Playing Baseball with my Father

Playing Baseball with my Father

By Bill Schaeffer

I was the youngest student in my 5^th grade class.   I was smart and able to keep up with the work, but I was uncoordinated and not athletic.   This was largely because I never played sports of any kind.

  

My father was always busy working.  He was a corporate sales representative for a chemical company and had a small dance band that he played weddings and parties.   He was rarely around and rarely talked to me.   When he was at home, he was busy working in his office in the basement.

The summer after 5^th grade I tried out for Minor League Baseball because a friend did.   I failed to get on a team until my friend’s father, who was a coach, felt sorry for me and let me play on his team.

I was terrible at baseball.   One time we played a game against a very bad team.   One inning, I was the only one who didn’t get a hit.   We went through the entire batting order three times until I got my third out.  This was a humiliating experience.

Because my father was too busy, my mother bought me a “Pitch Back” to practice playing baseball.   This was a big frame with a springy net that you threw the baseball against and it would bounce back.   It was used to practice pitching and there was a bright red rectangle in the center of the net that indicated the target area.

My dad rarely went to our baseball games, because he was busy working.  One day my friend’s father forgot to give me a ride home and I was left stranded on the baseball field on the other side of town.   I wasn’t sure how to get home, but I knew the general direction, so I started to walk.   It took me about three hours to walk home and when I arrived, no one had missed me.

On the walk home, I discovered a very important principle.   I was getting very tired and just wanted to sit down and quit, but I knew I had to get home before dark, so I couldn’t quit.   So, I told myself that I only had to walk to the next street corner and THEN I could rest.   And then when I got to that corner, I told myself, that I was strong enough and I could walk one more block and then I could rest.  Using this technique of self-hypnosis, I managed to walk the entire way home.   I remember this and whenever I have an extremely difficult task, I concentrate on one small part at a time.

This technique has been very helpful in figuring out difficult VFX paint and rig removal problems.  I will work on the part of the problem that I know I can do, and then find something else that I can do, and then before I know it the “impossible” paint task is complete.

On day my father actually played baseball with me.  It was a Saturday and he was working in his office.   I went downstairs and asked him if he wanted to play catch and he said, “I can’t right now.  I have to finish these reports.”

Sadly, I went upstairs and told my mother, “Dad never wants to do anything with me.  He is always busy.”

So I went outside to practice with my “Pitch Back.”  I was no good at baseball.

Miraculously my father came outside about 15 minutes later with a baseball glove and wanted to play catch.  But it was no fun.  It was obvious that he did not really want to play catch and my mother had put him up to it.   He was real good and showed me a couple things.  He really tried to hurt my hand with his fast ball, and it was fast.

We play catch for about 15 minutes and then he went inside.

That was the last time we ever played catch.  The next summer I did not sign up for Minor League Baseball again.

Copyright©2014 Wm Schaeffer