In The Country Of Baseball
My two favorite baseball essays are by Roger Angell, "In The Country of Baseball" and "The Web Of the Game."
I felt like I was in the country of baseball when I took Emmett out to play in his first baseball tournament in Concord this weekend. We played at the J.O.B.L. Complex (Junior Optimist Baseball League. Inevitably I began contemplating the Senior Pessimist Baseball Association) which is out beyond an industrial park, abutting a long row of refinery tanks. Fittingly, the complex looks like baseball fields metastasized - growing one after the other and filling acres. There were something like 12-15? fields from little cute pee wee T-ball fields to regulation high school fields. That's a damn lot of baseball and softball. It was both nice and odd at the same time. Nice to be able to kill time between games by having innumerable places to throw the ball or have some hitting. Weird to think that this is such a massive focus of that community.
I'm still trying to suss out Emmett's traveling team, The Albany Eagles. Most of the kids are decent players though, to be honest, a number seem to be on the team because their dads have been involved with the league and tournament team for so long. Only a handful of them really struck me as being all-star quality when we played against them this year - but that's in part because they're all on the 8 y.o. team, and most of the best players on other teams were 9+.
Emmett hit a triple in his first at-bat which was an excellent introduction to his new teammates. He hit well all weekend, spraying line drives with regularity. The best player on the Eagles is Reed - who played in Triple A this year. He's one of the bigger kids on the team, but with an athletic (as opposed to Big Lug) build. He does everything with easygoing confidence, and competence. He's by far the best schooled player out there on both fundamentals and gameplay. He's always in the right position, fields cleanly, threw somebody out at home as the cutoff man at short. All that stuff. Also a very strong, live arm when he's pitching. He's our best pitcher. He's very likeable and even keeled which makes him stand out on this team, which is a bit high strung with some pouty divas. (Some kids didn't make an immediately favorable impression after my sweetly humble Angels this season.) Reed's dad is a tall skinny academic looking guy who seems both proud and befuddled that he spawned such a stud. Despite all this, Reed doesn't give off the sports star vibe. He's more like the super competent cowboy that everybody respects on the cattle drive.
Marcelo is the Eagles manager. He's mid-thirties, swarthy (Italian? Hispanic?), low key but intense, athletic build, sort of quietly charismatic but approachable. I like him a lot. He's very good with the kids - soft spoken but direct. His son, Matthew, is an excellent player -- one of the potential stars on the team. Matthew's slender, and fields, hits and pitches very well.
Wayne is the other main coach. (I've mentioned him before from the Double-A season. He's the one who always takes a lot of struggling players on his team to teach them the game.) I also like Wayne a lot. He's closer to my age, trim and athletic, balding but handsome, very vocal, very encouraging. Very friendly and likeable guys guy. Wayne is the one who lobbied hard for Emmett to be on the team.
His son Jack is one of Emmett's good friends from school. Jack is tall, very solidly built, sandy brown hair, wide open face, freckly. Has the same kind of rough and tumble vibe as Emmett (one reason they get along. Lots of pushing and jostling and wrestling.) Jack loves to play catcher and does a good job at it, though he's a bit in love with all the gestures of catching. He throws his mask off even to pick up a foul ball. Stuff like that. He's well schooled at it, but dawdles behind the plate in a way that I dislike. When Emmett catches he's up and challenging the runners on every pitch, and he helps the pitcher get into a good rhythm.
So we played four games this weekend. Lost the first one, 2-1. Real close, well played game. Second game we lost 7-2. We basically had one bad inning that cost us. Came back on Sunday and won easily, 8-3. Then lost the second game in a very tight contest with the unbeaten host team from Concord, 8-7.
So even though we went 1-3 over the weekend, we're still in a semi-final game this evening. Apparently there's some complicated run differential math involved as well as W-L. Emmett didn't get to pitch all weekend, which sucked for him but he didn't get pouty about it. Frankly, he's better than any of the other pitchers except Reed. But Marcelo never saw Emmett pitch in Double-A because we played his team early in the season before Emmett started pitching. But we've lobbied to get him to pitch, and I think he will next weekend in our next Tournament.
I'm still very ambivalent about the whole Tournament Sports world. Since I'm not a coach, I'm not nearly as involved. I'm welcome to help shag whiffleballs and such, but the whole team is already crawling with superinvolved Dads. Also, while I do like most of the kids on the team, at least three of them have exhibited pouty, whiny, cocky behavior that's very offputting to me.
During Emmett's lone gaffe of the weekend, he was playing shortstop and called the ball on an infield pop up. But the pitcher and third basemen converged toward him so he backed off. Of course, once you call it the ball is yours and it's their fault if they get in the way. The ball dropped and the pitcher bitched him out on the field.
Now...that's the kind of stuff that gets a short choke chain from me. I'm way more into sportsmanship than winning, and I'd have had that kid on the bench for an inning after a brief, sharp talk.
Emmett got really down about it too, even though he wound up ending the inning on a very heady play where the second baseman booted the ball, which Emmett collected and made the force out at second.
But other than that incident, Emmett had a lot of fun, especially running around with a pack of like minded boys between games on Sunday. Pure, goat-boy headbutting bliss for him. And he played very well in all four games, making excellent plays in the field, catching well and hitting more consistently than anybody except maybe Julian. I like Julian - he's got a lovely left-handed line drive stroke and makes regular contact, very even tempered, smart player, good in the field. He's mixed race, Asian - looks almost Hawaiian.
So Emmett's Mom is taking him to the semifinal game tonight. I'm already clear that I'm not going to attend every practice or game, and that's a little weird too. But I'll let the season play out before I come to any conclusions about it. See how Emmett feels, how we manage the commitment, that kind of stuff. We'll see.
