I feel mind-numbed this week, and so I'm scratching my head for original blog material.  So, as a general rule of writing, if you can't write about something new and original, then write about something you know well.

So, tell me about your favorite personal sports moments or stories.  This can be anything from being at a professional or college sports event, or just playing in some beer league softball game.  Maybe it's your son in soccer, or your daughter in swimming.  Perhaps some high school glory days.   What makes you happy there are sports in our lives?

A Moment of Perfection 

"Full many a flower is born to blossom unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air" - Thomas Gray 

Growing up in the suburbs of Houston, it was almost a rite of every spring to play baseball as a boy.  Starting at the early age of 5, I was initiated into tee ball and coach's pitch leagues.  Despite these nice "training wheels" for the infant player, I was never really good at hitting, throwing, running, or catching for years after that.  I was that kid who typically got put into the outfield and picked grass for several innings before being benched again for the better kids.  I was mainly out there either for Dad who wanted to be proud and see his son physically active, or I was there because all of my friends were there.  It didn't matter to me.  It was something else to do on an otherwise boring Saturday morning other than watching cartoons.

There were plenty of times when I felt like quitting.  The first time I ever got hit by a pitch in a game by another kid, I thought I was dying.  What was worse was that I got hit twice in that same game, plus I had a teammate throw his bat into my face as he was trotting down to first face after a walk.
 How's that for a bad day?  There were other heartbreaks, such as striking out when my team needed me the most.  There was being called out at second base during a steal, when I felt lucky for being on base one time during the month.  There were also times when I could see disappointment on my Dad's face, in the coaches' eyes, and in the cruel verbal abuse of other teammates.  "You suck!" is a terrible thing to hear from boys that are normally your friends at school, but on the diamond it's an early assessment of your young man-hood.  Childhood can be cruel that way.

Despite a few bad times, there were always a lot of positive experiences in and around the ballpark.  The concession stand was a must.  Frito-pies, corndogs, candy, hamburgers, Cokes, and cotton candy were all part of the experience every other day during the spring.  Chasing down foul balls into the parking lot would earn you a free sno-cone for returning the ball to the scorer's booth.  There were even those few awesomely kewl times when a player would foul a ball off and hit the lights.  Shattering them into a giant shower of sparks.  it was The Natural all over again.  I enjoyed watching my older brother succeed on the field, and I was blissfully envious to play like him some day.  I could see the proud look in father's eyes when my brother did well.

I was always encouraged to persevere, or as they say it to kids, "Don't be a quitter.  Besides, your year is already paid for."  As I got older, I still enjoyed playing with my friends in the league.  Whether I was good or bad, it was nice to just be able to do something with Dad.  So, I kept on, and I played a total of 11 years before stopping in high school.

 Every league has that one big kid who seems like he should be playing for the New York Yankees and not the Spring Creek South Little League Yankees.  Our Little League field had a set of convenience stores that abutted against our outfield fence.  I remember one of our "big kids" hitting a homerun so high and far that he hit it over the lights, over the convenience store, and onto the street beyond it.  It was easily a 300ft+ homer, which was gargantuan for a 12 year old kid. This kid was a monster as tall as the adults.  Some wondered at his true age.  Some wondered at his species.  He was a man amongst boys for sure.   One year, I became the "big kid".

Between my 11th and 12th years, something just clicked in me regarding the game of baseball.  My intellectual maturity, as well as my physical maturity, kicked in at once.  Suddenly the game made sense to me.  I understood the little things that needed to be done in order to gain an edge and succeed.  I went into my 12th year (and last at the Little League level) as having grown 6 inches, and was a head taller than everyone else at 5'11".  I remember the first day of practice in some school yard; during batting practice, I was hitting balls off the side of the school some 100 yards+ away.  The other kids were wondering who I was.  This year I was no longer playing with my friends, but was drafted onto a team full of strangers.  I knew some of them, and they were likely wondering who replaced me with this bigger, stronger, and better player.  It wasn't that I had necessarily practiced over the preceding summer and winter, but as I said, I had just connected the dots and my body followed.

