Batter up!

If you are planning to share a cookie at our house, one person is the breaker and the other gets to choose which half they want.  It’s the fair way we’ve come up with to divide food with less chance of an argument ruining the meal.

But when they were little, I remember it wasn’t as easy, and many days were filled with dodging land mines of arbitration involving complaints like, “I had that first.”  Or, “Mom, tell him to give me my toy back.”  Or, “That’s mine!”

Those are the times I remember simply throwing up my hands and realizing there simply was no fair way out, you just have to make the call, and then call it the other way next time.

That’s exactly why I thought it was so perfect that my oldest son’s first real paying job turned out to be umpiring baseball.  After all those life lessons I’ve imparted all these years he ought to be great at it.

Unfortunately, it made me a nervous wreck!

There he is in his navy blue T-shirt with the official white UMPIRE lettering on the back.  He looks different wearing a thick chest protector, shin guards, and heavy facemask.  I’ve watched as balls pummel him there behind the plate, bouncing off his shoulder or knee or even rattling his facemask.

But of course it’s not the bruises on the outside I’m worried about.  It’s the potential I see for him to be propelled into a position to be ridiculed that gets my heart pounding.  Each pitch he shouts out “STRIKE!” 

Or “Ball” and heads in the stands shake back and forth, shoulders slump, or I hear the inevitable “WHAT?  That looked good!”

But at the same time every single call is followed by an equal and opposite reaction in the other bleachers.  Cheers and calls of “Atta Boy, good pitch!”

It’s a swirl of confusion for me watching from the outside, not particularly interested in either team’s outcome, just hoping my son survives with feelings in tact.

“Strike Three!  Batter’s out!”  He shouts sending one little person kicking the dirt as he walks back to the dugout, and another pumping his fist out on the heap of dirt where he’s throwing pitches.

In a swirl of dust at home plate, my son oversees a player charging from third base and a throw on it’s way to the catcher.  He sweeps his arms wide and calls, “He’s SAFE!”

Then, it happens.  What I had been afraid of, my protective instincts prickle to life with goose bumps on my arms.

I see one of the coaches calling my son over.  They chat, my son looking up at the coach, gesturing briefly and then returning to his post to continue his calls for the rest of the game.

Afterward I asked what transpired.

“He asked me why I made the call the way I did,” my son says, nonchalantly.

“What!” I exclaim, worried.  “Oh my gosh, what did you say?”

“I told him that’s the way I saw it coach,” he calmly explains to me not even the slightest bit rattled.

“Were you sure?” I ask.

 “He beat the throw, mom, he was safe.”

And with that, it was done.  I could see that I have no reason for fear or worry.  In fact, I now see the much greater potential of this job.  He doesn’t worry about the controversy but rather relishes it.  He isn’t fazed when the eyes of the batter gaze up into his hoping for a ball but instead hearing, “Strike three batter out.”  He’s not wrestling over making the right call in the split second he has to make the decision.  He is growing up with each called time out to brush off the plate, each click of his ball and strike counter, each meeting he conducts with the coaches.

And more importantly, I hope he recognizes, that when he is the player looking at the ump back there behind the plate, that this game, like life, bounces all different directions and not every call is going to go the way you want it to but some of them will and that’s why it’s worth playing the game.