Passage IV

Baseballs and Butterflies

[1] Our son has started playing organized T-ball, a beginner’s version of baseball. [2] “Organized” is what parents call it, anyway. [3] Joe is seven, living in those two or three years when they can manage to throw a baseball a few feet but when what they’re really interested in are things closer at hand, bugs, butterflies, dirt (if they’re in the infield), grass (if they’re in the outfield). [4] Children of that age still think nothing of doing little dances in the outfield, often with their backs to home plate and, consequently, the batter. [5] It’s not as if the outfielders’ positions matter much, though—the ball never gets hit hard enough to reach there. (49)

Since there’s not much chance that a seven-year-old just learning the game can hit a pitched baseball, the umpire puts the ball on top of a stationary tee, a piece of flexible tubing adjusted to each batter’s height. If batters repeatedly fail to hit the ball—and lots of them do—the umpire is patient, giving them four or five chances instead of the usual three. (52) When a batter finally makes contact, the ball dribbles into the infield, where the nearest player usually ends up throwing the ball at the first baseman’s feet or, if the fielder is precocious, over the first baseman’s head.

In a T-ball league, one needs to do something to keep the score from reaching triple digits in the early going. There’s a rule, therefore, that says the runner must stop when any fielder from the other team picks up the ball and holds it aloft. The rule might seem a good one, but the children can’t remember to hold up the ball. Once they’ve picked it up, they look at it quizzically for a while and then, look up to see what all the ruckus is about. What it’s about a bleacher section full of parents, each adult frantically holding up a stiff arm. The child with the ball wonders at the grown-up’s odd, noisy behavior. Meanwhile, the runners continue to score. They score, that is, if they were not to be distracted by the grown-ups—or the butterflies.