Youth Sports.

 

Elementary school, and then because of my birthday, the 80s was filled with a after school sport for almost every time of the year barring the summer. Soccer was the first to come up back in kindergarten. Soccer is also the simplest to understand and do as a knee-high brat, you just kick a ball. So early on it was more my game of choice than the others. So, in some ways it was unsurprisingly the first to get retired from as well.

The first few years of it though I was into intensely. So much so we just have pictures of me hanging out in my soccer uniform in the house. But little kid soccer is very interesting as you travel through time. My mother thought that first year, the kindergarten age group was the cutest thing imaginable. When you watch games at that competition level it really is just a cluster of kids running after a ball while a couple less interested kids sit on the sides, no big sports drama there. But when I was a kid in that scrum, we thought one kid was better than the others, all kinds of nuanced play was going on in our minds while maybe not in reality.

I would continue to play soccer all through elementary school, and I think for one spring league around fourth or fifth grade. I think the highlights of my career comes in the second and third grade though. For second grade in 1985 we had a team called the Tigers since our uniforms were orange and black, I know not terribly original. This was the age the game clicked on a bit though versus the scrums that we had when we were even smaller kids. I remember one morning in community park we had a game where I just scored a goal every time, I shot the ball. Most memorably the like fourth of fifth one going in of a ricochet from the goalie’s pads and in from some impossible right angle.

That game is sort of what I remember being the spark for my love of the game. I sort of figured with that output the sky would be the limit for me in soccer going forward, I don’t think I’d ever seen professional soccer on television, but I am sure now any adult league would want a prodigy that could score goals that easily. So, I finished out that year of soccer. Now let’s be honest when I look at the lineup for the team in 1985 I can see why I was getting playing time, thus there might have been a physical advantage at that point in my life. While not the tallest kid on the team, we seem to have had a lot of petite little guys and something tells me that was throughout the league and probably contributed more than I might like to the easy goal scoring.

None the less the next year I was excited to go again. I won’t lie, I remember little kid me, and he liked scoring goals. Problem was I was big and physical and quickly into the 86 season it became apparent to the coaches I would actually play really aggressive defense. In some ways it was great, I got a cool nickname “The Animal” and was an easy pencil in to play defense all game, but as a kid even all the positive reinforcement didn’t make up for how kids weighed in on goal scoring being the most important thing in soccer, not winning, not playing your position well, the best kids scored the most goals period. And while it was fun knocking a kid out coming across the center line it lacked the fame from the other kids and no amount of praise from the coaches made up for it.

It was from that point that even though I still was looking to get back to that plateau, soccer never felt as exciting. While my mother thought I still was super-into the game, my interest was waning. It didn’t help that Dad’s influence into making me collect baseball cards was in 1987, which happened to be the same year we moved into having real pitchers in AA baseball in little league. This would shift my focus on which sport I cared about to Baseball and mark the slow death of wanting to play soccer or even bother to go to the practices.

I think by the 1988 season was when I remember trying to dodge out of practice a lot. That may have been the last year I ever played soccer to be honest. Fall 1989 would have been the sixth grade, and we don’t seem to have any pictures of a team from that era, so all my animosity, which I thought was spread our over a couple seasons might all be on that “Kotoko” team.

Little League

Baseball didn’t start out being the most important sport to me though, baseball started in the spring of kindergarten the same way it does for most kids. Tee-ball, the starting point, is a different set of memories, mainly revolving around kids reenacting an M&M’s commercial about how a green ones would cause you to hit a home run and not so focused on what was going on, on the field.

                Tee-ball was M&M’s making faces when it was picture day and that was about it. In 1983 and 84 I didn’t watch baseball on television, and I probably thought Babe Ruth was the candy bar guy. Soccer was the sport kids ran around and did things in, that’s where all the athletes were during those years. I can’t remember a single kid bragging about their baseball prowess at this time. Nope you either played soccer really well or you had a really awesome collection of toys that the other kids would covet. None of us played football. But we were way too little to play tackle football like those gladiators on television.

                You can see even in farm league they just gave us simple hats and we went out there and swung away at the pitching machines. The only really neat position was catcher then because you got to suit up in all that armor and try and catch the missed balls. But while little league was an institution at that age it was running around for the foul balls of other games to get free snow cones and Big League chew that mattered not the on field play.

                But then we got cable TV somewhere along the line and Dad got me into the cards and by 1987 that all mashed into a new look at what it was to be on the baseball diamond. AA ball would be weirdly different too, now we got, if I recall almost a full jersey. It might have been the full thing. I just don’t remember if we got the little stirrups or not yet. This would also be the beginning of real pitchers. Armed with my new knowledge from watching the game and stats I was ready for it.

