Youth baseball season is in full swing (so to speak), and for grandparents, that means sitting for hours on the sidelines, huddling in our winter parkas on 50-degree days or sweltering under the hot sun, monitoring the weather report for tornado warnings — and even dust storms!
I’m a devoted fan, but watching a baseball game played by 11- and 12-year-olds sometimes feels like purgatory. After enduring the vagaries and furies of a Midwest spring with my son, and now my grandsons, when I get to the pearly gates, I fully expect whatever demerits I have accrued in my life will be absolved, along with countless other long-suffering sideline grandparents.
To maintain my equilibrium, I keep repeating my mantra: “They’re just 11 years old. They’re still learning the game.” And they are learning it. The games used to last three hours or more. Now they’re done in two. Infielders make plays on ground balls and actually throw runners out at first. Pitchers throw more strikes and walk fewer batters. That’s the upside.
The downside is that league organizers decided to include the dropped-third-strike rule that allows a batter, after striking out, to reach first base if the catcher fails to retrieve the ball and throw him out. The problem is young catchers almost never catch the third strike. In fact, they seem to have misinterpreted the rule, assuming they “must” drop the third strike.
Our team lost one game in the final inning on a bases-loaded, two-out strikeout that instead led to all three runs scoring. I’ll spare you the details. What the players learned that night is the agony of defeat. They now understand what the late baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti meant when he said, “Baseball will break your heart. It is designed to break your heart.”
On the plus side, when I asked Bryce what he likes best about baseball, he said, “Running the bases!” So maybe the dropped-strike thing isn’t all bad.
Anyway, to compensate for the tragic nature of watching baseball, the boys and I have discovered a much more thrilling and fulfilling spectacle: nest-watching.
Several weeks back, a nest appeared on the back deck of their house. It didn’t fall out of a tree; it was painstakingly constructed there by a robin (or robins), violating the most basic rule of nest-building: keep it hidden from prying, preying eyes! This one sits on the railing up against the side of the house, out in the open, hiding in plain sight, fully exposed to any and all predators who happen by: three tiny, oh-so-fragile, yet delectable, pretty pastel-blue eggs.
Against all odds, the eggs hatched and the chicks now crane their necks, beaks open to the generous heavens, waiting for Mama robin to deposit scrounged nourishment.
The predators must be thinking, “Oh come on, who would build a nest on a back deck right next to the humans’ back door?! It must be some kind of decoy decoration. We’re not falling for that trick!”
So the nest and its inhabitants appear to be flourishing, with Mama robin alternately providing and protecting. I’m sure she is an imposing adversary, which I almost found out the hard way. Watching from behind the screen door last week, I saw two starlings fly by dangerously close to the nest. I don’t trust starlings, so when I spotted a third bird swooping toward the nest, I leaped out to save the day! But it turned out to be Mama herself with a sizable bit of bug remains locked in her beak. Startled, she detoured to a nearby tree branch until I, shamefaced, retreated back inside. Eventually she returned and fed her hungry brood.
The boys know not to touch the birds and they seem blissfully oblivious to the dangers — as are the rapidly progressing fledglings. But Mama and I know how unforgiving the food chain can be. We’re all waiting in suspense to see if the robinettes survive.
May they beat the odds, strike out on their own, and someday build their own nests, preferably camouflaged — and if they can manage the improbability of all that, maybe Bryce and Tyler will come to believe that pretty much anything is possible for them as well.
And may my fledgling grandsons also thrive until they, too, are ready to leave their nest — to forge a life of their own, a life that will be worthy of them and make them glad to be alive.
A life that may or may not involve baseball.