Baseball at Night

Thirteen years old and I’m playing right field late in the game on a late weeknight game at Liondotte Field, Kansas City, Kansas.

It’s hot.

It’s mid-June humid, and there’s a haze in the air, which, for once, is not caused by the 1970s-era parents chain-smoking in the stands trying to stay awake.

The coach has thrown me out in the field as a defensive substitution so he can sleep better knowing he played every kid on the team and still got the win. There’s hardly a sound around the mostly empty field. The little league field next to us is empty and dark. Those players and their families long cleared out. Our best pitcher is on the mound, throwing his usual gas, so the baseball probably hasn’t seen the outfield grass all night. I feel safe out in right field.

Being thirteen is tough. Things are changing. Life is changing. I am sitting the bench for the first time in my life for two reasons. The first reason is a new coach with new rules. Our new head coach was also in charge of the program’s fundraising and implemented the rule that nobody who did not sell at least one box of 25 World’s Finest chocolate bars would start on his team. I, even the 13-year-old me, do not sell things with much joy or success. I sold only four chocolate bars out of my box of 25, and I sold all four of those to myself.

The second reason I was sitting on the bench that summer was that I knew when we got back to school that fall and the nurse ran us through the compulsory vision and hearing tests, my parents would hear the four words that sent shock waves up most parents’ spines, ”Your kid needs glasses.” I couldn’t see very well. I was nearsighted.

We were as far away from being rich as you could be without being called poor. I knew we didn’t have the money so I’d spent most of the spring and into the summer adjusting. When I was at bat, I saw two baseballs. The trick became figuring out which one to hit. Eventually, I figured it out pretty well, but it took some time.

That night in right field, looking up, I saw swarms of bugs flittering around the outfield light pole. It’s like a natural light show with the light reflecting off the wings and bodies of the insects. I also noticed black shadows streaking across the field of illuminated bugs. Bats.

They were mesmerizing to watch. Zipping around the globe of light in the sky. The crack of the bat brought me back to the baseball field as a check-swing pop fly descended to foul ground down the right field line. The coach yelled at me to wake up. I did not get there nearly in time to make the sure out. The coach yelled some more. I jogged back to my spot in the right field, thinking about echolocation and how the bats found their food in the dark night sky.

Echolocation is when an animal, like a bat, sends out a sound wave. The sound wave reflects off an object back toward the emitting animal, who then processes and determines distance, shape, location, etc. from the rebounding waves. Humans have an innate, but underdeveloped, ability for echolocation. Since most home sapiens have spent eons not using this innate skill, it is hidden for most of us. Many blind people learn to use their innate sense of echolocation to help them navigate their place in space.

Settling back down in my position, I watched the bats work over the last few innings. They zoomed in and out of the light, following the navigation maps constantly being updated in their tiny brains, and never giving up on chasing a meal. It hit me that I could take a lesson from those bats. Not to become a caped crime-fighter in downtown Kansas City, but to trust my senses and keep trying even though my vision was failing. I vowed to keep swinging the bat and using my version of echolocation to make each swing count. Instead of a cape and cowl, this bat-inspired human would don a batting helmet, spikes, and uniform. The struggle would be real, but the journey now had ample fuel.

I found my way eventually. Down the line, over the next school year, my parents calmly accepted those four dreaded words from the school nurse, and I got glasses. I tried to be thoughtful at all times, knowing how much of a financial burden it had to have been, so I took care of those glasses like they were gold. I only wore them when needed and never had them on when it came to an activity where the potential for hard contact was possible.

I did wear them for baseball, though, and it changed everything. When you’ve been trying to hit two baseballs and all of a sudden there’s only one, the success rate of every swing rises. I fell in love with baseball again. I wish I could say the same about selling fundraising chocolate bars, but alas, not all in life is as easily remedied with lenses and frames.

Even though the 13-year-old me couldn’t fully appreciate this at the time, the adult me fully appreciates how my parents handled the baseball disappointments that summer and beyond. They could have jumped in and helped sell my candy bars. Many parents do this; mine did not. They could have complained to the new coach about me being relegated to the very end of the bench. Many parents do this; mine did not. My parents let me navigate through these issues. They let me deal with the situation and, even though it was a blind step, they let me find the way forward. That was pretty cool.

Echolocation. No matter where we are in life, there are times when a step becomes a blind step. Times when the sky is black as night and/or there’s a blinding light ahead. Times when everyone needs to trust the gut and the mind instead of relying on the eyes to move forward in life. Trust your experiences and lessons learned to pick the right ball to hit. Trust the fact that even if you miss, odds are you’ll get another swing on the next pitch, the next game, or the next season.

Baseball bats can help show the way.

I’m now in my early 60s, and I still love baseball. I also still love bats of all kinds.

And it all started on a baseball field.