                I actually was not, after practices and the like the first kid that ever pitched to me, so non-adult, in a game was throwing side armed. Which for one is weird that he was allowed to go that route, you’d think someone would have corrected that early on, but I have my ideas why that didn’t happen. Anyway, this meant things looked totally different than I thought they were going to be. I swear before all that is holy it looked like he was trying to throw the ball at me, and I was keen to not get hit. So, there was a lot of surprise when I moved out of the way of the thing to see the umpire call strikes. Of course, there is a generous strike zone when everyone is knee high, but I saw the ball coming at me, he called it a strike?

                That game humbled and worried me a bit. Luckily as the season would go along, I found out that was a weird anomalous event and things got better. It did hurt my confidence a bit though, but I worked through it. That year was an interesting year in general, we had a lot of Ryan’s on the team so to simplify things I went by Wes that whole season. It’s strange how one can just quickly retrain to a new name if needed, and decades later seems so weird that I spent a multi-month span of my youth with a different name half the time. I guess that would help the groundwork later for finding internet and BBS nicknames so easy to use.

                Also, it’s when I got into first and third base on defense and once I started hitting again, versus the fear I was going to get hit, I got confident enough to try hitting lefthanded some, which I don’t remember if I ever did very much after that year. But there was a small time in my life when I was a hitting lefty, and my name was Wes on the ball field. Along with that I really focused on getting proficient with third base especially so I could cement myself into more playing time.

                Now in 1988 we are at the height of my love for the game. Moving up to AAA, I traded out the yellow uniforms the year before for proper green uniforms this year. The tail end of AA went so well I was really ready. This would be the season, I got that they hardly ever moved fourth graders up to majors, but I would do so well this year I would get those two glories years in the big field with the fans.

                I won’t lie the year went well. Focusing on third base was a big deal, a lot of kids that age weren’t good at stopping the ground balls and getting them accurately to first base from that side of the diamond. I was good and watching pitches and solid at making contact. These were the things I practiced. I liked those players in the majors. While most kids like home runs and the local bay area teams, I mean the Oakland A’s were a big thing in 1988. But I would open up the paper every morning, check the box scores and then look at the league leaders in batting average.

                So, I just always kept the focus on playing third well and making contact and going from there. This would include the only home run of my amateur baseball career. But from what I remember our team was terrible that year. I feel like this was the season we just didn’t win games. I don’t remember why, but I have a distinct feeling it was because we didn’t have any kids that could pitch. I may have even thrown like an inning or two, but just that, over the year. Thus I think even though I was personally having a fun season and a good year our team was just the basement team.

                In a small town such as ours maybe that carrier over. But I thought tryouts that next spring went really well for me. But when teams got posted I was once again in AAA. I probably shouldn’t have been disappointed. In retrospect almost all the kids on my team that year were in my grade and not many kids my age made it to the majors, but I wasn’t completely on board with another year in AAA. Maybe going in with that attitude didn’t help the situation, but this 89 season would be the turning point back down for amateur ball.

                There was some emotionally let down with this season of little league and then the eventual loss of the Cubs to the stupid San Francisco Giants of all teams that year. While still collecting cards obviously during the 1989 world series and the earthquake, I started letting other things be just as interesting to me. The paper route I would get that year and bringing the Nintendo into my life gave me somewhere else to push my drive which felt nice considering how this year would go.

                The main part I lost my position at third, to a younger kid. And since it’s been decades, I can probably safely lay into the issue with that. One he wasn’t as good at third, which brings up two, he was the coach’s kid and wanted the hot corner and so instead of getting to play my position all the time like the year before, I had platoon and watch him stumble through throws and ground balls I know I could have made. It was my childhood’s first look into the role nepotism can play in any organization and I just clocked out a bit after a while. I could either care and get mad and try to out play someone I knew I was better than, or buy a Nintendo game and follow the Cubs on WGN instead.

                I didn’t quit little league that year, but I also didn’t care what was going on, I was just waiting for next year where I could get out of the current situation and earn back the stuff I liked to do. So, in the spring of sixth grade, I hit tryouts again, did about the same as the year before, got super anxious and then found out I got in the majors. Now it seems like a smarter kid could realize the only difference between those two years was that I was older and that maybe there was a bias to get in as many older kids for their last year of little league into the majors as possible, but what I had done wrong the year before lingered a bit, especially considering how much that extra year in AAA sucked.

                But when I got selected, I didn’t care, I didn’t realize my love was waning at the time, it was too close to the peak still. Now unfortunately for me I liked the National league, but our town was divided into east and west districts, and kid’s living in the east side of town had to represent the American League teams. So, I was emotionally a little disappointed with being put on the Orioles. Which to boot was silly because like the Tigers the year before, instead of being orange and black with the name as would make sense for a team called the Tigers, we were red. This year we were a team in the AL that in real life was orange and black and little league made us red like I was last year.

