Pastimes

This is a big night for my son.

His 10-year-old All-Star baseball team faces elimination from the tournament – and he’s the starting pitcher.

He’s waited two years for this moment.

Last year, questionable focus – a state of mind I attribute to a lack of maturity – left him relegated to right field, despite the fact that his strong arm and pitching in the regular season was largely what got him selected to the team.

Since then, he’s worked hard. He thinks more about what he does and appreciates the fact that it’s his choice to decide if he wants to be a good player or a great player.

He’s come through for his team, leading them on the mound to a regular season championship.

The thing is, this might be his last opportunity on the mound for a public league.

I want it to end well for him – not to brag, or feel better than anyone. But to leave in a better way than he started five years ago.

This part of the country and particularly this part of South Carolina is a breeding ground for baseball players.

Just look at the two state universities who battled it out over the weekend for who gets to play for a National Championship tonight. A look at the roster of players for the Gamecocks and Clemson shows the kids who play for the national powers come from the communities we all know.

At an early, age children in this area are pulled out of “rec ball,” the league where you play for your town and compete against your friends. By the time a player has gone from 5-year-old tee ball to 7-year-old coaches pitch to 10-year-old kids pitch, he’s played against and with nearly every player in his league.

They’ve grown up together playing baseball. The community comes to the park as the park lights flicker on with an orange and deep blue sunset taking form behind them. The parents become friends (and – yes – frenemies.)

It’s what it’s supposed to be.

However …

The pursuit of excellence in baseball here is relentless.

Parents want their kids to “keep up,” talking in the stands when the boys still haven’t lost their first tooth about how great it would be for their boy to get a scholarship to play.

By the time the boys are in 3rd grade, parents pull them from the recreation leagues and place them on private teams that play in bi-weekly tournaments. The term is “travel ball” because teams sometimes travel all over the Southeast to compete against the best.

“Rec ball” has become a pejorative. “Travel ball” is a term thrown around as a status symbol.

In “travel ball,” these superbly trained baseball machines show up with their matching bat bags and helmets and cleats and play other boys they’ve never seen and might only see another three or four times a year, if that. They play, then they disperse, back to their private, 3-days-a-week practices.

After Asa’s rec championship game, the parents talked with one another while the kids wearing different colors chased each other on the bases. You don’t see that in the private leagues.

There is a benefit: You can put together the team you want, a team with parents you know you’ll like with kids you know your boy will get along with. That is unless you’re in it for reasons that might lead you to be on a team simply because you want to play “travel ball.”

Everyone is trying to keep up, whatever that means. Left in the wake of hyper-competitiveness is the recreation league that is decimated by the exodus of talent.

As much as I don’t like the trend, my son will play the private leagues next year. He simply wouldn’t enjoy playing kids who are average players. The friends he’s played with for so long will all be moving over. They have to. There’s simply no fun in playing against kids who can’t catch or throw or hit. The best we can hope for is to try to get on the same teams, which is a problem in and of itself when you’ve only got 12 spots on a team.

While I will miss the nights at the city ball park where kids play their friends like they should, I’ll simply have to make the best of the culture around me.

I’m not concerned about my kid getting a scholarship.

I just want him to leave with the same sweet taste he had when we first put his little body in a tee ball uniform and let him do what he loves.

He’s lost a few baby teeth since then. And he still has a few now.

I hope this last night feels as special as all the years leading up to this moment have.


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