Zen and the Art of a Game of Catch
Before this summer, my son wasn’t much interested in baseball. We signed him up to see if he’d like it. Now. Yeah. I KNOW. Do we really need another activity absorbing what little free time we have? We. Do. Not. But do we believe our kids will grow up to be better people by engaging with others instead of sitting at home on screens? Yes, we do. That’s the modern calculation behind so many family decisions. Our time/the need to do the laundry/wash the dishes/answer those emails/get the towel rack fixed/finally unpack from moving two years ago versus hours at a sports field or dance studio or swim practice.
Baseball was a good choice. He likes it. We play catch now. A lot. For the first time in my life, I am a father having a game of catch with my son, who is 8.
Maybe this is me getting older, but I think a lot about how some things stand the test of time and some do not. Playing catch stands the test of time. Why? Because it’s a form of ritual, and like all rituals it holds deeper meaning.
What is a game of catch? It’s throwing a ball back and forth. What is it really? It’s a connection, a metaphor in action.
Am I digging deep on this one? Indeed, I am. Hey. You have time to think about these things when you play a lot of catch.
At the most basic level, a parent playing catch with a kid is about refining a skill. But this activity has layers, and the next layer is love. A parent playing catch with their kid is a statement that says, of all the millions of things I could be doing right now in this world, I am spending time with you doing something you enjoy. You are that important to me.
There is a window when a kid’s whole world revolves around their parents. This is a window that opens slowly and feels like it will close quickly. If you don’t make the most of it, you run the risk of your kid becoming a giant music star and eventually writing the saddest song ever written, and that song is specifically about you.
I already know I will miss the feeling, years from now, of walking in the door from work and my son asking if we can play catch. I think about that older version of me, and he always says the same thing, “Go, you idiot. The window closes.”
Catch is more than just an indirect expression of love, it’s also about teaching a kid how to learn. It’s humbling when you start. Two months ago, my son couldn’t catch the ball or throw with accuracy. He was frustrated and did not like – in the weeks leading up to his first official team practice – me asking him to go outside and throw the ball. (I swear I am not a psycho sports dad. My goal was mainly – I didn’t want him to get hurt when another kid whips the ball at him.) My son is one of those kids who’s pretty good at everything he does, so when he couldn’t throw or catch very well, his eyes bore the look of a boy who would rather be doing anything else, and I had to gently emphasize that mistakes and not being good were part of how he would improve even if it felt like the opposite. He didn’t like it, but he trusted me.
Slowly, he improved. I think it helped that his coaches gave him the same instruction I did. Hearing it from your dad is one thing, but when your cool coach tells you the same stuff, you realize the old man knows what he’s talking about.
We have a park near our home. After a couple weeks, we went out one afternoon to throw the ball around, and this kid who couldn’t throw the ball 15 feet accurately was making perfect 50-foot throws and catching almost everything. He wants to play catch all the time, and not just with me, but with friends. He is gaining confidence, and he wants to push the boundaries of how hard and fast and long he can throw.
It was when we moved into this confident phase that I realized catch has yet another meaning, one that never occurred to me before I had kids of my own and was reminded through their horsing around that violence remains a default human setting. Throwing a ball is a playful form of controlled aggression. I suspect that – like so many things that come with being a human – having a brain and arms and hands that can throw hard and accurately carries with it some evolutionary advantage. There was probably a time when it would have been really useful for your nomadic tribe to have Roger Clemens or Nolan Ryan on its team for the hunt or for battle. Back then, throwing would have been used to injure or kill. We are lucky now. Most of us don’t have to kill our own food on the savannah or fend off gangs of roving marauders.
But we still carry this evolutionary baggage with us, and we need a place to put it, and baseball is a place to put it. Throwing a baseball back and forth takes a violent impulse and channels it for good – as a way to be helpful to others in a team sport. I don’t think we give sports enough credit for redirecting some of humanity’s worst traits and turning them into something positive. Football, basketball, baseball, wrestling – they’re shock absorbers.
A game of catch says, we have these awesome physical powers, and we’re going to use them for good, kid. You’re learning this skill to be helpful to others – to help your teammates. This will be a pattern in your life – take that which is inside you and could be used for bad and turn it for good.
Something I had forgotten because it’s been many years since I had a long throwing session is how well it serves as a blessing for the soul. It is an activity that requires skill and precision that somehow also allows you to lose yourself completely. You don’t have to think. You can just be. Same goes for the other person. This is the other magic of sports. For a few minutes, you and whoever you are playing with, you let it all melt away. All of the stress that comes with being an adult – or a kid – is not welcome. How often do we let go and just exist in the moment with someone else as a pure and untroubled version of ourselves?
Zen wears a mitt.
One of the indelible memories of my childhood was a day I played catch with my dad in the backyard of our old house, the house that was too small and that you moved out of for the bigger house but has all the good childhood memories. The ground was slick, and when I ran forward to catch the ball, I slipped and fell flat on my back. I was out for a quick moment. When I opened my eyes, I saw my dad standing there asking if I was OK. I looked in my mitt, and there was the ball. I asked if I caught it, and he said I did. I always wondered if he put it there. Looking back, it doesn’t matter. The fact that I know he’s the kind of guy who would have put it there is all that matters. You learn things about your dad when you play catch.
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Beautiful stuff. Reminds me of a line I heard once: “These ARE the good old days.”