                And then our team was so bad. We also had one kid that was such a braggard in the dugout that our lack of on field production made his bolsters seem that much more pointless. There could probably be a litany of reasons why this team didn’t work out. But I think at this point there really was a break in kids that could pitch well enough to win, which there was like three of, and then the dregs. So only a couple teams would win all of their games and the rest of us would be batting practice.

                Undaunted, I think I’ve told the rest of this story I would go on to sign up and try out for Babe Ruth league ball in junior high. Unfortunately, when tryouts occurred, I had the flu, but I still mustered my self out to the field and went. But this was the season I realized I didn’t care anymore, as I said we would win the city championship, and where I said I lived in a small town a few paragraphs earlier, I lived in a small town for California, so it was a whole to-do. And whereas I would retire from baseball as a champion in the end the most memorable thing from that season was the day I had a Saturday game, stayed the night at Chris H.’s house and Chris H. locked us out of his house in our boxers accidentally when he was brandishing a kitchen knife menacingly at me. Which turned into a boy in his boxers with a kitchen knife running from another pissed off not dressed teenager pissed that he got us locked out of the house.

                That was the end of baseball though. Then there was city league basketball. I didn’t get it, when we were little just getting the height on the basketball to get it in the basket was a herculean task, how did anyone ever think to try and organize small children to do so. Some years down the road, J.F. coached a city league team of I think it was second graders, it really is a mess, and because of that it I don’t remember it being all that fun. I remember winning some tournament, however knowing how adults structure youth tournaments, I am sure we weren’t the only winners.

                Sadly, city league also didn’t take team pictures like soccer and baseball and later football would, something tells me with the cheapness of the shirts for uniforms, the lack of pictures and using already existing courts, that most of the dues to play in the league were city money. I did stick with City league until the seventh grade though, so it outlasted soccer. But if you asked me the name of any of the teams or any highlights I would say, I think I got new shoes every year for it.

                It wasn’t until I was older and could play football that I remember having any sort of real competitive drive to win as a team. Baseball always seemed more about winning as an individual, maybe that’s just the way it was coached. Basketball also had that feeling, and I won’t lie after like the third-grade soccer was boring. But still, from kindergarten through the 8th grade every seasonal change meant another team sport and probably would have continued to be if my dislike for going to class as a freshman didn’t clash with state rules on GPA and attendance to play the sports. Way to tie access to health and fitness to schools need for attendance. Of course, now it’s changed, a large enough lump of money can let you play on for years. I might be cynical.

image 72 Midget football at its Davis finest.

                But these sports had their moments, like I said remembering the power of the green M&M stuck with me. Hurting my knee during soccer is solid memory. Soccer also had a few rewarding seasons, being able to identify and push kids around on defense got me popular with the coaches, however, defense a lot of time in soccer held no on the field glory. However, my cynicism now understands that glory was held for the kids tied to the coaches family trees, since I could play defense well and was okay with it, I did sort of get relegated there, probably to stop tantrums at home.

                But football was a lot of fun. I think because it satisfied a visceral need that kids were usually shut down from, and that’s to go run into another kid as hard as you can. Its play younger minds can wrap their primal brains around without question. Tackling is just human nature and getting a chance to let it out from time to time without punishment from above its therapeutic. Also since everything in a football play is so dependent on the other players doing their jobs, it does feel more team oriented, sure the me first players had their positions in football like in the other youth sports, but you can mess up a quarterbacks day by not blocking in football, in a baseball game they get to pitch and hit really in an isolated fashion, and thus it’s so much more their show and not the teams.

                So, it was in the fall of seventh grade that one of the kids I went to elementary school with’s father called me up. I was sitting in what would become the TV room and later Jake’s room but was now the office in the L street house. I sat at the desk and got recruited to come out and sign up for the city youth football team. Never had that happen, baseball which was the sport I had been really into was always full of tryouts and nepotism, they never acted like the wanted you, you wanted them. Thus, I instantly liked the idea of it.

                When I got mom on board to okay it all those reasons for it being fun came to life. Then there was some stuff beyond that. All these sports up until now I mentioned were intra-city, Football was not. As a city every kid in town was on the city team, which I had to get over being called the Cowboys, and we travelled to away games. This allowed me to see different schools, we played in places as far away as Oakland and then just up the road versus Woodland, oddly not into Sacramento too much. It just felt so much more like a team sport, the kids you played with would then be there at school and you could talk about it, and it wasn’t like the intra city stuff were it bread in city rivals. It was just better.

                I ended up playing a lot of defenses, although seventh grade year we had to play both ways a bunch since our team was so thin on players. But defense had always been kind of my thing now in the other sports and it bleed into football now, but where defense was cool and all in others football is the sport where defense really can be more fun that scoring and playing offense, which probably is what helped with its climb to success as a professional sport. GPA issues would cause issues with consistent play after eighth grade but at least the last sport I played I never got tired of.