Never Had It So Good

Most little boys, if they are going to bond with a baseball team, start paying attention by age 7 or so.  Consider the expectations that the child in this scenario is building:

Age 7:  team's new star pitcher wins Cy Young Award.
Age 8:  team's star pitcher wins second consecutive Cy Young Award
Age 9:  team's new star catcher comes up mid-season, sets franchise rookie consecutive hit streak, wins rookie of the year award.  Oh yeah, and the team wins the World Series for the first time in more than fifty years, and the first time in its current city.
Age 10:  team's star catcher suffers horrendous injury partway through season, yet team remains in hunt for playoffs until final days of the season.
Age 11:  team's star catcher returns to win batting title and probably the MVP award, ace pitcher throws perfect game, and the team wins the World Series again.

That is Michael's context for following the Giants since he moved to the Bay Area.  I have no frame of reference for this kind of parade of success.  The World Series wins are precious to me because my context for the same ages was nothing but losing, wind-swept cold, and third-rate status in the baseball world.  For the Giants to be the focus of sportswriters and fans nationally for several years running has gone from merely novel to downright surreal.

I still bear the proud, bitter temperament of being a fan of a team that is generally overlooked.  Recent triumphs do little to erase the complex that comes from being ignored.  On the other hand, being a Giants fan has been nothing but rewarding to Michael.  Every year, he has had something truly remarkable to cheer for.  In his experience, the Giants have always been a relevant presence on the national sporting scene.  I fear that there is only one direction this can go.

Get ready for disappointment, kid.  But enjoy it now, because being a fan is pretty sweet these days.

Update:  I guess I am not the only person drawing these conclusions.  Local columnist Ann Killion seems to agree with me.

Clutch

The boys finally got in the win column.  It is the way they did it, in the best traditions of the long history of baseball at all levels, that makes it special.

A couple of weekends ago, in front of a crowd of eleven family members (plus three family dogs), Michael started the game on the mound.  He was uncharacteristically wild, walking a couple of batters and hitting one in a couple of innings of work.  An old baseball adage holds that leadoff runners usually score, and it proved true for Michael, as the leadoff batters he walked came around to score on the usual collection of lightweight hits that could just as easily have been outs.

After falling well behind, though, the boys chipped away all game while holding their opponent to couple of scoreless innings along the way.  By the bottom of the seventh, they were down by only two.  One of our players finished a spectacular day at the plate by legging out a triple and later scoring on a single.  With two outs, a runner on second, and a run down, Michael came to the plate.  After a short battle with the pitcher, Michael drove a low and away pitch into the right-center field gap.  He cruised into second with a game-tying RBI on the longest ball I've ever him hit.  With the dwindling home crowd energized in the fading afternoon light, Michael stole third, then came home on a bloop single that fell just behind the third baseman.  Cries of "we won!" erupted from the bench, and there was joy in Mudville.

(A nice sideline to the story is that Michael and the boy who drove him in, Sam, have teamed up for good baseball in years past.) 

Michael wore a very satisfied glow about him the rest of the evening.  He was rightfully proud of his hit, which was powerful and, most of all, timely.  The team needed him to contribute and he delivered.  Everyone should get a chance to feel that joy at least once in life.

2012 Fall Sports Report: Baseball

After a year hiatus, Michael is playing fall baseball again.  He is moving up a division, playing on a larger field with older teammates and opponents, and fall ball provides a relatively low-stress opportunity to adjust to the new surroundings.  Our league's fall ball program is intended to be a developmental league.  We play teams from the neighboring communities of Orinda and Piedmont, but the game results are not recorded and standings are not kept. 

Over the summer, Michael and I spent some time hitting, pitching and fielding on the larger field, but nothing can substitute for the game-time experience, especially when you find out that what would have been easy double last year is now a close play at first.  This is also the division (11 and 12-year-old boys) when the divide between little boys and fiercely adolescent men-to-be is the most stark.  In our last game, half the other team's players were bigger than our biggest kid.  In game before that, I saw somebody in the opposing team’s on deck circle for the other team that I would have sworn was a coach.  He had muscles!  (And I think drove the team home in his van.)  Although he is growing quickly, Michael remains one of the little guys, so it is just a little alarming to see him face these relative behemoths.

