The Best Kind of Pain

My arm feels like jello when I don’t have sharp, searing pain shooting through it doing even the most mundane of actions like lifting my coffee mug or reaching for a stapler.  It hurts when I clench my fist or reach over my shoulder to scratch my back, but it’s a pain that’s well worth the trouble.

I was lucky enough to get batting cage time and a personal one-on-one hitting lesson for Marc with a friend who also helps coach the Dukes whenever he can find the time.  Coach Mason as the boys call him is graduating from high school today completing a stellar high school baseball career where he was named League Most Outstanding Player this year following a junior season where he was named League MVP.  He is a three-year First Team All-Area and All-League selection, and was named to the All-CIF team the past two years.  A young man mature beyond his years, Mason has been an exemplary role model for Marc and the boys on the baseball field as well as off of it as well.  He has parlayed his baseball acumen into a full-ride scholarship to the University of San Francisco where he’ll be majoring in Kinisieology next year. 

I threw 2 1/2 hours of batting practice on Monday and another 1 1/2 hours yesterday.  Needless to say, my arm is spent.  Mason was able to work out a lot of the kinks in Marc’s swing pinpointing some bad mechanical habits in various phases of his swing.  I’m so happy that Marc has the drive to get better.  2 1/2 hours of batting practice is very long time, but he never complained or intimated he wanted to stop.  Mason called me at work yesterday to tell me he’d be at the cage if I wanted to bring Marc down, but after Monday’s prolonged workout I wasn’t expecting it.  When Marc got home from school he told me that he had practiced his swing in front of a mirror the night before to get his muscles to remember how to it correctly.  That’s when I knew he wouldn’t shy away from more batting practice.  Sure enough, when I asked him if he wanted to go back for more, his eyes lit up and he gave me an enthusiastic “okay!”.  We stayed for 1 1/2 hours and only stopped because he had All-Star practce at 6.

The kid will never pass up an opportunity to play baseball whether it’s hitting at the cage, playing catch, hitting into the net at home, or playing pepper in the front yard.  He simply loves the game.  He’s worn his All-Star jersey to school the past two days even sneaking it into his backpack yesterday so his mom wouldn’t nag him about wearing the same thing two days in a row.  It reminds me of when he was 3 years old and wore his Batman costume almost until Thanksgiving.

Last year, he was voted by his peers to West Torrance Little League’s 10 year-old All-Star team as a 9 year-old only to be snubbed from the playing roster by a coach who doesn’t know what he’s doing.  I reminded Marc of how he felt last year, and he’s used that feeling to drive him this year during All-Star season.  After moving over to a new league that plays by PONY rules (much more competitive, higher quality of players) he was a unanimous All-Star selection by the eight managers in the division in his first year in a new league.  I told him to use All-Star season to show everyone where he stacks up against the best of the best, and he’s been bringing it in practice with his focus and intensity. 

It means a lot to me when Mason says that the way I push Marc reminds him of the way his dad used to push him.  I’m not one of those crazy “Little League” dads who thinks his kid is going pro and will stop at nothing to make it happen.  The game of baseball is a lot like the game of life in many regards.  Baseball is a game that is predicated on failure.  The key is to take those failures in stride and use them to make yourself better through the process.  There are also many subtle ways to be successful besides getting a hit or striking someone out.  Hitting behind a runner with no outs to move him along the bases is a successful at-bat.  Knocking a ball down in the infield with a runner on second base while not getting an out is a success because it keeps the runner from scoring.  Being there to tell a teammate who just struck out to keep his head up and “get him next time” goes lengths in being a great teammate and contributing to the team’s success.  Most of all, baseball is a game that develops discipline, determination, and perseverance, and I think those are valuable lessons every child should learn as early as possible. 

I’m fortunate that Marc and I share a passion and a bond that will last forever.  Baseball is a game that’s passed down from fathers to sons, and I can’t wait until the day I’m grandpa watching Marc coach his own son.  It all started with a NERF baseball set, and me putting down pieces of tape on the driveway so Marc would know where to put his feet when he bats.  Soon, we’ll be playing catch shooting the breeze about being a teenager and all that entails.  I can’t wait. 

TV Sucks.

When my team loses, I can’t function properly the next day.  I have to avoid all things sports related: TV, sports websites, ESPN.com, newspapers, etc.  It’s time like these I kind of wish we weren’t living in the information age. 

I’ve avoided writing about the Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals because at first I was too giddy with anticipation to sit down and think of a write-up previewing the series.  Then, after the disappointment began I was too depressed to start explaining why the Lakers were sucking ass. 

All I have to say is that the Lakers need to take care of business and hold serve at home.  Boston did what was expected of them and won their home games.  That’s what good teams do.  Now, it’s going to come down to who can win one on the road.  If the Celtics come into LA and steal one, then they’re in the driver’s seat for the title.  If the Lakers can take care of business like the Celtics, then they’re in the position to steal one on the road and seal a championship.

