Catching the moment and the meaning
This father and son know what the game is really about
By Casey Christy ’92, M’03

 was standing in front of the dugout on a warm July evening, coaching my 10-year-old son’s all-star baseball team. Being selected as the all-star coach is not as prestigious as you may think. In small towns, it often goes to a parent willing to postpone a summer vacation.

To qualify, you only need to love the game and commit to providing daily lessons in the sweltering heat. Tossing candy from the back of a pickup truck in the annual Fourth of July Parade is usually the highlight of making the all-star team. If you win a few games after that, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

It’s the third inning and we’re down by a few runs. In the true spirit of youth baseball, the fact that we’re losing shouldn’t really matter to the coach. But admittedly it does, until what happens next.
My son was the catcher. (I’m sure his choosing that position had nothing to do with his father catching for Glassboro State College many years ago.) With two outs and two strikes, the batter hit a foul pop-up that skied straight up over my son’s head.

We had been working on foul pop-ups behind the plate all week in practice, a difficult play even for more experienced catchers. There is a specific way to do this. First you need to locate the ball in the air behind you, quickly flip off your mask and toss it out of the way. Next you need to turn your back to the infield because the ball has backspin and will curve back toward the infield. If you don’t turn your back, you’ll likely miss the ball. My son did all of these things perfectly, but at the last moment, he realized he had misjudged the ball and it was going to land behind him…

Professional baseball today, no doubt, has its troubles. In some cases, players we thought of as the new generation of heroes turned out to be liars, cheaters, drug users and just outright greedy. We doubt the legitimacy of records some players set because steroids have infiltrated the game. Many are turned off by it all. That’s until you experience the innocence of youth baseball.

…My son quickly adjusted and dove backward as the ball softly fell into his mitt. Turns out all that practice had paid off. It was the third out of the inning and all his teammates instantly ran toward home plate, picked him up and dusted him off, with hugs and high-fives everywhere. Now this is what it’s all about—the team unity, the joyous celebration, the opportunity, even for a brief moment, to be the hero.

Looking back on my playing days at Glassboro State, that’s what I remember most. The camaraderie, the laughs on long van rides across the Garden State and beyond. And yes, those occasional moments when you were able to come through for your team in the clutch.

Baseball can be a great game. It can humble even the most skilled player or give the weakest hitter the chance to drive in the winning run. With all of its issues at the professional level, having a catch in the backyard still bonds a father and son like nothing else. Just watch (or watch again) that powerful scene in “Field of Dreams” and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

I greeted my son at the dugout entrance, gave him an “attaboy” and tousled his hair a bit. But inside I was bubbling with pride and excitement. A lump formed in my throat, but in an attempt to remain a somewhat unbiased coach, I tried not to show how I felt. It really no longer mattered that we were losing (or that we lost), because my son had a moment in the sun in this great game. And that’s what he’ll remember—and his dad too.

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Casey Christy ’92, M’03 played baseball for Glassboro State College from 1988-1991 and is an athletic trainer at Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees. He can be reached via e-mail.