These little guys are the Red Wings. It was my privilege to spend every Saturday the last six weeks with them in the Miracle League. The Miracle League is a national baseball program for special needs kids. Only one can't really call it "baseball" as such.
They hit soft balls with padded bats. They hit them off a tee or off an underhand toss. Nobody gets called out. Everybody scores and the last guy up gets to hit a home run. As you might surmise, absolutely zero defense is played except what is necessary to keep somebody from getting knocked in the head. All in all it is not so much different than tee-ball played by little kids except some of our kids need help in remembering where to run. Some of our kids need "buddies" to push the wheelchairs.
If you can't be humbled by the courage of these little guys than your asshole enzymes are at Barry Bonds levels. Not that the players in the Miracle League would consider themselves brave. Hell, no. They're just playing ball. They are getting the opportunity to run around and be on a team just like "normal" kids everywhere. They are just having fun. For these guys it takes courage to get through the day to day. They don't have to be brave when they are at the ball park. They can just play and let somebody else do the bravery thing for awhile.
There are lessons that can be learned from children such as these. I learned one last week when I said something to a little girl on one of the other teams that made me hope for the Earth to swallow me whole.
One of the kids-a girl we'll call Mary- on the other team didn't want to bat. " I can't bat. I don't want to." she said. I asked her if she would give it a try "just for me." That tends to work with girls. At least it does until about the age of 16. Then nothing works and this never changes.
And so she stood in and took her cuts. I noticed that Mary's right hand was turned in and that she drug her right leg. She swung as if she were trying to hit a left handed backhand. She eventually hit the ball-nobody strikes out in the Miracle League-but clearly she was frustrated.
I have coached baseball off and on for 20 years. I figured I could help her out. When she was out in the field, I asked her what hand she wrote with. She held up her left hand. The left wrist had girly-girl kid bracelets on it. The right hand she held behind her back. "I used to write with my right hand before the car accident" she said. Oh. Turns out she sustained a traumatic brain injury in a hit-and-run accident. Jesus. Poor baby. Poor sweet baby.
"Listen, honey," I said. "We're going to try something different next time around. I think I can fix you.'
Her brown eyes widened. "You can fix me?" she said.
Dear God in heaven. I wanted to die on the spot. I wanted to literally be smote into ash there on second base. How could I have been so thoughtless? Coaches talk about fixing swings. Lawyers talk about fixing problems. Still. I make a damn good living being careful and precise with language. And here I am coming across to this poor child as the baseball equivalent of Benny Hinn. How could I have been so stupid?
And yet, we say and do things all of the time in the "real world' with very little regard for the feelings of others. We tell jokes, we make statements and offer opinions in the company of others with no thought that we might be offending someone needlessly. We mean nothing by it. And when we are told" You know all that stuff you said about the Mayor the other day? That's Bob's cousin.", we go seek Bob out and offer our sincere apologies. But still we ought to keep a closer eye on ourselves as the actors say. We ought to do a better job of thinking before we speak. There's a lot of hurt in this world. No sense in turning up the temperature on a person's pain unless we just have to.
After I realized that God wasn't going to bail me out by smiting me hip and thigh, I said, " Well sweetie, what I meant was that I think I can help you hit the ball better." That seemed to satisfy her. Thank God.
After our game today, we handed out the medals and we sang "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." I said goodbye to the Red Wings until the fall session. My Asperger's kids told me they had fun. One of the kids confessed that in lieu of his baseball cap he had been wearing a technology cap that turned him into a robot. OK by me. One of my PDD (pervasive developmental disorder) kids wanted to shake my hand before he left Even better than being hugged by a bunch of germy kids, the Moms all hugged me.
It was a good day. Did you have a better day than I did? Oh yeah? Wanna bet?
All of the Red Wings are precious in my sight and I will miss every single one of them. Which is a first for me. Usually I want to kill, on the average, one or two guys on every team I have ever coached and the feeling is generally mutual. Not so at the Miracle League. Victory remains in love at the friendly confines of our little ballyard.
I can't wait to see my Red Wings again. This has been the most fun I've had on the baseball field in years. I'm in the process of learning sign language so I can communicate with the players that are hearing impaired. It's not that I'm a nice guy. The deaf kids are the only players I can't yell at. This dangerously alters the balance of power and must be rectified. . Hopefully, Mary will come back out in the Fall. It is my fervent prayer that she isn't warped for life by the careless words of an insensitive moron.
And I swear to God that I will use that other "f" word before I ever utter the word "fix" down at the Miracle League again.
1 comment:
You have mail, sir.
No way to comment yesterday, so I emailed a thank you for your work with the Miracle League. My son has played on our league for 9 years.
I can't even imagine why someone without children, much less special-needs children, would give up Saturdays to help our kids experience some facsimile of the great American pastime.
As I said in the email, don't give a thought to the "fix" comment. No one is immune from using a word that will be taken literally by a child. When the word RE-tard is bandied about on t.v. and in general conversation, I stifle anger.
But most of my rage is directed to whatever force (genetics? biological mishap? a "greater power"?) determined that this coming year my son will ride the Handi-Ride bus to his parttime job loading a dishwasher rather than heading off to college.
I know. I should be grateful that he can work, and I am. I see kids in wheelchairs or caged in by their minds, and I know that we are very lucky. But as one of the team moms has said, "When I get to heaven, I sure have a lot of questions that need answering."
Having a child at all is pretty much a crap shoot. Would I rather Evan had not been born? Goodness, no. I can't imagine my life without this incredible young man.
Would I wish that he be like others his age- capable of abstract thought, clear speech, muscular coordination, relationships of young adulthood, and all the rest? In a heartbeat.
If I could trade my mispent life for a physically and mentally healthy son, I would. It's as simple as that.
Some say that anger and bitterness only make matters worse, but I continue to look for actual cures beyond a grief I can't shed. (There's a promising study of proteins that will "heal" affected areas of the brain. Please let this not be too late for my son.)
Meanwhile, noble souls such as you extend your time and patience to give children of another world a taste of ours. My son, at least, loves playing a game that he's watched on t.v. since he was very small. Thank you for your generous heart.
Lucy from Alabama
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