I take solace in knowing the Lakers haven’t lost at home in a couple months, but this is a different situation with the season hanging in the balance.  Kobe Bryant needs to assert himself in a way that he hasn’t yet in this series.  I know much has been made with “Team-first Kobe” changing his ways and riding his teammates to his first league MVP this year, but while that’s great over the course of the season, now is the time for the world’s best player to prove that his skills are on an incomparable level.  He’s going to have to reach into his bag of tricks and will his team to a victory in game 3.  Team ball worked for two close losses on the road, now he’s going to have amp it up a notch to win a very critical game 3.  Boston has played the aggressor role in the first two games and have two victories to show for it.  Kobe needs to be aggressive and put Boston on their heels if the Lakers are going to stand a chance against the more physical Celtics.  It’s not beyond the realm of possiblity that the Lakers turn this series around, but they’re going to have to outwork the blue-collar Celtics to do it. 

I’d write a more detailed analysis, but I’m trying to take my mind off the Lakers… for my own good.

It’s dusty in here, I swear…

Rick Reilly, the former Sports Illustrated writer who’s widely considered one of the elite sportswriters of this era, made his ESPN The Magazine debut today.  I’ve read his columns in Sports Illustrated and didn’t really see what made him special, other than it appears as though he was the inspiration of Everybody Loves Raymond (Ray Romano and Rick Reilly must be related).  Then I read his piece about his father and how his relationship with his father molded him as a man.  Now I’m sitting at my desk trying to compose myself so my coworkers don’t feel obligated to ask me if everything’s okay. 

This is what draws me to writing.  Or maybe I feel this way because I appreciate good writing.  When a writer can get the reader to detach himself from his own existence and project his consciousness into the writer’s, then he’s done his job. 

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Courtesy Rick Reilly

 

Since this is my first column for The Magazine, I figure I should introduce myself. And maybe the best way to tell you who I am is to tell you about my dad, Jack. He was an Irish tenor, a yarn spinner, a songwriter, a father of four, a crack golfer and a first-class drunk.

As kids, we blamed golf. We thought the game made him meaner than a dyspeptic rattler. We were sure it was more important than we were, or why was he never around? More than once he asked me, “What grade are you in again?”

He’d always come home drunk from golf, except for the times he’d come home dripping drunk. Then he’d be looking to bust something, maybe a lamp, maybe somebody’s nose; my mom’s, once. To this day, the sound of spikes on cement sends a shot of ice through me. That was him coming up the sidewalk.

In alcoholic families, the youngest kid becomes the mascot. That was me. I became the funny one, comic relief, third-grade vaudeville—anything to keep the furniture where it was. When he’d eventually stagger into bed, the rat in my stomach would finally stop gnawing.

When I was about 10 or 11, I started working through the thing backward. If I could play golf with him, maybe I could keep him from drinking. I’d be the hero! So I started asking him to take me. He did once, but my fear of him was so paralyzing that any instruction he gave sounded like a shotgun in my ear. After about three holes, I stormed off the course in tears and waited in the car.

I didn’t play again until high school. I did it partly to understand what was so wonderful about a game that would keep a man from coming to his kids’ games and piano recitals and birthday parties.

And I was happy to find out it wasn’t the Titleist clubs that made him so mean, it was the Canadian Clubs. It was the whiskey. Golf was this green-and-blue launching pad for little white rockets. Golf taught me the lessons my dad never did, including the best one: You play life where it lies. You hit it there. You play it from there. Nobody threw you a nasty curve or forgot to block the defensive end. I learned that my mistakes were mine alone, not my boss’, not the cop’s and, as much as I hated to admit it, not my dad’s.

And then one day, out of the blue, maybe 25 years ago, my dad went to one AA meeting and quit. Never had a drop after that.

It was five more years before I finally believed it. Then I invited him to the Masters. He was 70, I was 30. And it was on that two-and-a-half-hour ride from Atlanta to Augusta that we finally met.

He told me his life story, how he drank and fought to get the attention of his distant father, how he’d kept from us that he’d been married before, and how sorry he was to have let his family grow up while he was holding down the 19th hole with his elbows.

He apologized and cried. I forgave him and cried. I never dreamed I-20 could be that emotional.

Suddenly he understood. He went home to Boulder, Colo., and apologized to my mom and my brother and two sisters. They finally got to tell him how much he hurt them. He wrote us a poem about his love for us and his shame and why nobody would cry the day he died.

It took a lot of guts and a lot of courage, and the only lousy part was that it came so late. By the time I saw him for who he was—a strong man who took most of a lifetime to understand his crushing weakness—I was ears deep into my own family and career. So we didn’t play much golf together before the warranty on his heart started to expire. I never got to really see the swing that won all those trophies. By then, the only time he used his putter was as a cane.

Two months ago, on the final night of his life, I sat alone in a chair next to his hospice bed, holding his hand and a box of Kleenex and proving how wrong poems can be sometimes.

As I looked at him, I realized that for better and worse, he’d shaped me. I think I’m a good father borne of his rotten example. I’m a storyteller out of surviving him. I’m a man with more flaws than a 1986 Yugo, but I try to own up to them, because a very good Irish tenor showed me how.

And that’s what I call a very good save.