Baseball Gave Me Somewhere to Belong When I Needed it Most
The reason I will always love one sport above all others ...
When I began playing baseball, the Big Red machine dominated the diamond, and Pete Rose was my hero. My version of the proverbial sandlot was the tiny yard behind the home where I grew up - a small, bumpy patch of grass surrounded by four-foot hedges. There, I competed against my older sister and kids my mom was paid to watch after school.
Baseball was my first love, and it has been the most enduring love of my life. It runs deep. I can’t summon a recollection of its genesis. But, clearly, it goes back as far as the earliest message of God my mother conveyed to me as a toddler.
“He always was, and He always will be.” So it is with my love of baseball.
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There are many aspects of baseball itself, that I love. I love the pace - easy and gentle. I love the choreography - fleeting and graceful. I love the sounds - the crack of the bat on the ball and the pop of the ball in the glove; the low rumble of the crowd that erupts into roars. I love the slightly uncomfortable intensity, and the urgency that ensues when the ball is in play. I love the emotional engagement between the hitter and the pitcher; that moment when the pitcher is contemplating speed and location and spin and the batter is trying to guess what will come next. I love the fraction of a second he has to respond. I love the way it feels to get all of the ball and to get lost in that moment, attempting to run in a complete circle. To come home – where most of us belong.
Those are some of the reasons I love it. But, the older I get, the more I understand it’s something far more significant.
Baseball gave me somewhere to belong.
I was born to parents of seven other children, six years after my youngest sibling. There was never a hint of an overt message that I was a mistake, or even the least bit unwanted. But, in a home like that, how could a parent possibly have much time for yet another kid? I felt that. A lot of the attention I received as a child was from my other siblings, who just wanted to be kids themselves.
Then, there was religion. We were Catholic. But, we weren't just any Catholics. My parents made a home in our neighborhood so my mom could walk one short block to St. Patrick's to attend mass, early every morning, before we awoke. My dad was a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus and had the ring and the sword to prove it. Most of the kids in my family attended parochial school at one time or another. I did not.
When I was three or four, my parents stopped going to church, and so did we, who were still under their care. My older siblings were married with kids by that time, and they still attended mass every Sunday.
In our family, the topic was off limits. My parents had their reasons. They said it was nobody's business.
Each Saturday evening and Sunday morning, from our front window, I would watch my friends, my neighbors, my community, my cousins, and some of my siblings walk by our house on the way to mass. I was a Catholic who wasn't a Catholic. And, like every kid, I just wanted to be like everyone else.
I wanted to feel like I belonged.
Then, at eight years old, I began playing organized baseball. I was this tiny little kid with red hair, and freckles covering his face. Tanner Boyle comes to mind - too little for anything to fit him well.
I looked like I couldn't throw to the backstop from the batter's box. But, when those coaches watched me throw the ball, they couldn't believe their eyes. I had a great arm, and I loved to use it. I not only threw far, I threw precisely. I could never relax enough to throw from pitcher's mound. But, I could throw runners out at any base, from anywhere on the field, and the coaches knew it.
They shouted, befuddled, and amazed when I would throw base runners out at third, on the fly, from deep in right field. The ball would leave my hand, and as I watched it reach the third-baseman’s glove, ahead of the runner, I would hear this high-pitched, whistling holler from the coach just outside the dugout. “Whoooooeeeeew!"
I remember the feeling when that sound ascended my spine. I loved it. Someone saw how good I was and said so. That recognition, that affirmation, felt great. I was a kid who needed somewhere to feel great.
After one practice, midway through the second of two seasons playing with a pitching machine, my coach at the time saw an opportunity. He wanted to show me off to one of his peers before I tried out for the next level. There was another coach leaving the diamond next to ours, and my coach flagged him down.
"Tommy, go out to center field." I wasn't sure what was going on yet. "Deeper … Deep! … Now, Ed … Just stand at third base." My coach threw Ed a ball and a glove and told him to play catch with me; said he wouldn’t believe it.
That was the day Ed Hayes conferred upon me a nickname. Rocket Arm. I played for him, the best coach, of the best team, for three of the best years of my life.
We were the H.P. McPike (aluminum siding and awnings) Astros. We practiced harder, longer, and more often than anyone else. We practiced in February, on any day the thermometer reached 50 degrees. We practiced between games and before games and we outworked everyone else.
I spent a season platooning in the outfield. Then, having grown and improved, I earned a spot on the infield dirt. I started at third, then became the shortstop for the team, and the coach, who everyone despised.
They complained about Ed, saying he yelled at us, and he pushed us too hard. But, the players, we knew there was only one reason the rest of the league despised us. They almost never beat us. We always won.
We played hard, and I loved being a part of that team the way I loved Pete Rose. It gave me a place to channel his energy, and to take on that identity. To hustle. I vowed that no one would ever try harder than me.
Ed Hayes and that team gave me a place to belong. I was part of something bigger than me. I felt proud.
Not only that, Ed taught me how to belong – how to be part of a team. A great team. A winning team.
When I was in third grade, the cool teacher, everyone's favorite teacher, told me, in front of our entire math class, that my dream of playing Major League Baseball was unlikely to ever come true, having never even seen me on a baseball field. I resent him, to this day, for telling me that. Because I trusted him, as much as I pretended not to, I believed him. Nonetheless, I played well into high school, but never for another coach as good as Ed.
That teacher and playing on mediocre teams took the wind out of my sails. Among my few real regrets in life is that I didn't play baseball for as long as I possibly could. I think about a few games when, when ahead in the late innings, I asked to be taken out because my arm was sore. If I could go back I wouldn't miss a single pitch. I wouldn't have stopped playing until someone made me.
Back then, I didn't realize that, had I pursued my dream to its conclusion, although I may not have ever played for money, I might have become a coach, or even a groundskeeper. And, I would have belonged there.
Once I stopped playing, I got lost. Bad things began to happen. I found myself, again, with no place to belong - not good for a kid in high school. Eventually, things got pretty messy, and had to get worse before they could get better. They got better when I found a way to feel like I belong.
Now, I know I belong. For the most part, I know where I belong and where I don't. And, more and more, I feel like I belong. I belong helping other people find where they belong.
I belong by helping them feel like they belong.