Listen . . . Hear That? It's the Fat Lady Singing

Tyler's baseball season came to its heartbreaking conclusion last night after a game that will not soon be forgotten by any of the players or their families. Let me assure Tyler's fan club out there that he turned in another excellent performance on the mound, but he can't win the game by himself, people! Okay, I say that with my tongue firmly in my cheek because I know how boastful it sounds, but I want to revisit the subject of pride and praise in a moment.

I am not ashamed to say that I have been bursting with pride over Tyler's progress on the baseball diamond this season. It has truly been just a fun, fun thing to witness. It's like Tyler flew under the radar for a few games and then all of a sudden it was like, "Where did HE come from?!" And as his parent, it has been pretty cool to hear some of the accolades being tossed around: "Best pitcher on the team"; "Amazing"; "That kid is smokin'!" Tyler is a very modest boy and has not let all the compliments go to his head, although I will admit that after the game on July 2 when he got all nine outs himself in the three innings he pitched AND hit a home run, he was feeling pretty full of himself. After the game I talked to him about humility and reminded him that the Lord gives but He can also take away. Sure enough, on Wednesday night after Bible class Tyler's teacher came to me and said that as he prayed in class, Tyler thanked God for baseball and also for giving him the talent to play the game. Awwwwww!!!

So back to last night's game . . . I had heard a kid ask the coach last Saturday morning if he was going to get to pitch in the next game and the coach answered in the affirmative, and I will be honest and tell you that I knew right then that we were doomed. Without piling all the blame on one kid, I will just say flat-out that all of the games we lost this season were as a result of two things: #1 putting in boys who had the desire to pitch but not the talent, and #2 having a coach with a heart of gold who perhaps wasn't quite as aggressive in his desire to win as some of the parents would have liked for him to be. Consequently, he would leave these pitchers in far longer than he should have, sometimes allowing them to load up the bases and walk in as many as six or seven runs before pulling the plug. Those were painful games. Unfortunately, as I've probably said many times before, in the Minor League that's sort of the "unwritten" rule: If you want to try ANYTHING, be it pitching, catching, short stop, whatever . . . you get your chance. So we had to suffer through a number of games where boys got a chance to try their hand at pitching, and it wasn't pretty.

Have I lost everybody at this point? Trust me, I never thought I would get so into Little League baseball, son or no son! I'll try to wrap this up so you can all resume your lives! Anyway, Tyler was the starting pitcher last night and gave up only one run in two innings, and the score was 9-1 at the top of the third inning. Then, inexplicably, the coach put the aforementioned kid in to pitch. Mike, the base coach, was a little confused when he saw "Sam" (not his real name) on the mound and said, "You're not up, Sam, Tyler's still pitching." Sam said, "Nu-uh, I am." Six runs later (all walks), Coach finally pulled Sam out. 9-7 . . . ay-yi-yi. A couple more base hits against our relief pitcher and the rest is history. I'll tell you what, it was heartbreaking to see 12 kids trudging out of the dugout to congratulate the other team when they could barely see through the tears. They were CRUSHED.

I keep telling myself, "It's just a game," and I certainly preach that often enough to my kids, but I find myself thinking about "what might have been." If the coach had just left Tyler in . . . but then I feel prideful. But here is where the pride and praise thing comes in: I was watching a segment on the Today show this morning that talked about how you can harm your child with meaningless praise, setting them up to have a fear of failure later in life, and it really resonated with me. I am so totally NOT one of those sports parents who is cutthroat and competitive and all that, and maybe I feel the way I do simply because it's MY child who got pulled out when he was on a roll; but let's use "Sam" as an example. He got out there on the mound and lobbed up ball after ball (as Randy would say, he was "throwing meat") and everybody clapped and said, "You're doing fine, Sam" or "Great job!" or something similar--you know, so as not to damage his self-esteem--when clearly he was NOT doing fine. Are we helping or harming kids with these ego strokes? I was all for encouraging Sam and rooting him on, but I couldn't bring myself to say "Great pitching!" when I didn't mean it. Was I wrong?