Baseball

ports are not my thing. They never have been. Unless someone invents the 100-yard smartass, I'm never going to win any athletic competition. I never played football, never played basketball, never freaked out over a fantasy football draft, never wrestled. I was on a forensics team for like one day--and I played little league.

Now my son is playing baseball and he's into it like he's falling off a cliff. We've spent a grand total of fourteen million dollars outfitting him with digital socks, a laser guided mitt, kevlar penis armor, and training equipment including personal visits from Whitsox players and the ghost of Babe Ruth. As I directed the wagon train of teamsters to the register at Sports Authority, I realized youth baseball is a racket and I'm it's biggest sucker.

But I don't care. I'll spend another million tomorrow because my son is into it. He's all about the baseball. He eats sunflower seeds, spits, hustles his juevos on the baseline, fidgets with his hat, keeps his foot on the bag, dusts his hands and checks the air flow . . . and disco dances.

I remember little league. I remember left field. I remember no kids could ever put it out there and if they did the third baseman (showoff) would be under it before I could even start running so I mostly stared at the traffic and ate mulberries from an absolutely gargantuan mulberry tree. The mulberries on this thing were as long as my middle finger and I'd come in from defense with purple stains on my Owls uniform. So I know all about the boredom of left field. I assume it's the same in right. It must be because in his game yesterday, Roon wasn't staring through the gap between second and first at the batter and chattering like a steely eyes Whitesox player. He was busting a move.

When I say he was busting a move, I mean he was John Travolting. You could tell by the way he used his walk. It didn't last long and as I was sitting next to one of the most charmingly unabashed Scout moms in the world whom I've known long enough that she wouldn't hesitate to punch me on the shoulder and scream, hey, look at your gay son, I know no-one else saw it. But I did. It's burned into my mind: a spastic hip pumping finger pointing head shaking Staying Alive poster emulating jig right there in right field and I know it was totally spontaneous and I know he's going to do it again. I know it.

The Roon likes the disco. He routinely erupts into a hip thrusting ten year old boy version of Bad by Michael "I Live In B'Hrain Cause They Won't Arrest Me Here" Jackson that, in my day, would get his ass kicked faster than wearing a tutu. Worse, it makes him laugh and when Roon laughs, his bones turn into Jell-O and he falls down.

So here's what I'm looking at: it'll be the big game in the clutch and Roon'll be playing first base. The other coach will have a brief talk with his next batter up giving Roon just enough time for his mind to wander and he'll forget where he is and he'll spaz out into his John Travolta tourrettes syndrome thing, realize he's doing it, start laughing, and fall down just as the third baseman throws the ball to clinch a triple play and it sails over his prone, wiggling, possibly urinating form.

At least he's happy.