Our league has divided up the fall ball participants into three teams: a travel team for 12-year-olds, a travel team for 11-year-olds, and a team of the remaining players that plays locally.  The travel teams were selected through a tryout process, and are essentially all-star teams with a few additional players thrown in.  Those teams play a weekend tournaments throughout the fall.  We decided that Michael would not try out for the 11u team, even though I figured there was a very good chance he could make the team.  I expected several of the players from the summer all-star team to either play other sports that conflict with baseball or simply choose not play baseball in the fall.  That would open up a few roster spots, and given that Michael was one of the top 10-year-olds who was not on the travel team this summer, he was pretty close to a shoe-in.  Having now seen the fall 11u team, which includes one of the least capable players from our spring team as well as another couple of players who did not make any of the tournament teams in the spring, it is clear that Michael could have been on the team.  However, by the time the league announced its fall schedule, Michael had already committed to playing soccer, and we all (Michael most of all) wanted to honor that commitment.  It also does not break our hearts to not have to travel for weekend tournaments in such garden spots as Modesto and Sacramento (although the tournament in Sunnyvale last weekend might have been fun).

Because the two travel teams siphon off the top players, the team that plays locally during the fall is a motley collection of mid-range players.  Made up almost exclusively of 10- and 11-year-olds (i.e., kids in their first year of this level), they would probably be at best a mid-range team in the younger division they just played in last spring.  The team is short of sluggers, pitchers, and baseball instincts in general.  However, they are receiving excellent instruction from their coach, a knowledgeable man who is giving them new aspects of the game to focus on at each Saturday practice.  He is assisted by his two sons, both of whom play for one of the local high schools.  They bring the unique energy and swagger to the group that I think the boys enjoy. 

Not unexpectedly, the team has yet to tally a win after four games.  The competition they face each week varies widely.  The Piedmont team we played this past weekend was (as I noted above) huge.  Our little guys were, for the most part, no match for their physically much more mature players.  On the other hand, they had a few kids at the bottom of the lineup that were younger and not as capable, and our kids competed well with them.  The week before, we played a different Piedmont team that was much more similar to ours in general distribution of talent and experience.  We scored a lot of runs in the game, but they prevailed in the end in a very entertaining contest.

For his part, Michael is playing well and having a good time.  He is often the shortstop, and is also one of the regular pitchers.  Because he throws strikes better than anyone else on the team, the coach has taken to calling him his "closer," bringing him in at the end of games.  Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.  Two weeks ago, when we were clinging to a one-run lead, Michael did what he does, which is throw strikes.  The other team put the bat on the ball, and ended up scoring four runs to win the game.  However, none of the balls they hit left the infield.  With more experienced players, we would have been out of that inning with a couple of ground outs and strikeout.  As it was, there were several missed opportunities to make easy outs. (To be fair, as I reminded him after the game, Michael cost his starting pitcher two runs at the very beginning of the game with some uncharacteristically poor play at second base.  Learning the give and take of picking up your teammates when you make mistakes and maintaining poise when they fail is a big part of baseball at this level.)  The coach, however, was very pleased with the way Michael pitched because he went after the hitters.  This past week, Michael pitched in the last inning of a blowout.  His first batter had hit two triples earlier in the game.  Michael got a called strike, another strike on a weak foul ball, and struck him out.  He retired the next (humongous) batter on a ground ball to shortstop, who got an easy force out at third.  

At the plate, Michael has been the leadoff hitter all season and has gotten a hit in every game so far (as fact he never fails to point out to me).  He has stolen several bases and scored several runs.  

The runner goes!

Flying around third on the way to scoring a run

He even came through in the clutch this weekend, for his personal stats.  Going into his last at-bat, he was 0-for-1 with a walk, with his hit streak on the line.  Facing a new pitcher who was at least a head taller than he, he worked the count, as he always does.  After watching a couple of balls go by, he fouled off a pitch up in his eyes, then took a called strike that was even higher.  He couldn't hide his frustration at what we call the "fall ball strike zone," but he showed his development as a player with the next pitch.  It was also up in his eyes (I have photographic proof below), but he went up to meet the pitch and drove it sharply into right field.  He promptly stole second and scored shortly thereafter.  When we talked after the game, he confirmed my guess about what he had done:  he told me he swung at pitch precisely because the previous pitch had been in the same location and had been called strike.  

The classic eye-high fastball

I am thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to watch Michael and his teammates play without any burden to coach, prepare, instruct or do anything other than refill his water bottle and take lots of pictures.  I take responsibility, along with a couple of the other dads, to prepare the field before each game, but beyond that, I am not needed.  I still sit through the two-hour Saturday practices, not because they need me there to coach or shag balls, but because I love watching the coaches work and the players play.  Those two hours every Saturday afternoon have turned into one of the most relaxing and enjoyable weekly interludes I have had a long time.  

