Things I learned from baseball

My four year old son is a genius. I walked into his room the other day to find him sitting at his red, plastic desk writing an essay. The perfectly formulated, perfectly structured experiment in creative writing every English teacher dreams about receiving from a pupil.

I don’t know many four year olds who can read, write or correctly punctuate a compound/complex sentence while maintaining appropriate subject-verb agreement and using the correct verb tense. Maybe this is why the brilliance of my boy overwhelmed me. Lest my boasting take away from his masterpiece, I’ll simply let the reader decide.

“Things I learned from baseball”
By Cooper Smith, age 4


How to count:
Keeping score in baseball is a great way to learn how to count. There’s that big scoreboard out there with all kinds of numbers on it. Once your mommy or daddy teaches you zero through ten, it’s all pretty easy after that. Then you just start saying “teen” a lot and you finally learn to get them in the right order.

How to read:
The scoreboard can be an intimidating beast for a kid to try and tackle. There aren’t just numbers up there, but lots of letters too, and all in different spots. Once you learn that “H” spells “Sentinel Bulldogs” and “V” spells “The other team” you can pretty much tell who’s winning and who’s not. Of course if it’s an away game, “V” spells “Sentinel Bulldogs” and “H” spells something else, and we never get to have last bats.

How to add and subtract:
After mastering the scoreboard, one finds it’s never really good enough just knowing how to read it. A real fan and a true ball player has to understand how many runs his team needs to put the other team away, or on a bad night when Daddy has to yell a lot, to catch up.

How to communicate with people:
Sometimes the guy making the numbers come up on the board doesn’t pay attention and he gets them all wrong. But that’s ok, cause there is usually someone sitting close enough to yell at him to change the score and pay closer attention.

How to earn money:
During ballgames kids can earn money for every foul ball they chase down, and each one is worth a quarter. Last Saturday I earned seven quarters! No wonder Dad has to work so hard; he has to pay for all those foul balls!
If we’re lucky and we get to stay to the end of the game, Momma will let us pick up all the trash in the ball park for a dollar, but we have to leave the chewed up gum on the ground cause it’s full of filthy germs.

How to use our best manners:
It’s never ok to spit where we play, but in baseball sometimes it’s ok. You just have to be sure the wind isn’t blowing toward your mom or you get in big trouble.
We usually aren’t allowed to eat with our hats on, but if it’s just a hotdog or cheesy chips, it doesn’t really matter as much. And if someone gives you gummies or Gatorade or Jello with onions, you have to say “Thank you” or mom makes you give it back. Even at the concession stand.

How to control our emotions:
We usually aren’t allowed to throw things that aren’t made to be thrown, but in baseball, sometimes you’re allowed to throw your hat, but only if it keeps you from throwing a fit. Dad says it’s especially important that the pitcher doesn’t throw a fit cause the umpire won’t like it and he might even change the strike zone and then you may die on the mound.

Always be a good sport:
At the end of every game, both teams go to home plate and give each other high fives. I liked doing that in coach pitch, but I think as you get older the fives must start to hurt a little cause the big boys don’t look like they are having much fun doing it, and the Yankees don’t do it at all.
Mom says to treat others the way you want to be treated, but I think that only goes for people on your same team, cause I never see Daddy’s boys smile at the boys on the other team. And nobody smiles at the umpire.
Mom says we’re not supposed to yell either, but sometime she forgets and sometimes Daddy forgets and maybe somebody needs to put up a sign to remind everyone that this game is supposed to be fun.

How to think ahead:
Dad’s always saying when you play baseball, you have to use your head. I used to think that’s why they made you wear a helmet, but then he said, “No, you’ve got to learn to think.” I think about baseball all the time.

How to compete:
Mom says it’s not always easy being the youngest in the family. You aren’t as big, you aren’t as fast and you have to wait till later to do what your big brother is doing right now. She says that means I shouldn’t be so hard on Brisco and that I should try to let him be safe sometimes when we’re out playing ball. But I don’t like to do that very much. Besides, that’s not how the big boys do it.

How to be loyal:
On game days we wear something that’s red like the Bulldogs. Sometimes we wear our long, red, socks, but they aren’t Red Sox-red socks cause we don’t like the Dirty Sox.
Sometimes we play “Who do you want to win” and say the names of two different teams. When we say the Bulldogs vs. the Yankees, we always choose the Bulldogs, even though I know there’s no way the Yankees are ever gonna drive all the way to Sentinel to play ball.

How to be responsible:
Mom is always telling us to “be responsible” with our things. She says she’s sick from having to search for balls and gloves when it’s time to go somewhere, and if we’d put them in the basket when we’re through playing, we might could find them when we need them. I decided to try it out last week to see if it would work cause I got sick at Grandma’s house and I sure didn’t want Momma to have to do that.

How to fall in love:
The first thing I do every morning is ask Mom if there’s a baseball game on TV that we can watch.
Now that I’m in school, I get to take my glove and ball with me so I can play with it outside, and when I come home, Mom lets me throw the ball against the wall in the house and practice fly balls and grounders.
The other night at the ball field, I laid my glove down somewhere and couldn’t remember where I put it. When Mom asked me where it was, I felt really sick in my stomach and my face felt red and hot. I tried not to cry, but I just didn’t know where that glove was, and I couldn’t imagine how I would live another day without it.

How to dream:
Mom says I can be anything I want to be when I grow up. I told her I wanna be a baseball player. She said, “Who do you wanna play for?” I said, “Daddy, of course!”

As I stood looking over his shoulder, I was amazed at the insight of such a young boy and the lessons he had gleaned from simply being an onlooker in a 163 year old game. I hugged his neck and told him I loved him and asked if we could hang his story on the fridge. He just smiled and handed it over and blew me a kiss as he grabbed his mitt and headed out back.

I pass that masterpiece at least 20 times a day. The way he has so accurately portrayed the little boy in the piece. The precise shading he had crafted in the scene on the page. Simply put, it is picture perfect.

And that’s All in a day’s work!