By Laura Taylor
Everybody hates Pinnacle. The kids on the Stars team had tried out for Pinnacle, the Double A team, and had been cut. Now they were playing on the Triple A team. This explains the hate. Playing against the team you get cut from doesn’t mean friendly competition, it means war on the field -- dirty slides into the base, aggressive runs, and the greater risk of harm on the limbs.
As I studied the battle ground on through the chain link fence, one of the parents I regularly sat next to, Mr. Rivera, interrupted my thoughts.“You know, I give my son a speech before every game. Today was different. Joe came over to me and simply said ‘we gotta beat em, dad.’” Mr. Rivera’s eyes reflect the proud look of pride he had in his son as he said this. He told me Joe doesn’t slide into the base (implying what about his son?). It kind of scares him and rightfully so. When he played Little League, he slid into third base and broke his ankle pretty badly. It shattered and his ankle and his confidence with sliding.
I glazed my eyes over the muddy baseball field once again and couldn’t help but notice the history that these two teams had built on the dirt. These two teams had faced each other several times in the past which only fueled the rivalry. As the ump called the game to start, Pinnacle took to the field a step ahead of the Stars and the low grumbles of the Stars’ parents heated up. Baseball is a dirty sport.
There’s a sense of unity with these parents. A sense of us against them that surrounds this baseball field.
“Get a hit for me, babycakes!” said one parent. At the ninth game of the season, I had been waiting to hear this common phrase from a baseball mom at Mechanicville Little League field number four in Mechanicsville, Virginia. The chain link fence was the only thing keeping me and a long line of reclined parents in folding chairs separate from the 13-year-old travel Stars baseball team at their biggest rivalry game of the season. From my folding chair parked next to
Mr. Rivera under the canopy that shaded us from the sun, parents settle in with their snacks, their water bottles, their coolers filled with Gatorade in colors from red to yellow to blue, long wagons parked up behind them forming a train barrier, and their chanting voices still babying their teenagers. This is kind of a routine for them. There’s a weekly Costco trip, battery packs are charged, ice packs are chilled, and the car is cleaned and ready for a weekend of baseball and there is nothing different this week.
I guess you could say Mr. Rivera is the “Atta boy!” father who you hear first when his son makes a great play. There’s the dog mom and the assistant coach’s wife mom who must have a hand in everyone’s business and the game. Did I mention there’s the teacher mom? She has a pen in her mouth and is grading eighth grade science homework. What draws these parents to this game with an exaggerated version of themselves? Perhaps it’s an opportunity for parents to bond over their kids and reflect on a time when they were younger.
Some of these parents grew up playing little league baseball themselves and they feel overwhelmed with the memories of attempting home runs and hearing their parents chant their name as they came up to bat. For others, it’s the sense of pride that their kids are growing up and have the opportunity to become successful and that means mom and dad might get some credit.
Families have been going to baseball games since the game began in 1839. According to Newsday, what initially drew families to baseball games was the energetic upbeat play-by-play announcers. Children were the main audience for announcers, which explains the overly dramatic calls during the play-by-play.
When Little Leagues began in 1939, there was this sense of having pride in the child on the field. Parents would utilize use this sense of putting their kids on a pedestal for other parents trying to prove that their kid was the best at the sport and thus making their family the best.
As far as the exaggerated parental personality is concerned, parents really feel the most comfortable coming together in this social environment and having this sense of pride for their children on the field.
Parents are always going to be at baseball games with their children, supporting them in overly exaggerated ways even putting the reputation of the child at risk. After all, babycakes won’t pass over too well with other 13-year-olds.