Curve Ball

The train of thought was a little slow coming into the station today, but when it got there, it was pretty satisfying. As I left the house for my run I started thinking about the steady creep into spring that has begun. I recalled the other fathers in our group talking about the inevitable baseball tryouts that were fast approaching.
We don't do a lot of team sports in my family - unless it's the spectator kind. There was an attempt at soccer that ended somewhat abruptly after my son's first attempt at heading the ball - and it bounced off his face, causing his first nosebleed. He really enjoyed tee-ball, but it was primarily a social experience. The details of the game were lost on him. He is only eight, after all.
As discussed here previously, my own experience in right field as a cringing non-participant has done little to encourage my son to become more involved than his father.
I mulled my options as I continued to run - noting the irony of the solitary nature of my own exercise - and considered the possibility of signing my eight year old son up for some youth league baseball. A great many of his friends have already been playing for two or three years. If I left it up to him, would he choose to be part of a team? What if I just signed him up and then dropped him off one afternoon, with his glove and his cap? "Good luck, son. Make your dad proud."
I couldn't do that. Our family is much too fond of discussion for anything that would approach that kind of fascist parenting. When I reached the park, there was an assortment of fathers and sons and daughters tossing balls back and forth. The snap of leather hitting leather punctuated the late afternoon. My brain took a nostalgic detour.
I don't have a memory of playing catch with my father. He wasn't absent or inattentive, he wasn't much of a baseball guy. His game was raquetball. He tried dragging his three boys into that a few times, but we just seemed to slow him down, and after we all became thoroughly discouraged, we stopped asking to go along. Years later, after my parents had separated, I went to see "Field of Dreams" with my dad. The final scene in which Ray finally figures out who the "he" is in "if you build it, he will come," he calls his father back from the corn for one more game of catch caught us both hard. We walked out of the theater with a lump in our throats and a tear or two in our eyes.
When I finally got home, my son was still working his way to being finished with his homework. "Go grab your glove. We're gonna play catch in the front yard." We played until the sun started to go down. He dropped as many as he caught. I kept encouraging him, watching his pose and gesture, making all the right sounds. When it was time to go inside, he said "You're pretty good, dad." I thanked him and told him he was pretty good too, and after another eight million catches he'd be even better. "Practice makes perfect, right dad?" Perfect? Maybe not, but it sure can be fun.