Strike Out Looking

April 1992

My baseball career lasted one season.  This was a devastating blow to my projected life path, since I had spent the previous 5 years fantasizing about following in the footsteps of my idol Rickey Henderson and becoming the left fielder for the Oakland A’s. 

My dream began to feel tangible when I entered into tryouts for North Oakland Little League. I subjected myself to the emotionally agonizing process of being observed by a small village of  clipboard toting coaches as I hit the ball, ran the bases, and caught pop flys. Making contact with the ball was not my greatest attribute, but I appeared to be one of the fastest kids on the field, and I hoped that would catch the attention of at least one of my judges. In the weeks that followed, I waited anxiously to learn if I had been drafted.  

My heart sang in relief when I was notified that I would be joining the Red Sox, which happened to be the only team in the league not being coached by a man.  In a time before email and cell phones, the good word was received on my parent’s cassette answering machine when we returned home from a family outing. 

I went through the rite of passage of getting my first athletic cup to protect my prepubescent genitalia.  I felt the joy of trying on my pristine white uniform for the first time. I convinced my mom to amass a stockpile of bubble gum from Costco to chew while sitting in the dugout. I perfected my bubble blowing technique and routinely inflated pink spheres larger than my face. I was ready. 

In my first game, I looked poised to make a run to the big leagues. I went 4-for-4 and scored 4 runs.  I ran the bases with the determination of an Olympic sprinter, pumping my scrawny arms like a chicken attempting to take flight. I savored the sweaty high fives I received from my teammates when I returned to the dugout. In recognition of my standout performance, I even got my name printed in a local newspaper, the Montclarion. Little did I know, I had just experienced the climax of my baseball career.

On my first at bat in the second game, I was hit by a pitch in my left thigh.  I felt throbbing waves of heat emanating from the point of impact. Tears streamed down my face as I hobbled to first base.  I held back sniffles and attempted to stay focused on the game when all I wanted to do was go home, eat ice cream, and lay in bed. By the end of the day, a purple blotch the size of an adult fist had manifested on my quadricep and served as an ongoing reminder of the danger of the batter’s box.  I don’t have any memory of processing the injury with my parents beyond being asked if I needed more ice for my bruise. I don’t remember becoming consciously afraid of playing baseball, but the damage had been done.

I didn't have a single hit for the rest of the season.  Every time I approached the plate I was frozen in fear, so much so that I could rarely muster the courage to swing the bat.  Sometimes I was fortunate enough to face a pitcher without any accuracy and was able to walk to first base.  The majority of the time, I struck out looking, even though I was so afraid that I wasn't actually looking at the ball. I was afraid of the physical threat of getting hit. And, perhaps my fear ran deeper than that.  By not swinging, I was making a philosophical statement. It said “it is better to not try. If I try and fail, I will be demoralized. If I fail without trying, it won’t matter, because I haven't wasted any effort.” This would pretty much become my modus operandi for adolescence. 

Between baseball games, I practiced with my dad. He managed to cobble together a large canvas bag full of baseballs, which he would sling over his shoulder like a Chinese American Santa Claus, whose purpose was to bring the game of baseball to the children of the world.  After dinner, he would occasionally take me to the grass field at Merritt Community College to work on my swing. Under the orange glow of the setting sun, he would empty the entire bag on the ground and toss the balls to me one at a time. I would swing the bat, and typically the only contact I made was with my own frustration. Then, we would scour the grass for the few balls that I had hit and repeat until we were enveloped in darkness.   

More often than not, practice was limited to playing catch in our cozy backyard.  The 300 square feet of fenced in space behind my family home was an oasis whose importance can't be overstated. While the City of Oakland was being decimated by the crack epidemic, my childhood was relatively insulated by a humble patch of grass flanked by several fruit trees and a raised bed of flowers which my mother tended to religiously. The soundtrack in the front yard consisted of stray bullets piercing the air, blended with sirens wailing, engines revving and tires screeching speed. Meanwhile, the backyard was a sanctuary for laughter, the rhythmic bouncing of ping pong balls, and the satisfying thud of a baseball hitting the palm of a leather mitt.

One night, I retrieved our baseball gloves from the basement and waited for my dad to trot across the lawn and position himself directly under the apple tree, which never produced any fruit worth eating. Maybe I was distracted by other matters in my third grade reality. Maybe I didn't eat enough protein that day. Whatever the cause, my aim on this particular evening was atrocious. I consistently missed the target of my father’s glove, which resulted in him sleuthing around in the bushes to retrieve the ball.  After a few rounds of navigating the thorns of the lemon tree, he warned me that if I continued with my errant ways, then he would stop playing.  Sure enough, I missed the target again, and he stormed off, dropping his mitt in the basement and marching upstairs into the house.  That was the end of our playing catch in the backyard.  

This event seems trivial, and part of me thinks it's ridiculous that I even remember it.  I can easily sympathize with my dad who must have been exhausted after a long day of work and did not have any patience to repeatedly be crouching in the bushes when he probably just wanted to relax, drink a beer, and watch TV. This memory only surfaced after I became a father, and the reason is fear of failure.  From the time Taishan was conceived, I became enveloped in a tidal wave of fear. I was now responsible for another being.  I began to spin out about ways that I might fail and how I would be judged.  What if my son dies? What if it’s my fault? What will people think about me? I wondered why I seemed to be spending more time fearing what might happen rather than simply enjoying what was happening in the moment, which had been one of my foundational aspirations and intentions of the previous decade of my life.  

Something about fatherhood was triggering unprecedented levels of fear within me, which forced me to go within and reexamine my life with new eyes.  Long faded memories were restored like antique films remastered for a high definition screen. I’ve time traveled back to Little League and so many places that I ignorantly assumed had been permanently erased from my archives.

~

For a musical exploration of hindsight, listen to “Changing’ by clicking the image below.

“used to feel stuck weighed down like an anchor

Now I’m in my living room I Listen to Goenka,
Used to be consumed, with that fear and anger
Now I cant lose, I am steered by angels”