I had an awesome year at the plate.  I was easily the best player in the league that year, and I led my team to the playoffs.  It's still hard to believe we ever lost any games that year, because we had a pretty decent team.  I was the star shortstop, which is bigger than pitching in Little League.  The shortstop makes every play all the way from 3rd base to half way across the diamond.  The SS runs halfway out into the outfield to steal plays from the outfielder.  It's not necessarily a nice "team play" attitude, but when you're big and good, you try to make every play possible, not because you're showing off and being selfish, but because you want to win and you want to test the limits of your abilities.  I was flying all over that field that year, whether it was on defense, or speedily around the base pads.  I wanted to try pitching too, but our league didn't allow 12 year olds to pitch in a league that includes 10 and 11 year olds.  I was clearly playing out of my age group, and should have played up into the 13 year olds league.  However, that was not an option in my league, and I so I made the most of my short-lived glory.  What kid wouldn't want to milk his new found gifts for all they're worth?  I was the envy of all the kids, and I was atop all of the stats boards.

Entering the playoffs that year, I felt invincible.  For the first time in my life, I did not feel insecure.  I was the master of my situation.  I was a 12 year old in a teen's body, and I had the immortality that most teens feel when they're on top of their game.  My team was on a high, and we were going to steamroll any contenders.  We were definitely the team to beat, with the best player in the league, myself.

Now I don't want to sound arrogant about my abilities and accomplishments that year.  I am very humble about how I approached them back then, and how I look back upon them.  They were truly fleeting moments of perfection that every child should feel in their lives at least once.  This is my account of the moment of perfection...

Over 6 games of our playoffs that year, I got a base hit or better 19 consecutive times.  There were no walks, no hit by pitches, no errors, nothing but hits.  I was slamming homers, triples, and doubles like they were going out of style.  I don't even know what my final RBI tally was for the playoffs, but I had 3 homers and touched homeplate a lot.  Needless to say, my team won a lot, and we scored a lot.  Years after this I wondered why the opposing coaches didn't just intentionally walk me.  Perhaps it was against league rules, and considered unsportsmanlike to not give a kid an opportunity to hit.  However, my reign of terror on opposing teams should have been considered cruel, unusual, and unsportsmanlike.  For 5 games, my team was unstoppable.  Mercy rules were called after 5 innings in all 5 games.  Why hadn't they just gone ahead and given us the trophies?  As the old saying goes, "that's why they play the games".

In our 6th playoff game, the Championship Game, we were matched against the 2nd best team in the league.  They had decent pitching, and good fielders.  If you've ever played Little League, especially at All-Star levels, you understand that fielding and pitching go a lot farther than hitting at that level.  And as such, my team got stopped in it's tracks for 5 innings.  Our opponents brought excellent pitching to the table that night, and our guys were striking out left and right.  What pieces of the ball we would get, the other team easily sniffed them out for routine plays.  I was the lone exception as I was getting base hits, but I was going no where when on base.  In the 6th inning my team managed a charge.  We entered the inning down 5-1.  I stepped to the plate with a runner on 1st, and I blasted the longest homer I had every hit.  That "big kid" who put the ball in the street would have been proud.  I didn't hit it as high or as far, but I stuck it on the roof of that convenience store.  (OK so I may be stretching this into a fish story now, but it was a long homer at a big time)  So, I had brought my team back to a 5-3 deficit.  We tacked on another run before the end of the inning making it 5-4.  Going into the final and 7th inning, my team needed a rally.  The other team added 2 runs back to gain a 7-4 lead.  As my team came alive the previous inning, we continued our rush into the final inning.  We were getting on base by walks, errors, hit by pitches, and we were scoring.  We batted back around to myself.  Here was my moment.  This was the moment I felt ready for and destined to dominate.  19 straight at-bats, and 19 straight hits.  We were down 7-6, and I had 2 runners on base.  All I needed to do was put the ball in play again to tie the game.  There was one out, and plenty for me to work with....

I was too young at the time to have ever watched The Natural, which was a new movie in the mid-80s.  However, years later, I recognize that scene at the end of the game with all of its suspense.  The "old man" at the plate, living that last moment of glory.  Ready for that one last blast of accomplishment.  The final seconds of perfection.

