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Just a Game
Learning Not to Keep Score
By Mark Stackpole
There was a time in sports when winning wasn't everything. It was an era when a player's value to the team was measured in more than dollars. It was a place filled with cheering fans rather than jeering cynics. It was a game played for the sheer joy of taking the field with friends old and new and watched so that spectators could bear witness to the miracle of life passing one inning at a time.
Indeed, life seemed simpler then. Spring had just arrived, but its gentle breeze already carried summer's whispered promises. It is a time that we can never return to, no matter how hard we might try. Too much has changed, though it seems like it was only yesterday.
Actually, it was only yesterday.
I was nervous as I went to my first-ever T-ball game. What if the team isn't that good? I know that the league does not keep track of things like scores and standings for the little kids. That's tough for me, because I'm the kind of guy who says things like, "Well, even though they don't keep score, we won." It's a sporting event, for crying out loud, there has to be a winner. Just because league officials don't keep score doesn't mean that the rest of us don't.
Beyond the team's ultimate fate, I know that my niece Alie is a sensitive soul – what if she let a groundball go between her legs and got embarrassed? What if, after repeated attempts, she only hit the plastic tee and not the ball? I didn't want to see that.
Another niece of mine is also on the team. Meghan is a little older and basically fearless, but I still had some concerns. She is a delicate girl who is, for some reason, prone to disaster. Maybe it's a byproduct of her toughness. After all, she did cry after breaking her arm in a fall. Not because of the pain, but rather because it meant that she could not ride the carousel before going to the doctor's office. Still, how would she react if a ball took a strange bounce and caught her on the chin? I didn't want to see that either.
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