who’s your daddy
Thursday, October 11th, 2007If you're new here, and you're into sports and/or the Christian faith, subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I gave my wife the night off yesterday, carting both the kids over to Kylie’s soccer practice. While Kylie dribbled around cones and played with her ponytail, Parker and I were 50 yards away playing baseball with the tennis balls and bat that we brought. As we were playing, a spastic 8-yr old kid came over and asked if he could play. I was annoyed at first, but decided the right thing to do was say “yes” and so i did.
He said his name was Eddie, and then he told me where we were all going to be positioned and what our roles would be (he was going to be the batter). I politely made it clear to Eddie that i was making the rules because i was here to play baseball with my son, so if he wanted to play, he would have to listen to me. Eddie seemed cool with that, and so we played on.
Five minutes later a 10-yr old kid wandered over with his dad, who was still dressed in his business casual work clothes. They had a soccer ball with them and they were kicking it around together. I could tell that neither was really athletic or coordinated, but i thought it was cool that they were goofing off like dads should with their kids. A few minutes later, the dad retreated to his chair by the soccer field and the boy, named Kyle, asked if he could play baseball with us. Why not? The more the merrier.
I let all the kids take turns batting and being the catcher. Parker was the best at hitting and throwing, which i took some sense of pride in, even though it’s probably a dumb thing to be proud about. (He is only 4 though). When it was Kyle’s turn to bat, it was pretty obvious that he didn’t have any experience playing baseball. He told me sheepishly that he wasn’t very good at baseball, and i told him it was okay, that i wasn’t very good either, which seemed to give him a sliver of his confidence back.
After a few hopeless flails, I adjusted his grip, stance, and posture and to his delight he began to foul pitches off. (Hey, sometimes you have to set the bar low, right?) When he finally hit one in the right direction, he was beaming with pride. He looked over at his dad, who was 50 yards away and out of earshot, and said, “I wish my dad could have seen that.”
I continued to help Kyle adjust his swing, and he actually had a few hits that flew by me in the air. “Wow, look at you!” I said, “Great hit.” I was feeling pretty good about myself. Look at me, the baseball coach! Moments later as i walked by him to retrieve a few of the balls he had missed he said to me, “You’re cool. I wish YOU were my dad.”
Ew. That kinda made me feel gross. Thankfully, his dad didn’t hear the comment, but man, if i had heard one of my kids say something like that to another guy, it would break my heart. I mean, all it took for this kid to disown his father was 3 minutes of one on one baseball instruction? Yikes.
Before Kyle ran over to his dad to tell him how well he had it, i tried to redeem the moment as best i could. “I might be cool to have as a friend,” i told the kid, “but your dad is the best person in the world to be your dad.” Not sure if he bought it or not, but it was all i had.
As we drove home i thought about the exchange and it reinforced my desire to be a great dad. I never want that thought to run through my kids’ heads. I want to do everything i can to be the best dad in the world to them, and i want them to know it in their hearts without even having to think about it. That way if someone else’ dad ever spends a couple minutes correcting their batting stance or offering them praise for a job well done, they’ll think to themselves, “this guy’s cool, but he’s not as cool as MY dad.”
Hey, sometimes you need to set the bar high, right?
