Howard Simmons Little League baseball teaches a father and son big life lessons.
The front door opened, Ryan looked up, and like a jump cut in a movie his son entered and was ready to turn 15.
Whenever summer ended, his youngest son, Rory, turned over another year of life in the unstoppable first week of September.
Ryan looked Rory up and down after the kid returned from the gym where he’d worked on cardio and toning machines.
“Hey, old man.”
“Hey.”
The kid plopped on the couch, grabbed the TV clicker and searched for an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick. And in those crackling moments between channels it felt like only that morning that the doctor in Long Island College Hospital delivery room had handed Ryan a screaming infant boy the size of a loaf of bread.
Wasn’t it only a few hours ago that Ryan had carried that same kid, at 3 years old, home on his shoulders from watching the trains roar in and out of the local LIRR station in Queens?
Now the teenage Rory caught his father staring at him and said, “What?”
“Nothing.”
Rory smiled, gazing sideways. “Why are you looking at me like that, Dad? What did I do?”
“Did I tell you I love you yet today?”
“Yeah. Twice. You okay?”
“How was the gym?”
“Great. Starving.”
Ryan laughed. There was still lots of kid left in his son.
But time is a cat burglar when you think you’re watching a kid grow up before your eyes. It takes a milestone, like Labor Day Weekend, and another birthday to make you realize how much of the growing happened behind your back. In your sleep. When you were at work. When your kid was at school, or out shooting hoops with pals in the street.
And when you weren’t paying close enough attention.
Those sneaky minutes and hours turn into weeks that tumble into months and changing seasons until the cavalcade of vanished years pile into a teenager who is always as hungry as a hammerhead shark.
You just wake up one day, the door opens, your kid walks in, and you realize that 15 years have been swiped on life’s debit card. And you want to know where to go to get them back.
There are, of course, no refunds.
You take what you have and you cherish it. There was one more weekend of this summer left before Ryan’s youngest kid was no longer 14.
It never escaped Ryan that as his kid grew up he grew older. And so the end of every summer became a tough time for him, the way others were saddened by the strains of “Auld Lang Synge.” Since that September when Rory started kindergarten, Ryan rejoiced on the last day of school as much as — if not more than — his kid. Because in those golden weeks of summer Ryan got to sit on the sidelines and watch his kid play the beautiful game of baseball, learning about teamwork and playing by the rules. He learned from generous volunteer coaches how to win with humility and more importantly how to lose with grace in a game based on failure, where a hitter who succeeds only three times out of 10 is considered a star.
Not a bad template for life that has more strikeouts than home runs.
Even the worst of youth baseball prepared you for adulthood. Kids quickly learn that the only thing wrong with Little League is Big People — ranting parents, conniving officials, and a rare few abusive coaches so obsessed with winning that they berate and bully kids to try to vicariously relive the shattered dreams of their own failed childhoods.
But even those clowns help kids in early adulthood know how to recognize and avoid born losers.
Now there was just one more weekend of baseball left in this fading summer. Three more summers and his son would be old enough to vote and go away to college.
So as Ryan watched his son tune into his action flick, he cherished the lingering private moment. He would pay close attention to these last few days of his son’s 14th year before Rory blew out 15 candles to end another summer.
Soon Ryan would drive his kid to school every morning in those special father/son minutes alone. His son would be home more during the week, studying and doing homework.
Then the holidays would jingle in, followed by the crack of spring baseball and another golden summer.
“Dad, why do you keep staring at me like that?”
“Was I?”
They both broke up laughing. “You’re weird, Dad. And I’m famished. Anything to eat?”
“Anything you want,” said Ryan before another summer ended.
