baseball the game

THE GAME: Do we sit on the bench because the rules aren’t ours?

Last updated: January 26th, 2019

When I was a young boy my father played baseball for a semi-professional team in Grandville, Michigan. He would get paid a very small sum of money for the games that he played in… but in them days every penny counted. We were a young family and because money was tight, we could not always afford the price of admission to his games. But mom was resourceful and would usually find a way of getting us all in past the ticket taker, who usually turned out to be someone she had known in school. One night, however, a new man was on the gate who wasn’t letting anyone in without a ticket, so we all returned to the car while dad went to sign in for the game.

Mom told us to wait in the car until she returned. We could hear the sound of the announcer calling out the names of the players as we watched mom disappear in the darkness. She returned about ten minutes later and told us to be very quiet and follow her. We took each other’s hands and followed her back into the darkness for several yards, along the chain-linked fence that kept us out, then she stopped and whispered, “Here, there is a hole under this fence; we can all crawl through it.” My older sister Karen went first and then me with my younger brother Ron right behind. Mom had some difficulty making it through but in a few minutes we were all standing on the other side of the fence brushing the dirt from our clothes. “Don’t ever tell anyone about this,” mom whispered as we began walking to the bleachers. We hadn’t gotten very far when she shouted “Ouch!” She had stepped in a hole and twisted her ankle. We could tell she was in pain, as we ran to assist her. “Wayne, go tell dad to come here,” she said tearfully, as she rubbed her ankle.

I ran to the field and found dad in the dugout getting ready to go to bat. I told him what had happened and he went to the manager and said he had to leave. The manager said something that didn’t sound very nice but dad came out of the dugout anyway and followed me to where mom was. She was still sitting on the ground with my sister and brother trying to help her but she was obviously still in pain. Dad helped her up and we slowly walked her past the ticket taker, who looked at us suspiciously as we came out from the dark, and got her in to the car. The next day dad took her to Dr. Brooks who examined her and said it was only a sprain, but mom had learned her lesson and we never tried anything like that again.

Dad loved playing baseball and had hoped to play professionally some day. But being a father took precedent over his personal dreams and he soon found himself far too busy to even play in the semi-professional games. Eventually he stopped playing altogether but every now and then he would save up enough money to take us to a Detroit Tiger’s game, which was his favourite team. Mom had a liking for Yogi Berra, however, and always rooted for the Yankees.

Because of dad’s love for baseball, he wanted his boys to be baseball players as well and so one day he brought home a new baseball and bat for us to play with. Being the oldest son, I of course took charge of it and soon was the envy of the neighbourhood. I found that the prestige it gave me, allowed me to make up my own rules and if anyone didn’t like my rules they didn’t have to play. I decided when, where, and who could play and if my team was losing badly, I would just take the bat and ball and leave the field, ruining the game and the day for all of the other players. All that changed, however, when Tom Gifford came to the field one day with a brand new ball and bat. Suddenly, I was no longer needed and had to learn to play by his rules.

I wish I could say that I had learned a great lesson from this experience, but years later when I was a drug and alcohol counsellor in Gallup, New Mexico, I ran a group therapy class for young people. I had recently stopped smoking and decided that it was also not good for the young people in the group to smoke while we held our sessions. I knew it would be difficult to get them to stop and so I waited until there were only a few smokers in the group and then lectured them on the evils of smoking and the dangers of second hand smoke in the group. I told them we would take a vote and whatever the decision was, those would be the rules for all future groups. It worked and everyone put their cigarettes out for the remainder of the session.

The following week there were new members so I told them about the no smoking rule that had been made. One of the boys, actually the Mayor’s son, whom I didn’t like at all because of his negative leadership abilities, objected to the rule. I told him that it couldn’t be changed because a majority of the group had voted for it.

“But that was last week’s majority,” he challenged, as I felt my face begin to turn red with anger. “I want to have another vote now… and whatever the majority wants will be the rules for this session.”

I called for the vote and of course it was unanimous. I fumbled through the rest of the session in a cloud of smoke and dismissed them all early.

I have, over the years, gotten better at recognizing these traps but I still like to see things done my way. It is difficult to surrender control to others and to have to play by their rules, but I have learned that the game will go on, with or without you, and you can either learn to swallow your pride and get back in the game, or sit on the sidelines and pout.

The world is changing and those who once had to follow our rules are now making the decisions for us. You can complain all you want, but the game will go on and on, for as long as there are people willing to play.

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Wayne Dale Matthysse oversees the activities of Wat Opot Children’s Community in Bati, Takeo in Cambodia, caring for dying AIDS patients, orphans and vulnerable children. To see more of Wayne’s writing and photography, or to contact him regarding his work, visit his sites: watopot.orgwocf.us, tsoham, wayne-matthysse.blogspot