The first pitch came to me from the Lefty ( I hated lefties; my mind can't adjust fast enough to the ball coming at me differently than from righties).  I took the pitch:  BALL.  The next pitch was heaved; curveball; taken:  STRIKE!   I set my mind on the next pitch.  I had seen the first two pitches well.  I knew no matter where he threw the next pitch, I could jump on it.  I can still see that last pitch coming, in all of its slow-mo, The Natural-type style.  Right down the middle, in my wheel house, and my eyes lit up like roman candles.  WHAM!!!!  I hit it as hard as any ball I've ever hit.  I willed it to come out of its seams.  I wanted it to kill a player if it had to.  Just get a hit.  It was a line drive right at their shortstop who's eyes were filled with fear as a screaming mi-mi was coming at his head.  Just as fate had granted me a wonderful year of being larger and better, fate stepped in and let that boy snag my liner.  He hesitated for a split second, letting it sink in that he had caught the ball.  He waltzed over to second base and doubled-off our base runner to end the game, end the year, end the perfection.  I stood there at the plate still.  Hadn't even moved from the hitter's box.  I just stared in shock as the other team began to celebrate.

Needless to say, my heart was greatly broken.  I had not had a woman(girlfriend) at that point in my life, but I can look back on the situation and feel like I had lost a spouse at that moment.  My perfection was taken away from me.  19 for 20.  No championship.  I made the last out.  I cried for a while.  No one's consolation would bring me back up.  I felt like that little kid before who had struck out and let his team and Dad down.  What good were all of my previous accomplishments if I didn't win the big one?  Perfection is a terrible seductress.  She wants more and more, better and better.  And when she leaves, the good times are over.

Thankfully there was still a vast amount of childhood left within me, and like most children, it didn't take me a day to recover.  The spring was over, and time for life to move on.  The summer was starting, and there were bigger and better things to explore and discover in the world from there on.  I went on and played a few more years of baseball, but they were never dominating like this one year had been.  My team the next year actually won the championship, but I was a middle-rung player on a team full of 13 year old "big guys".  I never grew an inch after age 12.  I slowly became the little guy again as the other kids got bigger and taller.  My skills never really developed much beyond my hey-day.  So like most humans, my bloom of youth slowly began to descend into the decay of adulthood.

We may have short moments or seconds of perfection as we get older.  Getting married, having a child, playing with your child.  These are all glimpses of the perfection in life, but they come and go too fast.  I relish the opportunity I had when I was 12 to be blessed for a season with a zone of perfection few see.  In the years since, I've seen moments of perfection on TV from professional athletes, such as Michael Jordan scoring 60+ in the playoffs.  John Elway and his drives.  Tiger Woods being Tiger Woods.  However, nothing appeals as emotionally as something you actually get to participate in and experience.  It doesn't matter to me how many bad years of baseball or any other sport that I played.  It doesn't matter to me how bad Houston sports teams have been historically.  What matters is that for a short time, I was the epitome of the sport within my small sphere of influence.  There was no one better, and I felt purity.  Not personal purity, as in I played the game perfectly, but purity in the sport.  Sports allows us to see what we've got in us, not just physically and intellectually, but also spiritually and emotionally.  Sport embodies the human spirit to not just sit still and wilt, but fight and suck at the water of life as long as our bloom will allow us.

My days of glory in sport are long gone, and so now I live vicariously through my son.  He's no athlete.  He has 2 left feet, but I enjoy his spirit of trying and enjoying it.  He does tae kwon do.  He's working his way up through the belt ranks and loops.  As a mature adult now, I don't look for perfection in my son.  I shouldn't ever have to.  He was born perfect in my eyes, and will always be so.  I don't think my father likely remembers my playoff accomplishment, and I don't expect him to as he gets older.  Whether I struck out every time or got 19 straight hits in the playoffs, I am forever perfect as his son in his eyes, just as my son is forever perfect as my son.  Our glory is not in our short-lived perfections, but in our existence and how we live our lives.  That we don't quit once our perfection is gone.  I like to think about the lost, by-gone glory, but it's nicer seeing the new glory of perfection in the next generation transpire in front of us now.