Growing Pains

We completed our "regular" season baseball schedule this past weekend by winning a final tuneup tournament for the World Series. Coby's team overcame a very disappointing loss in the first game of pool play on Saturday to win four straight, including an extra-inning, 5-4 win in the championship game Sunday against a team that had beaten us in a championship game at Dr. Pepper Ballpark the week before.

Everything worked out great for us Sunday. Coby's our ace, but we had several other guys step up and pitch well throughout the weekend. That allowed us to save Coby until the championship game, and he kept us close against a very good Rattlers team that battled him tooth and nail all day. Coby had dominated them the week before in two games, allowing just a couple of hits in a total of 8 innings or so, and the Rattlers were a little better prepared for him this time. The put a few balls in play, and fouled enough off to work some walks. But after six innings with Coby on the hill, we were tied 4-4 and won it in the seventh when Coby led off with a single and scored what would be the winning run.

That's the baseball part of the story. But something else happened during the game that, looking back, gave me both some pride and some embarrassment.

I like to win as much as the next guy. Doesn't matter if I'm playing baseball, coaching, or watching the Cowboys on TV. I want to win. Losing makes me feel bad. It stinks. I've been that way all my life, and it's had its good and bad moments for me. Sometimes my competitiveness takes a lot of fun out of it, and I've tried working on that aspect of my personality for several years.

I have to admit, I've gotten a little better at controlling my emotions now that I'm approaching 40. I am ashamed to say that sometimes I've taken my competitive streak too far and taken out frustrations verbally on my son. Nothing abusive, I don't think...just frustration. Now, I want to push him to be the best he can be, whether it is athletically, in the classroom or just life in general. Competition is healthy, and I'm proud to say that my only son has also worked on his competitive streak as well and is much better prepared to handle disappointment during the tough times than I was at his age. That's part of his mother coming out in him I guess -- he can take some things in stride much better than even I can now.

I made a vow to myself and to him at the beginning of the year that there would be no outbursts of frustration. We were going to work hard and have fun and accept whatever happened on the field, good or bad. For the most part, and he'd vouch for me on this I think, I've done pretty good as a baseball coach-dad.

But for some reason on Sunday in the championship game, I had one of those "uh-oh" moments. You know, you do something really stupid and then realize it about five seconds later.

I don't know if it was the 100-degree heat we'd been playing in, or maybe just an overall lack of sleep, or maybe the fact that I as a 39-year-old, grown man really wanted to win this game between a bunch of 10 and 11-year olds. Yeah, I know, that sounds really, really dumb.

Coby's been in a little bit of a batting slump lately. When he's on he can hit the ball as far as anyone his age, and it's fun to watch. But -- and I've been telling him this since he started playing in t-ball -- baseball is a game of failure. You succeed 3 out of every 10 times at bat, and you are a Hall of Famer. The other seven times can make you look and feel really bad.

We've been working at it, and I've been calmly trying to help him through it. But the results haven't shifted to the playing field the last three tournaments or so. We were in a tight situation Sunday and had a couple of runners on, looking to take our first lead in the championship game. And Coby was batting. He took a very weak swing, his mechanics were way off again, and he tapped a little dribbler right back to the pitcher for the final out.

I stood up off my bucket and before I realized it, yelled something to the fact that I wish you could hit the baseball. I don't really know what exactly was said, but it was loud enough for everyone in McKinney to hear. And I really wasn't yelling it to anyone in particular -- you know, one of those things you want to just think about saying but don't actually say. Only this time I said it, very loud, in the heat of the day and moment.

My 11-year-0ld son, who puts more pressure on himself than I or anyone else could put on him, heard my outburst. He got to the entrance to the dugout, looking for his glove to go back out there and battle them from the mound. Then I hear "Stop yelling at me!"

I heard it, and briefly thought of pulling him aside and giving him the what-for. But then a strange sense of pride came over me and I just continued walking down into the right-field corner.

He wasn't sassing me or talking back to me. I deserved the response. I'm not about my son or any of my children talking back or yelling at me or their mother or any adult, for that matter.

But there's a certain point in a young boy's life where he will develop a little bit of, I don't know, some moxy I guess. Up until Sunday, any time I'd had one of those uh-oh moments of competitiveness around Coby, he'd wilt and shrink into a shell sort of. Start looking for his mama to help, you know, something like that.

But not this time. He knows how competitive his dad is and that I don't mean one word of what I say sometimes on the field in frustration. Nothing ever profane, now, just pure old meanness and being loud. But he would shrink away anyway.

Sunday, he didn't shrink away. He said what he was thinking -- "stop yelling at me!" and he meant it. You know, that kind of makes me proud now. He knew he was in one of those little battles on the field, he had a goal, and he didn't want some immature old man ruining it. So he said what he had to say and after that everything was cool.

In a strange way, it helped to calm me down a little bit and I was able to enjoy the rest of the game with no frustration. I'm a little ashamed that it took my 11-year-old son to snap me back into some sort of respectability, but then again, I'm proud he's reached a point in his life where he can help me, too.

Now if he yells at me or his momma for no good reason, or gets a little bit of that sassiness going, we'll have problems. But when I'm being a jerk and he can see it happening, I think it's okay to stand up for yourself and take care of things. I think it shows a little bit of maturity on his part, that he can understand what's going on in the big picture.

We'll spend an entire week in Mississippi starting this coming Saturday, playing in the USSAA World Series. We think we have a team that can win the whole thing if we play like we are capable of playing. We've played in 10 tournaments this year and made the championship game in six of them, winning four. The other four tournaments were either 10-year-old "Major" tournaments (our level is officially "Triple A," a step below major), or against 11-year-old teams.

We've been looking for some leaders on the team to step up. Based on what I saw from my son Sunday -- his pitching, his finding a way to get on when we needed to score a run and then getting home with the winning run, and especially his way of putting his old man back in his rightful place -- lets me know we have at least one.