Little League, Little Brains

There's nothing like a beautiful Saturday afternoon in May to let you relive the great childhood construct of little league. Where children cry over strikes and balls, grown men get drunk under the sun, and everyone hesitantly pats each other on their child-sized behinds, sometimes throwing one of the quieter kids into Pavlovian hysterics (yes, it can happen to boys too). Yes, this is where I spend my Saturdays: being entertained by kids with no hope of free agency and very high voices.

We all know how sad it is watching a 10 year old try throw a ball. Sure there are the few outliers, bulkier, vaguely Hispanic; but for the most part, they're only out there because they saw all their friends raise their hands when some first-year Buck Showalter unwittingly asks "Who wants to pitch?" and leaves the decisions to elementary mob rule. And now with only 9 warm-up pitches, totally 45 for the week due to an overcrowded mound, he's got three different adults yelling about various parts of his body, of which he has absolutely no awareness in the first place (they still piss themselves through kindergarten for cryin' out loud!).

But somehow these keeds remain out there, encouraging one another, desperately trying to make the whole thing a little more fun. And it's truly beautiful. The coach almost never takes out the pitcher in a strategic moment in the game, leaving him to single handedly mercy-rule his own team (they really do have pathetic curve balls). Nearly every grounder results in an infield hit, usually a double if the kid tries to throw to first, accidentally pegging the drooling helmet-kid at second base in the side of the head. And to each and every adult, it really doesn't feel like the game we used to play when we were kids, which we forgot involved zero adults, when it was just me, Manny, Yeah-Yeah, James Earl Jones' ghost haunting the left-center field bleachers, and the rest of the gang. Those were better times. Unfortunately, most of those guys have since had children and can't seem to figure out why their kids aren't having as much fun as they had when they played.