Little League, Big Disappointment

In the past 10 days, I've had flashbacks to my Little League days - but not the good "Home Run" or "Nice Catch" memories pop up. More of the LSD/'Nam flashbacks where you just want the acid trip to end (note, I've never done acid, just to ease your mind in case you worried - this is just to make a point).

Last week, I went to a White Sox game with Jen, her friend from work and the friend's husband. The Sox were facing the Tigers. We had decent bleacher seats in right field, kind of close to the vistiting team bullpen. As the Tigers half of the first inning ended, I saw a familiar name warming up the right fielder. Turns out an old classmate of mine is now the bullpen catcher on Detroit and gets to play catch with the outfielder during the game.

Look at this stud

I knew this guy was in the Tigers system, but that's not the story. The sight of this player brought back some memories of my Little League days. I played with him in a baseball league back in the day, including making a traveling All-Star team when I was 8 years old. I say "made the team", but unfortunately did not involve much playing. This team was coached by the guy's dad. It sucked as a little kid sitting on the bench for these games while my peers got to play every game and every inning. Sucked even worse for my parents who came to all my games, hoping that I would get some action, only to be a bench prop game in, game out. I have a trophy that proves that I was a part of the team, but I was no more part of the team than you were. You would think that all kids in a setting like that would get close-to-equal playing time, but this particular coach was all about winning.

My second reminder of these days happened earlier this week. I was watching America's Got Talent, and some 7-8 year old kid was showing off his rapping "skills". The judges buzzed that kid off before he could finish, which led the kid to cry. While I don't remember crying when these baseball games were going on and I couldn't play, I was definitely just as disappointed at not being able to play. The weird thing with this incident was that I completely sided with the judges on this one. The kid didn't deserve to advance - he sucked. The judges are required to be critical of bad talent and advance the good talent. Obviously doesn't always happen that way, but they get it right more often than not in these shows. Anyways, Howard Stern was given heat for critiquing the kid, even though he was hired to be critical. It's as if a kid is just automatically supposed to advance because "he's cute" or some other BS.

In both of these cases, a young person (me and this kid) were exposed to disappointment at a very young age. Despite my negative experience, I didn't have a ton of sympathy for the kid who got voted off. If this kid is as good of a rapper as he and others may think he is, he will continue to work on his skills, practice his craft to no end, and perhaps someday show some actual talent in rapping. Whether you're the best at what you do or looking to advance in the field of your choice, practicing and looking to learn how to get better is necessary.

While I didn't give up Little League after that experience, I did give up playing baseball when I got cut from the high school team in freshman year. My line of thinking was - OK, I didn't make the team this year - no way will I make the team in future years. So instead of trying to get better and make next year's team, I quit playing.

These experiences as a youth can definitely carry over to one's adulthood. While I was definitely disappointed with how my traveling baseball experience went when I was younger, it gave me a life lesson really quick. One that we're afraid to expose to younger kids - the concept of disappointment. As parents (or in my case, a future parent down the line), we want our kids to be happy and have a better childhood than we did - even though many of us can't really complain about how things turned out.

Unfortunately, it's hard to spin a disappointing event in a kid's life into a positive. It's hard to tell a kid, "This is how life is sometimes. It's not fair." As a kid (or even a high schooler), if I really really wanted to succeed at baseball, there's no guarantee that I would have made future baseball teams. Sometimes, it's just a true lack of talent in something that holds you back from making a team; other times, it may be some silly politics, where kids make teams simply based on who they know or whose asses they kiss.

However, there is a definite guarantee in not making the team if I don't try out for it. I suppose I just didn't care to succeed in baseball, that I was somewhat burnt out from playing for the past 9 years and just wanted time to myself.

The best thing you can teach a kid in a moment of childhood disappointment is that while life doesn't always go the way you want it to, if you really want something, you have to keep trying, keep practicing at making yourself better. You may not always catch the right eyes and get what you want (more playing time or your first record contract), but you won't catch anyone's eyes if you just give up because someone said you weren't worthy or weren't good.

As the cliche goes, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take. You may miss some (or most) of the ones you do, but if you really want something, a certain level of effort is needed. Otherwise, you have only yourself to blame for it.