This past weekend I got a glimpse of something I could not have anticipated. After fifteen years of coaching national-caliber water polo, I had my first day on the job in a new arena: Assistant Coach of my 4-year-old son’s tee ball team. Game One. It was part mayhem, part enlightenment, and part pure joy—I was actually surprised by how much of each was packed in to the hour-long enterprise.
Sport, it turns out, truly has built into it quite a bit of the abstract: Something aficionados likely become accustomed to and take for granted. As I watched the gears turning in our neophyte players, I could see them pondering: Why confine yourself to running around in a square when you can run to the first base and just keep on going? Actually, why not cut back through the pitcher’s mound and head home? Why run at all—I’m already here!
Our catcher made what must have seemed to him a tremendously strategic play: as the runner barreled towards home plate from third, he stepped out in front of “fourth base” to grab him. Why, he must have wondered, must I be holding the sacred ball in order to touch this player attacking our home? And, when I finally do acquire this sought-after ball, why relinquish it to the other team—or to any of my teammates, for that matter?
As I stood in the outfield with one of the other assistant coaches, I realized just how convoluted sport must seem to “outsiders,” be they young people first experiencing it, or people from other cultures watching such an activity (cricket and curling come to mind for many Americans).
But this all plays a part in what yields such joy for those enthralled with sport. The sporting arena exists on a plane separate from our societal endeavors and other activities. With its self-imposed rules—why not throw the ball off the tee?—and internally defined values—home plate is sacrosanct, but only if during a game—everything outside the game becomes momentarily meaningless. That leaves, by definition, the momentarily meaningful, all enclosed in one special place. Rarely does life provide us with such esoteric opulence: a unique moment in which the meaningful is clearly defined, and we—and our children—can relish in the virtues this provides.
With everything defined as such, the joy of it all can come to life. Sport allows us to go all-in in ways not possible elsewhere: Swinging a metal stick with all your might and knocking a ball into the hallowed field. Running at full capacity, concluding by sliding through the dirt. Throwing a hard, round object with the whip of your arm. Never mind that this particular game saw zero outs—zero. Balls were thrown. Sticks were swung. Joy was experienced.
From this vantage point during Game One, if you look closely enough, you can see the buds of sport’s deeper virtues seeping in. The team, with the encouragement of our head coach, began to cheer for their teammates at bat. They applauded their competitor after the game. Two of my son’s new teammates approached him to give a “high five”—four and five year old boys who had just met, sharing a moment to extend themselves and offer a “good job.”
On various occasions over the weekend, I had the opportunity to share my and Jake’s inauguration to tee ball. In response, nearly every parent had their own memories from their respective children’s Day One on the sports field. There’s a book to be written here: “My First At Bat: Stories From Tee Ball’s Annals.”
Don’t let me disabuse you: this was a first for me as much as it was for Jake. I sat at our breakfast table that morning, next to Jake wearing his team shirt he’d slept in the night before, and told him how excited I was for him to go out and be his best that day. Be your best: a mantra that has been at my core as a coach and in my daily life for the past fifteen years—and I was saying it to my son over a bowl of oatmeal for the first time.
One parent of a player on Jake’s team, clearly a veteran parent, had assumed the most important job of the day: bringing the snacks, including the paragon of youth sport, the orange wedges. The boys sat together to relish in their collective effort. Not for their win—we didn’t keep score and, with no outs, one must imagine the game ending in a tie—but for the joy of it all. And, likely, in small part for surviving the mayhem. And, I have a feeling, for the little bit of enlightenment they experienced through it all.
