Last night while watching the movie, "Sandlot" for the umpteenth time, I recalled the line Small's Mother said to him. She said she wanted him to go outside, meet other kids, have fun and get into a little trouble. It got me to thinking of the role the Mothers have in all of the baseball playing boys.
My Mother didn't throw me or my brother batting practice or hit us grounders. However, she went to the field and shagged balls as we hit. I can still see her in the outfield without a glove scooping up ground balls with her skirt. She was pretty good at it too. She could whip up a meal in minutes and often had to prepare two or three suppers a day, as we were all on different schedules. She was a score keeper. After she passed I found many of those scorecards. I think she only kept the ones that I did well.
Later in life as I started coaching my seven and eight year old boys in Little League, I became more aware of the importance of mothers in their baseball son's development. My first year in coaching I had to draft a team. Identifying the kids to pick in the early rounds was easy. The later rounds was tougher. I recall that first team and my last pick. I had about ten kids from which to pick. None had shown any ability at all. So when it came my turn I selected a little lefty named David Rose. Why David, you ask? Well David's Mother, Ginger, had brought him to tryouts. She was knock down gorgeous. I mean a real beautiful woman. If her kid couldn't play ball, at least she was nice to look at. (At this point I will pause and allow female readers to comment on my shallowness and whatever adjectives one would feel necessary to throw at me).
However, the story does not end here. Ginger was as beautiful inside as she was outside and ended up being my Team Mom. Byron, her husband, ended up volunteering to be my assistant coach. We became good friends. But there is some irony to this story. We ended up with a pretty good team. David was a real nice kid and tried hard. We had a pretty good team and made the championship game. In the last inning of that game we had a one run lead. The other team had the bases loaded with two outs and their best hitter at the plate. He hit a line drive to left field and my little lefty with the beautiful Mom made a diving catch to end the game. What a great draft pick.
The next year I had another pretty good team of eight and nine year olds. Practices can be a challenge to keep the kids interested and make it fun. Many of the mothers would bring their kids to practice and wait to take them home. In order to keep it interesting, I told the Moms and kids the next day we were going to have a Mothers vs. kids game. My second baseman was a kid named Phillip McAbee. A really good player. He could hit and field. It turned out that one of the mommas was an army brat and had been an All Europe softball player when she was a teenager. Phillip's Mom was still playing slow pitch softball in Chattanooga. Needless to say the Mother Team was pretty good. When Phillip's Mom caught his line drive, putting him out for the second time, he sat down and cried.
I understand Phillip later received a voice scholarship to U of Tennessee.
All the Moms weren't as classy as MY Moms. I once had to separate two of them from a "Cat Fight" at the Red Bank, TN Dixie League park.
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| Two Generation Of Baseball Moms. One is done and the other just starting |
Flash forward to the 90's. By then my kids baseball careers were over and I had become a Lamar University baseball fan. Sitting in the stands we had the chance to meet a lot of the baseball Moms of the college players. A handful stand out in my memory. Bryan Lovelace's Mom and Dad came from California to watch him play. She would holler at him, "C'mon, Cutie Pie". A name she must have given him as a toddler and thoroughly embarrassed him as a 21 year old college baseball player. Everytime he would come to bat she would cover her face and not watch until his at bat was over.
Richard Templeton was a reliever in the mid 90's. During one particular game when the Cardinals were playing poorly, His Mother got on top of the dugout and started berating the entire team for their poor play. The Cards came back and won that game. Mrs. Templeton was credited with the "Save".
As time went on, we began encouraging the Mother's to bring us cookies. Many obliged. A couple of Section BB favorites emerged. Lisa Dziedzic, whose son was invited to the KC Royals spring training camp this year, made all of the games along with about a dozen of her other kids. She made some outstanding pastries. Another favorite, Frankie Harrington, also brought some nice treats. Frankie had two sons, both pitchers that are still in the LU record books. We got cookies for eight years. She knew the game and when her boys made mistakes, she didn't cut them any slack. A great fan.
But, the favorite of all time was the Mother of Scotty Diaz. Scotty didn't pitch many innings in his two years at Lamar, but his parents were always there. They sat behind us in Section BB and she had treats at every game which she enthuastically shared. It was her desire to see her son pitch more that is still talked about today in Section BB. Last I heard Scotty had earned his medical degree and is practicing medicine.
As the new season is about to begin, I am looking forward to cookies from Reid Russell's Mom and the other baseball mothers yet to be named.
Most of the baseball Mom's don't throw batting practice, play catch, hit fly balls or call balls and strikes. But, like my Mother and Ms. Smalls, they are the backbone of a baseball playing kid. They drive the carpools, wash the uniforms, bandage the scrapes, ice the black eyes. They root for their kid, worry about an injury, prepare the pregame meals, give up a new dress to have money for a new catcher's mitt, soothe a wounded soul following a hat trick and on occasion mediate with an overbearing Dad. They spend hours and days in uncomfortable seats when they would need to be doing something else. And, in some cases scoop up grounders with their dress like Ozzie Smith.
Thanks to my Dad I could hit left handed pitchers pretty well, But, thanks to my Mom, I learned to keep score. That I still do to this day.