It doesn't hurt that my kid, while far from being an athletic prodigy, is a very good player who is soaking up good coaching and achieving things on the field (six hits in 11 at-bats so far this fall) that have been his goals for himself for a long time.  I love that he is learning some of the finer points of the game and is physically capable of putting them into action.  As an example, two weeks ago I noticed that one of the opposing team’s batters stood extremely far from the plate.  Unfortunately, our pitcher threw to where the batter stood, rather than where the plate was, and gave up a very long base hit.  I explained to Michael after the game what I had seen, and reminded him to pitch to the plate, which would give him a huge advantage against someone who stood far from it.  This week, when called upon to face a couple of very capable batters, he noticed (as he told me after the game) that one of them stood well off the plate.  In response, Michael pitched ball over the outer half of the plate, with great effectiveness.  He turned a player who had drilled the ball repeatedly earlier in the game to a weak strikeout victim who could only foul off the ball to the right side with an excuse-me swing.  That is called having a plan and putting it into action; that kind of craftiness will serve him well as he waits for his body to develop the size and strength it will need to compete with most of the other rapidly-developing boys in the division.

The form is there, and the size will come

We may not see many wins this fall, but the players will benefit tremendously from the experience, and will be much more comfortable going into the regular spring season as a result.

Best Birthday Party Ever

At least, the best one I've been to that wasn't my own.  For Michael's 11th birthday, we agreed to his request that we take some of his friends to a Giants game.  We bought the tickets several weeks ahead of time, but since the Giants' last weekend home games were the same weekend we were going to select (and because they have sold out every game for the last year), tickets were not easy to come by.  Meaning, in this era of value pricing, the tickets for otherwise unremarkable bleacher seats were a bit more pricey that you would think seats 500 feet from home plate would be.  Any other event involving a bunch of kids for a party would be in the same price range, though, and I knew I would enjoy a ballgame more than a bowling alley or video game truck, so off to the park we went.

Michael made a special sign; we recorded the game on TV, but have not watched it yet all the way through to see if he made it to the broadcast:

I love the classic stylized team name; Michael worked freehand from an old logo 

Sitting in the bleachers at AT&T Park is perfect for 11 year old boys, since it is practically an amusement park at which there also happens to be a live baseball game.  There is a wide plaza with food and picnic tables, and a large slide complex (the boys are not too old yet to think those aren't cool), and downstairs is a batting cage and speed gun for pitching.

They can turn going down slides into a competition

Michael in the cage, ready to smack the ball off the back wall

It was a beautiful, relatively warm evening (i.e., you could get by with only one layer of heavy clothing).

The view out the back of the stadium of the Bay Bridge

Looking up at the back of the scoreboard from the picnic area

We missed most of the middle innings playing on the slides, having dinner, and hitting in the batting cage, but we could track the game on the TV sets that were everywhere within view.  We made it back to our seats for the last few innings, though.

The view from our seats, when we were not chasing the boys around the rest of the stadium

And it was, indeed, a special night:

By chance, the night of Michael's party was the first night the Giants could clinch as champions of the National League West and punch their ticket to the playoffs.  They played exceptionally well over the last six weeks, and clinched their postseason spot at the first opportunity.  I have never been to a professional sporting event that had such meaning attached to it, and it was a blast.  The team played great, a home run was hit into the first rows of our section, and the party lasted for the better part of an hour.  We left the park half an hour after the game ended, and we were among the first to leave.  The cheering went on unabated as we all reveled in the joy and relief of the players as they circulated the stadium to high-five fans and soak up the adulation.  Clubhouse interviews were broadcast on the scoreboard screen, and the mere appearance of any player on the screen brought renewed cheers from the crowd.

The players making their victory lap

It was a historic night to be in the park, and a great occasion for a party.  All of the boys got into the general frenzy of the evening, even though none of them are as rabid Giants fans as Michael.  We could not have scheduled it any better if we had actually planned it that way.

Lots of celebrating in the park, even almost an hour after the game ended

I'm not sure how we will top this

Nose To The Grindstone

We are a month into what we anticipated would be a school year full of work.  We have not been disappointed.  Fifth grade is well-known to be a demanding precursor to middle school, and sophomore year with honors and AP classes is just as challenging as it sounds.

First day of school, August 2012

Michael is doing far more work than he has in prior years, but he is doing very well.  Thanks to our studying sessions, I now also know the capitals of all 50 states.

