Showcase

As usual and sometimes unexpectedly, I got my son to the field on time for the next progression in his baseball career, the tryouts for the Junior Showcase team. The weather was beautiful for a fall day on Foxon Road in North Branford, Connecticut.

We didn’t really know how the day would play out, but there was a panel of coaches and assistants watching the kids and making notes on their clipboards. The boys hit, fielded, played a scrimmage, and then did it all over again. And then it was over. It just kind of ended.

There was no end-of-season fanfare, no customary last meal together, and no real plans for an uncertain future. Our team was disbanding, with some of the kids moving on together and others going their separate ways. The fellowship of Rangers Black that we had enjoyed over the past two years was coming to an end, and it felt like there should have been something more to acknowledge it.

But there was something else bothering me, that nagging feeling about what we were doing with, or perhaps to, our kids. The pressure of trying to make yet another team, always singing for their supper, always having to prove themselves worthy of the next opportunity.

When I was a kid, you played high school sports. You made the team or you didn’t. None of us thought we would play in college, and most of us didn’t care. It was about the camaraderie, the friendships, and enjoying the moment. Now, before some of these kids have even played a game in high school, they already feel defeated.

The odds of playing college baseball across all three NCAA divisions are approximately 8.8%, meaning more than 91% won’t get there. Why put so much emphasis on an outcome that the overwhelming majority will never experience? Why not just let them play?

I understand that the program we’re involved in is designed to cultivate kids who want to play at the next level, and I recognize my own responsibility as a parent. I want my son to compete, challenge himself, and learn the lessons sports have to offer. Teamwork, perseverance, caring for others, winning with humility and losing with grace. But somewhere along the way, I wonder if we’ve confused the value of playing with the importance of advancing.

Perhaps that’s what made this day feel so strange. What should have been a celebration of everything these kids had accomplished together felt more like an audition for what came next. Many of the boys would be moving on together, but others would not. Everyone simply went home, without any real acknowledgment of the team that was or the boys who would be going their separate ways.

There is something sad about spending two years with a group of people and having it end without really knowing it was ending. You always think there will be another game, another tournament, another weekend talking about everything and nothing. But life changes, people move in different directions, and eventually the space between those moments becomes too much to traverse.

I think about eating a Granny Smith apple with my buddy Kevin, talking Dad talk, not realizing it might be the last time we would do that in quite the same way. Like The Goonies, this was our time, and now it won’t ever be quite the same.

As I’ve said before, this was our favorite team of talented misfits, and that goes just as much for the parents as it does for the kids. We came together because of baseball, but somewhere along the way it became about the friendships and the simple enjoyment of being together.

Many of us will still be together, and there are new friendships and experiences ahead that I’m looking forward to. But certain kids, moms, and dads made this particular group what it was, and their absence will be felt. We knew the boys would eventually grow up and find their own way. We just didn’t realize how much we would miss the little world we had built around them.

Maybe that’s how these things are supposed to end. Not with some grand farewell, but with everyone heading home, assuming there would always be another Sunday.

But maybe fuck that.

Maybe some things deserve a proper goodbye.

So, to those of you who won’t be continuing with us, who I never really got the chance to say goodbye to, this is my goodbye. I loved all you guys. Thank you for the friendships, the laughter, and all the wonderful memories. We may have come together because of baseball, but what I’ll remember most is all of you, and how much better those two years were because we spent them together.