Batting Order

A few weeks ago, we took my son to the baseball field. He’s 5 (or 5.5 as he will gladly point out to you) so at this point he’s been to many different games- taking in the Rangers at Globe Life, the Aggies at Olsen and even in Omaha last year, and of course many of his own t-ball games over the last couple of seasons. 

This was different though. We went to watch a high school baseball game in their local tournament. We didn’t know anybody on the team, my son is not likely to ever even play for that particular high school, and it’s not like this was some big playoff push by a must-see team. 

We went to watch this game because the tournament was named after and in memory of my neighbor's 19 year old son, who was shot and killed on the 4th of July in 2024. It is still shocking to think about, over half a year later, the kind of thing that does not happen on our street or in our community. He was a good kid, he loved his family, loved sports, and he had an entire life ahead of him. It was cut short by the rash actions of a man who I try to waste no energy or thought on, because it’s the last thing he deserves. 

As cliché as it may be, a tragedy like that hits different when you have kids. Not just because of how it makes you feel, but forcing you to find a way to talk about it with them. Even if you’ve had that conversation just a couple of months before, it’s not any easier. You’ve tried to learn your lessons from the last trip to the Abyss, but that doesn’t mean you’re any better at it. And you still have to try to be there for those that were truly devastated and affected.

What can you do? How can you be supportive? What’s “too much”? How do you avoid being the person that seems to take other people’s grief and make it your own personality? How do you step up to the plate for the people that need it?

It's something that stuck with me a lot in 2024, this need for community, for relationships that are meaningful even if they aren’t the deepest ones in your life. People that can be there for you in moments of crisis even if they are not with you every day, the lineup of folks with whom your average weekly interaction is a wave at the mailbox or a 5 minute catch up at a kids birthday party in a trampoline park. It will take everyone, your family, your closest friends, and even those on the fringes of your roster to get you through it when the very fabric of your world seems to be ripped apart. 

It’s a double edged sword though, this old community concept. As you will look to them, they will also need you, and the wider you expand your circle, the more likely you are to be needed. Your number will be called, and you may whiff terribly, or even be drilled by an absolute heater. But you stood in the box when it counted, and that’s not nothing. You can’t hit a home run every time, sometimes you just need someone to eat pitches. 

Our latest version of stepping up to the plate was meeting up with all the other families with young kids on our street (almost entirely made up of boys between 3 and 6 years old, who will hopefully someday be 19 years old, and hopefully someday be much older), putting them in jerseys with our neighbors last name and number on the back, and showing up to this high school baseball game. It is by any metric a small thing, little time, effort, or money involved. But when his mother saw them all coming through the parking lot, and her eyes found the name and number on the back of their jerseys, it felt like a much bigger hit. We watched his parents throw the first pitch, sat in the bleachers while the home team jumped out to an early lead and the kids ran around eating Sour Patch Kids and occasionally shouted “Go Lions” when they remembered they were at a baseball game. And then after a few innings, we took our son home, stopping for some ice cream on the way, because you only get so many opportunities to give your 5 year old sugar after 8 pm. 

I thought about everything we saw in the previous year in our friend group and community. Deaths, divorces, infertility struggles, house fires, all manner of sufferings and hardships that somehow seem worse when you list them all out like that. And I realized if I teach my son (or his two sisters for that matter) anything at all, it’s that you need this. There are a lot of people that will make isolation and introversion trendy and there will be those that preach self care and self preservation above all else. It’s not sustainable though, you cannot be the only one in the batting order. You will need all manner of connections, spouses, close friends, weird little internet communities, borderline acquaintances, to make it through some games. 

Embrace it. Take a meal to someone, be an under qualified therapist to a friend that needs it, and never expect it in return, but be confident in the lineup you set when the game gets tough. Swing away, do what you can for those you know, and trust that someone will do the same for you. That's baseball baby.