During the summers of my childhood when my parents signed me up for baseball (contrary to my wishes, talents, and fragile sense of self-worth), my triumphs on the field and in the batter’s box were small in number. I was scared of the ball, couldn’t throw, couldn’t hit, and, frankly, didn’t have the firmest grasp of the rules.
Apart from my brief appearances at the plate (three pitches, three strikes, see you next time), I could be found in the dugout or parked deep in right field, where I’d chew on the laces of my mitt.
They say team sports are good for kids because flinging various balls through space in a group setting supposedly encourages cooperation, fitness, and discipline. But I feel like that argument overlooks a crucial fact: Kids are mean.
So if, say, you’re terrible at the sport you’re being forced to play, the other kids will more often than not despise you for your weakness and will more often than not let you know about it.
I strongly agree with my 9-year-old self’s preference for the children’s theater program at the Arts Center of the Ozarks. Putting on a play teaches everything you need to know about teamwork and discipline. Plus, you usually don’t have to worry about projectiles hurtling toward your face.
Once when the ACO was doing a stage adaptation of Charlotte’s Web, I was dismayed to find, upon entering the performance space on the first day, that the catcher on my baseball team had also been enrolled in the theater program, possibly by his mom, who drove a car sporting a bumper sticker announcing “Life’s a Beach.”
She seemed fun. Her child, however, was a snot rocket.
Early on in the rehearsal process, he attempted to endear himself to the rest of the company by regaling them with a catalog of my many baseball-related shortcomings. I believe mention was made of how I threw like a girl.
Unfortunately for my teammate, this was a miscalculation in a roomful of kids looking forward to putting on stage makeup. My standing among my fellow junior theater queens, bless them, took no discernible hit and, best of all, the spiteful catcher was cast in some insignificant, one-line role while I got what I considered the best part, Templeton the rat. Life’s a beach!
Back on the baseball diamond, though, nothing good ever happened except for 1.) the time I somehow hit a double and 2.) the time I was moved to first base late in a game—we must have been way ahead in runs—and miraculously caught a line drive, securing an honest-to-goodness out for once in my life.
On the day of the double, my aunt Teresa was in the stands. She was looking after my sisters and me while my parents were out of town. After the game, Teresa told me about another spectator, and the description has haunted me for decades.
According to Teresa, who has always had an innate flair for the Southern Gothic style that I of course found irresistible, one of the game’s attendees was a woman whose toenails had grown so long that they extended beyond the front edge of her flip-flops and curled downward to scrape the ground before her.
I did not observe these talons myself, but to this day ol’ Toenails, as she was subsequently nicknamed, will dart into my mind’s eye as a kind of grotesque cautionary figure whenever I realize that I am overdue for a trim.
Yet another scar etched on my psyche by the national pastime.
Indirect Objects 