When the Houston Astros won the World Series in November 2017, baseball season ended for most people. But not for me, the mom of a professional pitcher. Having raised one of those means that baseball has wormed its way into some perpetual corner of my psyche, a lot like how baseball lingo has seeped throughout our American culture and language.
I still can’t hit a ball with a bat to save my life. But watching my son, Adam, play, and learning about the game and the business of baseball, taught me a lot about raising a child who knows what they want and has the confidence to go after it.
Sitting through hundreds of games, in everything from freezing sleet in Nashville (our son played for Vanderbilt, pitching the last two innings of Vanderbilt’s 2014 College World Series win before signing with the Detroit Tigers) to dripping humidity in Florida, is probably to blame for the fact that my brain now easily perceives a surprising amount of life through baseball-related associations. Even as I was writing the first baseball-related essay that got me a paid byline, about how kooky it had been for my husband and me to raise an athlete, it occurred to me that he and I were both learning to perfect our pitches. His lessons happened on a Tigers minor-league mound, figuring out how to get batters to miss his fast ball. Mine happened on my laptop, figuring out how to get editors not to miss my queries.
Baseball is an integral part of our American culture because so many aspects of the game translate well to other endeavors. That includes parenting your child to swing for the fences, whatever their interests and talents. So:
1. Why not dream big (and then buckle up for the ride)? To want to be a professional pitcher, you have to be a little nuts, because the stats are not in your favor. Only 0.5 percent of high school baseball players will eventually be drafted; only 10 percent of those drafted will make it to the major leagues.
But is the slim chance of fame or fortune really the point of encouraging your 10-year-old to dream big, as long as it’s their dream? Isn’t it just to raise a happy kid who knows what they want and what they love, and has the determination to go after it? When it came to that, all we asked our son with each new more-competitive baseball team he made was: “Are you still having fun?’’ He always said yes.
Only then did we also agree to a lot of sacrifice in terms of time and money, but nothing beyond our middle-class means. Yes, we were fortunate that after he graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School Vanderbilt wanted him enough to make the roughly $60,000-a-year cost of his matriculating there feasible. But because we hadn’t been in it for the scholarship or parental ego boost, all of it was worth it — and still is because it’s what our son wanted and wants to do. I thank God that at least Thanksgiving and Christmas fall within his offseason, because he’s missed so many other holidays, family vacations, birthdays, his sister’s college graduation, and even a family wedding that fell between January and the end of October.
2. Practice really is (almost) everything. Raw talent is everywhere. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis of the 10,000 hours necessary to achieve exceptional expertise in any field, I figure MLB pitchers spend that developing a nasty four-pitch arsenal.
But if you’ve nodded your head to point No. 1, you know that, for almost every athletic child, the “fun first’’ principle comes packaged in more than one sport. We did what came naturally to our parenting preference for both of our kids (his sister also played several sports well): One sport per season, and each season featured a different sport.
In fact, specialization in a sport too early can lead to burnout and even be physically harmful because it too easily causes overuse injuries. In a recent study, researchers surveyed 708 minor-league baseball players and found that only 25 percent of them specialized in baseball before age 12. Those who specialized later were actually more likely to win college scholarships.
3. Success takes tenacity (and luck). To seal the deal for the Astros on that Game 7 mound with 54,000 fans roaring in the stands, relief pitcher Charlie Morton had traveled a long nine-year road of setbacks and success in the MLB, for four different franchises. Sports Illustrated referred to him as “previously unremarkable.’’ Huh? They should have talked to his mother before inking that!
All I knew as a young mom, and still think now, is that in the playbook of life lessons my husband and I were using, playing a sport was supposed to teach our kids good, clean fun; healthy habits; and how to handle not-so-fun lessons:
•How to graciously lose or to handle not getting the playing time you think you earned
•Self-reflection and resilience following a poor performance
•Overcoming setbacks such as getting injured and then having to work your way back
• The ethics of true leadership in doing your job, the right way, even when a coach or a teammate might not be.
David Epstein, author of “The Sports Gene,’’ encourages young athletes to ask themselves questions that will facilitate this kind of thinking: What did I do well? What didn’t I do well? Who are the people who can help me get there? In any sport, or any pursuit, tenacity is always key to success.
And then there’s luck. Epstein adds, “All athletes must be evaluators of their own development, especially as they all get better and better.’’ The higher up you go, the narrower the line becomes between who wins and who loses (about 35 percent of World Series championships have gone to a tie-breaking Game 7).
In my 20s, before I appreciated how razor thin that line was in professional baseball, I used to dodge my employer’s free box-seat Boston Red Sox tickets. Then I gave birth to a baseball-playing son, loved watching him play and learned to love the game itself. To date, I’ve probably logged 10,000 hours watching baseball, trying to understand it.
I now watch for my own enjoyment, as well as to cheer my son’s path and share in his world. Do I like baseball all the time? Nope. Home runs that make fans stand up and cheer don’t play so well with me; I prefer “swing-and-a-miss’’ at-bats.
That said, I’m all in hoping my son gets his shot at “the show.’’ But no matter the outcome, he knows his dad and I will remain his biggest fans.
