This Used To Be My Playground

Madonna's hit single is quite appropriate for this blog post...

For the past couple of weeks, Gabe and I have been going out in the backyard to practice hitting baseballs while there is still a bit of daylight left. He is turning into such a good hitter that he has now hit two balls over the rightfield fence (into my neighbor's backyard and more recently one over the leftfield fence (into the empty lot behind us). He is also starting to try to hit the ball from the right side of the plate and looks pretty good doing so. Baseball season is still 6 months away, but we are trying to retain the skills we developed last year.

On Saturday, the weather in Murfreesboro was beautiful. Bright and sunny, there was a soft breeze and the sun was warm on the skin. Gabe and I decided that we would go practice at a baseball field to practice hitting, fielding and catching. We had all of our gear in the car and headed to the ball field close to the house. Unfortunately, they have put a chain link fence around the entire premises and used padlocks to keep people off the field. We went to several other fields and found ourselves on the outside looking in on each field that we saw. We finally gave up on our search and played in a field beside 8 locked ball fields.

When I was a kid, this was not an issue. Most of the time, I would play baseball with several others in the middle of the street by bouncing a tennis ball in lieu of a pitcher. The tennis ball wouldn't break windows, so it was always the safe play. Yet there were still many occasions where the kids in the neighborhood would go to the park and play baseball after breakfast only to return as required by the streetlights, which was the third parent that told a child to get home on a summer evening.

What a disheartening world we live in for children today. Children have less time during a school day to play, exercise, and have fun in PE because we are pushing more academics. Most parents will no longer allow their children to play out of sight like generations past. Moreover, kids no longer play in sports in front of the house like we did either. Most children don't even have a playground in their own neighborhood because the developer's greed requires them to build 4 more houses built to maximize their profits. Other locations that have baseball fields are so afraid that a child will be hurt and a lawsuit will be filed for negligence.

I felt so horrible that Gabriel and I could not find a baseball field to play in this weekend. It is very unfortuntate that we cannot find a suitable place to practice ground balls on the infield dirt. Heck- I would have been happy finding a backstop in the middle of a field so that we would have to chase all of the passed balls that missed Gabe's bat. The children of our current generation have so many things that we did not have: electronic gadgets, video games, and portable DVD players. They don't have the things that help boys grow into men: open spaces to ride bikes and most improtantly, baseball fields.

Baseball fields are where boys learn the most important things to become men. Boys learn how to practice and play hard even if they get bumps and bruises along the way. They learn responsibility for their actions. They learn how to communicate with teammates and play as a member of a team. They learn victory is a reward worth all the time practicing. They learn that as long as they perform their best, they can be proud of their effort in defeat. They learn that each boy wins and loses as a team, not by the actions or faults of a single individual.

I guess for now, Gabe and I will have to continue playing baseball in our back yard. At least I'll know that he is learning the rules of manhood that schools don't have time to teach and our communities are not offering to our children.