Yankee Stadium and the youth field are hallowed grounds, just for different reasons.
Before the first game of “machine pitch” — one degree of difficulty higher than tee ball — Luke, my 7-year-old son, was stressed about his cleats. When he’s not playing baseball, he wears Velcro shoes or slip-ons to school.
“Maybe you should learn to tie your shoes?” I suggested, not for the first time.
He wasn’t too interested, and we were late already, so I tied them again.
But, I added: “Do you think Aaron Judge ties his own cleats?”
We have watched lots of Judge highlights together, so I knew the question would resonate. For those who don’t know, Judge is the best player in baseball. In fact, he is reaching stratospheric levels of accomplishment, and if he has a long career, he will be one of the greatest players in history.
The message was clear: If you can tie your own shoes, you are a little bit more like Aaron Judge.
Luke bobbed his head, yes, acknowledging that there could be some merit in learning.
It was a cloudy, warm, Saturday morning, and before the game began, the players lined up to prepare, each wearing matching gray pants. Their hats were sized S, when it was clear some of them needed XS.
Normally, warmups involve throwing, to loosen up your shoulder. Unfortunately, catching a thrown baseball is a dangerous thing to attempt at 7 years old, and most of them won’t be very good at it until they’re about 9 years old. So these eager players were rolling grounders to each other underhand, instead of throwing overhand, practicing their fielding skills while still loosening up their shoulders.
I watched as Luke rolled a ball to a teammate. The grounder wasn’t intended to be challenging to scoop up, but the teammate couldn’t quite get the timing right; he stabbed at the ball, backhanded, with his glove, and missed. It rolled behind him.
When the teammate retrieved it and rolled the ball back to him, Luke apparently was transported to fantasy land. Instead of the Little League field, he was in the outfield at Yankee Stadium. This grounder wasn’t being rolled from a teammate’s hand, but it was a hot shot off the bat, and he was Aaron Judge.
Luke dove!
But, after he landed on his side and then held the pose in the grass, he found that his timing was off, too: The ball whimpered to a stop about two feet before reaching Luke’s outstretched glove. Sadly, no dive was necessary.
Baseball is so big that it can contain the majestic athleticism of Olympian men, but also the slapstick dreaminess of little boys.
Luke might never become one of the all-time greats, but he will learn some invaluable things: how to be happy even after losing, how to try harder than you thought possible, how to draw a perfect circle in the infield dirt when the game gets a little boring.
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