One of the unusual aspects of school is the concept of the "last day of school." I had no idea there was going to be a last day of school. I guess it didn't sink in my mind why my family would go live in Portales for a couple of months each year and not teach school during that time. The idea of a summer vacation was very foreign to me even though I had experienced it several times before without realizing it. I just thought that we kept going and going to school and it would just never end and that we students would eventually become the teachers. That's what seemed to happen with my parents.
Toward the end of the school year, some cards were passed around to the boys inviting them to take part in Little League. I knew what Little League was. My father had coached the Little League team at the school next to our home the previous year. I was very interested in playing baseball. My parents bought me this funky green cap with white polka dots and a baseball glove. I was ready to play.
This particular summer, my father had gone to Oregon to earn some extra money working for his uncle, who was a developer in Portland. This meant that he wasn't around to help me learn how to properly play baseball. The plan was that my mother, brother and I would go up to Portland after a few weeks, meet up with him and we would start our first family summer road trip.
One thing that I may not have mentioned is that, up until I was almost 10 years old, we lived in the farming community about 10 miles outside of Artesia. That meant that going to town was a major undertaking and we always needed a good reason to go to town, like to go to work, go to school, get groceries and go to church. There were also social occasions which would require us to make that drive to town.
What that means is that if my mom was going to drive me up to Little League practice, she needed to find something to do to make the trip worthwhile. So, she would drop me off at practice and go run errands for an hour and then come back, pick me up and we would go home. We did this Monday through Friday. One particular day, the coach made us stay an extra half hour to practice. My mother had gone to the grocery store and had gotten some ice cream. She was so angry that the coach didn't let anyone know ahead of time that he was going to make us stay extra long that day and the ice cream melted.
Now, I had a good time at the practices. I got to hang around with some boys I went to school with and got to know some other boys who went to the other elementary schools. The Little League teams were not necessarily broken up by the five elementary schools in town.
I was having such a good time that I didn't realize that in competitive sports, you need to perform well, or else you're not going to get to play. The coach was always yelling at me for not touching all the bases, not knowing how to slide and being completely inept at catching a ball and batting. I didn't know this was a real problem. We were just having fun, right?
The day before we were supposed to make the trip to Portland, the coach had three of us players get into a car with one of the assistant coaches. We were driven to another elementary school where they were holding Little League practice. We met the coach there and he explained to us that we were going to have to start showing up and practicing with their team. He grabbed the funky green cap off my head and said he was going to get me a real baseball cap. The three of us were stunned. We didn't know what was going on. We got back into the car. One of the other boys asked, "What's wrong? Does the coach not like us?" The assistant coach said something to the effect that the team we saw didn't have enough players so we were being sent over there.
When my mom came to pick me up, I was about to tell her what happened, but the assistant coach talked to her first. She told him that it really didn't matter because we were going to go to Portland the next day.
Looking back, I realize that regardless of whether the other team needed more players, we were still sent over there because we didn't play well enough. That was surprising, considering that one of the other two boys was remarkably tall for his age, so you'd think that would be considered an asset. I guess incoordination comes in all shapes and sizes.
It also appears that my parents just put me through a big tease with Little League. They knew full well I was not going to be able to complete the season or play any games because we had already planned that big trip, which I will go into further detail in my next post.
The next year, toward the end of second grade, I got the Little League card again. I told my father I wanted to play. He said no and didn't offer an explanation. I think he thought I wasn't able to play and didn't want me to be treated badly by the coaches again. And I guess Little League would have been a lot less fun if we lost due to me making mistakes, but there was no way of knowing if that was going to happen.
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