I’ve taken to writing about Other Things on Saturday, and this morning there’s this weird hole of nothingness before the Big First Practice Game, so I thought I’d share a thought that popped into my mind as I was waking up this morning.
My son wound up a soccer player. Through his play I have become quite the soccer aficionado. No I’m not hitting games in Manchester or even that many MLS games, but I do enjoy the sport in a way I didn’t 10-15 years ago.
I was a baseball kid from Queens. Even used to coach baseball before I had kids – and have my Queens CYO Division Champs satin jacket to prove it.
So I had this fantasy that I’d be coaching my son in baseball all these years.
Then he tried out, and baseball has this stupid Age Cutoff rule. My son is born at the end of April…which means he misses the April 1 cutoff. The net result, he had to play with “the younger kids.” This is out of sync with the way school grades work.
So instead of playing with his friends, on his friends’ team….he played with the younger kids. And thus grew disinterested.
Oh, and he could play….but I wasn’t part of the local baseball mafia because of the hours I was working back in the day.
I would ask every year – hey you think we could play him “up” 20 or so days. Nope, no way, can’t be done. Except of course for (name changed) Timmy, whose dad was on the board. He somehow not only could play for his age, he could play a year up. Fun how that works.
So Junior got bored with baseball and we focused on soccer, and I assistant coached for many years until the kids got older…and am a pretty serviceable youth coach at the younger ages – match me against Generic American Dad Coach and I can probably help a team win a game just off tactics. (I love Holding Midfielders.)
My son, who I dragged to all those Mets games back when, is just not interested in the sport. When we do talk sports its usually NBA or NFL.
So, parents of ten years ago, bad job by you on being stewards of the game. I’d be OK with a rule is a rule, except when its not if you’re part of the baseball mafia. Oh, once they got to like 8th grade they needed a few extra kids to field one more team….we got asked if Junior would like to play…..this would be the playing “up” I had been asking for since he was 9. Guess what I told them.
