crapped-in diapers and the days and years started blending together long before we were summoned to stay home as much as possible for over a year. He already surpassed the zero experience I had with karate, and it was truly amazing watching him go places unchartered in my life.

These are tough moments for parents where you have to set your pride and selfish and hopeless desire to keep your kids young forever aside with no displacement for it to appease your own heartache and ego. You're helping your kid through this crazy life while juggling your own. You try to get them to the places and milestones that will build them up and lead them on the road to being a good and decent human being, hopefully making their own mark on the world around them. As you hit these spots on the road that bring great pride and joy, it sometimes feels like they're taking parts of you with them, and in a way they are.

So while our oldest still does karate and enjoys it, like most kids he had other interests. We started with whiffle ball in the yard since 2020's baseball season was called. In spring 2021 the opportunity came up for baseball again, his first time playing. He had other brief programs of football, soccer, and basketball, but after an issue arose with the team needing several parents to take on organizing practices and games, this would be my first venture into coaching. I was never a great athlete, but I loved sports, almost as much a I loved music and films. Any of the athletic skills my son has shown to this point were likely inherited from my wife's basketball and softball experience through high school. My knowledge of the games far surpassed my skills at them some time ago. Mostly I was adept at watching and listening, so this would be an interesting endeavor.

Seeing my son develop enough of an interest in a sport I loved as a kid made me happy, but the first time I got on the field and blindly started imparting my amateur knowledge to him and his teammates was such a gift that he never knew he'd given me. I didn't worry about anything else in the world in that moment. Just trying to help a group of kids who's names I couldn't remember make contact with the ball, hold their gloves in front of their faces, and run the bases in the right direction were the unspoken goals. I avoided my inner Billy Martin that I've probably shown around my house in non-baseball situations more times than I care to admit, because I was just acting present, mostly improvising on the fly, focusing on the moment and what it required of me.

Why couldn't the rest of our lives as parents be so primitive and simple? Probably because we fill our heads with our own crap that we ultimately project onto our kids. Maybe there was a lesson to be learned in such Zen-like exercises as directing 6 year-olds toward finding their way around base paths. This was something like Field of Dreams mixed with Little Giants, sprinkled with The Sandlot. Slowing down and forgoing the surrounding noise for something at least engaging, at best productive certainly seems simple enough. Kids are good at that type of exercise, and they can bring out some of that magic in our old bones every now and then as we marvel at their growth while they figure out the ways of the world.

Now that I've seen some of this beginner baseball magic my son and his teammates can conjure up in this old soul, it seems like many of those most valuable lessons we get from our kids, they arrive in unlikely moments and places, and usually when we're not looking for them.

Listening to:

John Fogerty, "Centerfield"

Frank Sinatra, "You Make Me Feel So Young"

Stevie Wonder, "I Wish"

Don Henley, "Boys of Summer"

Brandi Carlile, "Save Part of Yourself"

Derek & The Dominoes, "Keep On Growing"

Electric Light Orchestra, "Strange Magic"

Death Cab For Cutie, "Stay Young, Go Dancing"

Pearl Jam, “Present Tense”