Kelly is grinding away with several hours of homework every night, but she is doing very well with a heavy load of difficult classes.  She continues to love Spanish and choir, and she is doing great work in her AP European History class that is every bit as involved as a college course.  That class is well-known to be one of the best courses at the school, and one that teaches these kids how to write a college-level essay.  Alegbra II/Trig Honors presents the largest challenge, but with a math tutor already in the house, her prospects for success as the semester goes on are good.  We all may lose a lot of sleep in the interim, but we are going to know a lot more about the quadratic equation and the Defenestration of Prague that we did in August.

We see this for hours every day

It's September; Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

As a society, we trust order, but are not above manipulating our world to match our expectations of what the world ought to be.  We proved that time was not immutable by inventing "daylight savings time.”  By the written order of Congress, the laws of heaven and earth were overcome.  It should require no more than a voice vote and the twitch of a scrivener’s pen, then, to realign the entire calendar to conform with the well-established pattern of our lives.  That this has not yet happened must be a matter of mere oversight.  After all, is there any month of the year more deserving of "New Year" status than September?

Anyone who has children, who has had children, who knows children, or was a child knows instinctively that the new year, in all its many aspects, does not commence in January, but rather in September.  School, sports, marketing of holiday displays at Costco – they all begin in September.  The only beginning January heralds is the long, dull stretch of winter that does not include any festive holidays.  

Even calendar makers recognize the folly of arbitrarily granting January the "new beginning" status it does not deserve.  An increasingly large proportion of calendars found at those ever-popular kiosks in the mall are of the 16-month variety, tacitly acknowledging September's status as the true beginning of the new year.

We live our lives according to this adjustment to the actuarial orthodoxy.  This month, like every September of the past decade, has devolved into a flurry of activity, full schedules, neglected lawns and exhaustion.  We have seen the beginning of the sophomore year in high school and fifth grade, with increased workloads for both, the beginning of the soccer and fall baseball seasons, dust on the trumpet transferred to the videogame machines, and the Giants making another run at the playoffs.

There have been many notable events and pictures to share over the last several weeks.  I've simply been too busy or too lazy tired to share them.  

Yet.  Stay tuned.

Swimming Madness, In Absentia

For the first time in three years, our summer did not move to the beat of the swim team season.  Michael decided he did not want to be on the swim team anymore, and we supported his decision (reluctantly, on my part).  We still made a point of going to the pool to see portions of the meets and visit with friends, but the freedom from the practices and meets was just as welcome to us as it was to Michael.  We discovered that weekends actually have many hours in them that can be put to all sorts of uses, some of which are productive.

All the same, we missed some of the camaraderie of the swim team experience, especially for the season-ending league meet.  This year, seizing on the angle that many aquatic Olympians hail from our league's two small towns, a local news station (the one that happens to be broadcasting the Olympics) dropped by for a short report.  The interview (here) features two of Michael's friends.  The first swimmer interviewed also happens to be the son of our kids' orthodontist.  The last interviewee (sporting the blue braces), is Rex, a terrific swimmer and the star of our baseball team this year.  He is one of the most self-confident ten-year-olds you will ever meet, equally comfortable supporting friends and teammates and interacting with adults.  That he was smooth on camera is not a surprise.  This kid is destined to be a student body president someday. 

While we felt small pangs of regret about being apart from the esprit de corps, I think we enjoyed the wide open weekends more.  Those days are soon to end, as soccer and fall baseball start up again before the end of the month, along with school for both kids.  Let the frenetic schedule recommence!

Citius, Altius, Fortius: Interplanetary Edition

In the middle of the ongoing Olympiad, the most impressive performance under pressure this week was not an archer fighting crosswinds or an gymnast trying to land a twisting tumble on a four inch wide beam. The gold medal goes to the team of engineers and scientists who conceived, programmed and built the landing system for the Curiosity Mars lander that touched down successfully last night.

The mind-blowingly complex entry and landing sequence was, as one commentator put it, the Cirque du Soleil of spacecraft landings.  The "7 Minutes of Terror" is well-documented, but no less incredible for it.  In addition to the usual firey transit into planetary atmosphere that every spacecraft must endure, the Curiosity would also employ a massive supersonic parachute and rocket thrusters to slow the craft.  The seemingly redundant systems were necessary because the Curiosity rover is the size and weight of a small car, too large to be carried to the surface by parachute or airbags (as were its rover predecessors).  The problem with retro-rockets, though, is the dust they kick up, which could damage the rover.  The obvious solution for delivering the payload to the ground without unduly disturbing the surface with rocket blast, of course, is to lower the rover from the remainder of the spacecraft on tethers.  Once the rover is on the ground, the tethers are automatically clipped and the spacecraft rockets away to crash land somewhere else.  Through it all, two other Mars satellites would be reconfigured to track the rover and assist with communications since Curiosity would touch down on the far side of Mars, away from a direct line of sight to Earth.