I felt like I was in the country of baseball when I took Emmett out to play in his first baseball tournament in Concord this weekend. We played at the J.O.B.L. Complex (Junior Optimist Baseball League. Inevitably I began contemplating the Senior Pessimist Baseball Association) which is out beyond an industrial park, abutting a long row of refinery tanks. Fittingly, the complex looks like baseball fields metastasized - growing one after the other and filling acres. There were something like 12-15? fields from little cute pee wee T-ball fields to regulation high school fields. That's a damn lot of baseball and softball. It was both nice and odd at the same time. Nice to be able to kill time between games by having innumerable places to throw the ball or have some hitting. Weird to think that this is such a massive focus of that community.
I'm still trying to suss out Emmett's traveling team, The Albany Eagles. Most of the kids are decent players though, to be honest, a number seem to be on the team because their dads have been involved with the league and tournament team for so long. Only a handful of them really struck me as being all-star quality when we played against them this year - but that's in part because they're all on the 8 y.o. team, and most of the best players on other teams were 9+.
Emmett hit a triple in his first at-bat which was an excellent introduction to his new teammates. He hit well all weekend, spraying line drives with regularity. The best player on the Eagles is Reed - who played in Triple A this year. He's one of the bigger kids on the team, but with an athletic (as opposed to Big Lug) build. He does everything with easygoing confidence, and competence. He's by far the best schooled player out there on both fundamentals and gameplay. He's always in the right position, fields cleanly, threw somebody out at home as the cutoff man at short. All that stuff. Also a very strong, live arm when he's pitching. He's our best pitcher. He's very likeable and even keeled which makes him stand out on this team, which is a bit high strung with some pouty divas. (Some kids didn't make an immediately favorable impression after my sweetly humble Angels this season.) Reed's dad is a tall skinny academic looking guy who seems both proud and befuddled that he spawned such a stud. Despite all this, Reed doesn't give off the sports star vibe. He's more like the super competent cowboy that everybody respects on the cattle drive.
Marcelo is the Eagles manager. He's mid-thirties, swarthy (Italian? Hispanic?), low key but intense, athletic build, sort of quietly charismatic but approachable. I like him a lot. He's very good with the kids - soft spoken but direct. His son, Matthew, is an excellent player -- one of the potential stars on the team. Matthew's slender, and fields, hits and pitches very well.
Wayne is the other main coach. (I've mentioned him before from the Double-A season. He's the one who always takes a lot of struggling players on his team to teach them the game.) I also like Wayne a lot. He's closer to my age, trim and athletic, balding but handsome, very vocal, very encouraging. Very friendly and likeable guys guy. Wayne is the one who lobbied hard for Emmett to be on the team.
His son Jack is one of Emmett's good friends from school. Jack is tall, very solidly built, sandy brown hair, wide open face, freckly. Has the same kind of rough and tumble vibe as Emmett (one reason they get along. Lots of pushing and jostling and wrestling.) Jack loves to play catcher and does a good job at it, though he's a bit in love with all the gestures of catching. He throws his mask off even to pick up a foul ball. Stuff like that. He's well schooled at it, but dawdles behind the plate in a way that I dislike. When Emmett catches he's up and challenging the runners on every pitch, and he helps the pitcher get into a good rhythm.
So we played four games this weekend. Lost the first one, 2-1. Real close, well played game. Second game we lost 7-2. We basically had one bad inning that cost us. Came back on Sunday and won easily, 8-3. Then lost the second game in a very tight contest with the unbeaten host team from Concord, 8-7.
So even though we went 1-3 over the weekend, we're still in a semi-final game this evening. Apparently there's some complicated run differential math involved as well as W-L. Emmett didn't get to pitch all weekend, which sucked for him but he didn't get pouty about it. Frankly, he's better than any of the other pitchers except Reed. But Marcelo never saw Emmett pitch in Double-A because we played his team early in the season before Emmett started pitching. But we've lobbied to get him to pitch, and I think he will next weekend in our next Tournament.
I'm still very ambivalent about the whole Tournament Sports world. Since I'm not a coach, I'm not nearly as involved. I'm welcome to help shag whiffleballs and such, but the whole team is already crawling with superinvolved Dads. Also, while I do like most of the kids on the team, at least three of them have exhibited pouty, whiny, cocky behavior that's very offputting to me.
During Emmett's lone gaffe of the weekend, he was playing shortstop and called the ball on an infield pop up. But the pitcher and third basemen converged toward him so he backed off. Of course, once you call it the ball is yours and it's their fault if they get in the way. The ball dropped and the pitcher bitched him out on the field.
Now...that's the kind of stuff that gets a short choke chain from me. I'm way more into sportsmanship than winning, and I'd have had that kid on the bench for an inning after a brief, sharp talk.
Emmett got really down about it too, even though he wound up ending the inning on a very heady play where the second baseman booted the ball, which Emmett collected and made the force out at second.
But other than that incident, Emmett had a lot of fun, especially running around with a pack of like minded boys between games on Sunday. Pure, goat-boy headbutting bliss for him. And he played very well in all four games, making excellent plays in the field, catching well and hitting more consistently than anybody except maybe Julian. I like Julian - he's got a lovely left-handed line drive stroke and makes regular contact, very even tempered, smart player, good in the field. He's mixed race, Asian - looks almost Hawaiian.
So Emmett's Mom is taking him to the semifinal game tonight. I'm already clear that I'm not going to attend every practice or game, and that's a little weird too. But I'll let the season play out before I come to any conclusions about it. See how Emmett feels, how we manage the commitment, that kind of stuff. We'll see.