If you’ve got 20 minutes to spare and you love baseball even a little, watch this video before reading any further. Even if you don’t, make 20 minutes to watch it. You will not regret it.
My Son’s Losing Season and My Frustration as a Baseball Dad
My son’s Little League baseball team was getting creamed. Again.
He’s been on a losing team since last season, which was an 0-12 disaster last year and a 2-9 one so far this year. Sure, they scratched out a couple of wins this spring, but I wasn’t in the stands for one of them (eight o’clock games on school nights are legitimately one of the most exhausting things imaginable).
It had been literal years since I actually saw him win a game before finally catching one a few weeks ago. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy watching him play in between because I did. But it was from a different angle now, up in the bleachers instead of the dugout where I’d spent the previous six seasons as his coach.
Why I Stepped Away From Coaching
This year I didn’t coach at all. My youngest son started T-ball, and I couldn’t choose between them. So I hung up the clipboard, stepped away from the field, and tried to be just a dad in the stands. It didn’t go the way I expected.
The truth is, I was frustrated. Really frustrated. The lack of progress on my older son’s team was wearing on me. Practices felt scattered, fundamentals weren’t sticking, and every game turned into the same slow-motion disaster of walks, errors, mercy-rule innings that couldn’t end fast enough, and emotional breakdowns on the field and in the dugout.
I realized one night in the stands that I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I’d sit there wrestling my restless kids, muttering under my breath, mentally replaying what I would have done differently if I’d been in the dugout. The joy of watching my kid play baseball had been replaced by silent disappointment and a growing knot in my stomach every time the other team came to the plate.
The Sandlot Video That Changed Everything
Then one evening, I flipped on the episode of Texas Country Reporter linked above. It’s about a sandlot-style league just outside Austin, TX called The Long Time, where grown men (and kids) play old-school baseball on a field somebody built in a backyard. No travel ball, no five-hundred-dollar bats, no pressure. Just pickup games, music between innings, families on blankets, and the kind of fun I remembered from my own childhood.
I watched the whole episode and couldn’t shake this strange feeling after, this yearning for what the game of baseball actually means to a baseball dad. That feeling stayed with me for days.
The Cul-de-Sac Game That Reminded Me
Fast forward a few days after watching another loss or two from the stands. I had finished mowing the yard and my kids were outside playing. My two oldest boys, as they normally do when we are outside playing in the street, began playing baseball in the cul-de-sac.
Two heads popped out of the gate across the street (our new neighbors have a couple of boys too). My boys eventually noticed them and stopped playing to confer. Then my oldest came over and asked if they should invite them to play. I told him it was completely up to them.
They quickly decided to let them play. And there they were: my two boys and the two kids from across the street, playing a loud, chaotic game of whiffle ball. There were no umpires, no scorebook, no yelling parents. Just a couple of worn out plastic bats, a plastic ball, chalk bases on the concrete, and a whole lot of laughing.
They chased hits into the grass and never argued over whether a hit off the curb counted as a home run. Nobody kept score. Nobody cared.
The Real Lesson of Being a Baseball Dad
As I watched, something clicked.
All season I’d been so focused on the scoreboard, on the losing streak, the stalled progress, and the wins I’d missed that I’d forgotten what baseball was supposed to be for a kid. It wasn’t about 0-12 records or whether his team was “developing properly.” It was about this exact moment: two brothers and two neighbors turning a dead-end street into their own personal sandlot.
I’d been putting way too much stock in winning and losing.
I showed up to his next game early, found a seat in the stands, and just watched my son play baseball. Not as a frustrated ex-coach. Not as a disappointed fan. Just as his dad.
He struck out swinging once, got out at first the next time, made a nice play at pitcher to get an out for his team, and laughed with his teammates when the game ended in another lopsided loss.
And for the first time in a long time, I laughed with them too.
Turns out the game was never about the final score. It was about the cul-de-sac whiffle ball, that backyard sandlot spirit, and the boys who reminded me that sometimes the best baseball happens when nobody’s keeping score at all.
“Nothing’s ever been as fun as baseball.” – Mickey Mantle
Special thanks to J.B. Sauceda and Texas Country Reporter for helping me remember what baseball is supposed to be.