This Rube Golbergian system had all of JPL understandably nervous as the final countdown approached Sunday night. Many Mars missions with far simpler landing systems had failed in the past, and there was nothing the flight controllers on the ground could do to correct any problems that might arise since the entire operation was under computer control.

Their programming was bug free.  Against seemingly heavy odds, the Curiosity was "wheels down on Mars" at the appointed time and place.  Many nerdy hugs and high fives were exchanged in the JPL command center.

I spent my evening riveted to the NASA TV feed of the last hour of the flight, even while the rest of the family watched the Olympics.  The ability of mere humans, many of whom are now younger than I am, to design and build a spacecraft to successfully perform so many complex maneuvers never fails to inspire me.  The JPL control room, which erupted in applause every time each milestone was reached and became an unabashed party zone after the landing, may not exhibit the stoic professionalism of a Houston mission control under the direction of Gene Krantz, but the ability of the engineers and programmers is undeniable and equal to the best feats of the manned space era.  Here's to years of new images and discoveries from the Curiosity rover.

Vindication

Giants fans took a lot of flack from the national media and fans of other teams when they adopted Chicago-style tactics (vote early and often) to place three of their favorites in the starting lineup of the National League All-Star Team.  Buster Posey, the quiet, supremely talented young catcher who was rookie of the year two seasons ago, has come off a lost year after a horrific leg injury to anchor the Giants' lineup with solid hitting.  He also handles one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, and called Matt Cain's perfect game.  Giants fans rewarded him with the highest vote total ever.  The second highest vote total for the year went to outfielder Melky Cabrera, acquired in trade over the winter.  After a breakout 200-hit year with with Royals last season, Cabrera has not slowed down, leading baseball in hits and batting average most of the season so far.  His nickname ("the Melkman") has also inspired a cadre of devoted fans to dress up as milkmen at home games to celebrate his accomplishments.  The biggest surprise was Pablo Sandoval at third base.  A huge fan favorite for his outsized Panda persona but not well known outside of the Bay Area, Sandoval has had a solid season but missed several weeks with a broken bone in his right wrist.

Those in the know believed none of those players should have been starters, especially Sandoval, since Mets third baseman David Wright had a terrific start to the season.  That Matt Cain was named the starting pitcher rankled the baseball world further, especially Mets supporters, since many believed Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey should have been given the starting nod.

As is often the case, the East Coast just doesn't pay enough attention to what the West Coast is doing.  The Giants batters collectively went 3-for-7 with five runs scored and five runs driven in,  Cain pitched two scoreless innings, Posey called and caught five scoreless innings, and Cabrera hit a home run and won the MVP award in the National League's 8-0 win over the American League.

I refuse to be humble about the Giants' contributions, or feel bad that maybe Wright, or Dickey, or Carlos Ruiz, or anyone else should have started ahead of the Giants' players.  As I was growing up, the Giants typically sent only one player to the All-Star Game because they had terrible teams with generally mediocre players.  In those days of no interleague play and very few nationally televised games, the Giants rarely appeared on the national stage, so the All-Star Game was a huge deal for a young fan like me.  My guys usually got one at bat late in the game; I would just pray they did something interesting and not be a complete afterthought.  On the few occasions they had a more prominent role, it seemed inevitable that they would fall on their faces (Atlee Hammaker, you deserved to be famous for something better).  After brushing the sand off our faces kicked there by baseball's glamorous teams yet again, we Giants fans would go back to rooting for a completely irrelevant team.

Even now, I hear the Giants' 2010 World Series title referred to as "improbable" and "unlikely."   Enough.  Last night, Giants ran the show.  They had a stellar June, they are a half game out of first place in their division, and they shown that they have talent both on the mound and at the plate to compete with anyone.  The ten-year-old in me could not be happier.  Even better, by contributing substantially to the win, the Giants' players guaranteed that the National League will have the home field advantage in the World Series.

There is a pretty fair chance the national media experts will be making arrangements to be in San Francisco for those games.