MVP Caliber Tee Ball Dud
By: Ronan Takagi
Tags: Life Lessons, Family, Humor, Sports, Baseball

The closest I ever came to being a professional baseball player happened at age 6 when I made the local tee ball team. My friends Daniel and Shaheen convinced me to try out with them. Or was it their moms convincing my mom? Either way, there I was at the local baseball park for the tryout, hitting the tee instead of the ball and letting ground balls dribble through my legs. Despite my less-than-stellar performance, I made the team. At the time, I thought it was because they saw something in me. I was a raw talent that they hoped to chisel and mold into a finished tee ball specimen. But I’d soon learn that everyone made the tee ball team, as evidenced by each team having upwards of 15 players. I ended up being drafted by the Cardinals. At the time I thought their logo was cool, two birds perched on a bat. I was glad I didn’t get something lame like the Red Sox. Why would anyone want to be represented as an undergarment? Daniel and Shaheen weren’t on my team. They were both on the Cubs (another cool mascot), but they both quit a game into the season, so I was left to fend for myself in the mad world of competitive tee ball.

Although my mom is the one who signed me up, she ended up hating the whole thing. She didn’t realize that the games would be played on Saturdays in direct conflict with Japanese school. By the time she found out, it was too late to have me withdraw from the league without her losing face (I hadn’t told her that Daniel and Shaheen quit). My grandfather quickly swooped in to fill the void of Family Member Interested In Ronan’s Tee Ball Adventure. He’d take me to practices and socialize with the other parents as much as was possible for someone who didn’t speak English. He was excited about the whole endeavor because it was an opportunity for him to see how athletic I was. He’d always bragged about how when he was a kid he could pick up pennies on the floor while riding a bicycle or how he’d swim miles and miles each day. I think he was expecting some of this athleticism to have rubbed off on his grandson.

Unfortunately, my grandfather’s expectations were shattered to smithereens on the first day of practice when I caught a fly ball with my face. As I lay on the ground with one eye closed, I remember seeing the batter rounding the bases, and my grandfather shaking his head. To my grandfather’s dismay, that incident wasn’t an outlier, but the norm. When I wasn’t catching baseballs with my face, I was dropping them and failing to hit them properly off the tee. As the season progressed, my grandfather drifted farther and farther away from the other parents so as to minimize the shame I had brought upon his athletic lineage. On the car rides home, he’d openly wonder how someone so unathletic could have been spawned in his genetic line. He’d then blame my grandmother for diluting the gene pool.

As I mentioned, everyone makes the tee ball team and everyone plays. My athletic prowess landed me 13th in the batting order and playing right-right field, a position where it was statistically determined that zero balls would come my way. That was fine by me, as I enjoyed being out in nature and watching the other, more gifted kids play the game. It would’ve been nice if Daniel and Shaheen were still playing, but that’s life. Instead, here was an amazing opportunity to make new friends in the crucible of a new experience; one that would forge a bond stronger than the strongest metal and be carried into the distant future. Decades from now, we’d share beers and reminisce over those innocent days of tee ball. Of course, it didn’t happen like that. I was way too shy to meet any new people. Plus most of the kids seemed to resent the fact that I was forced upon them by the rules of Major League Tee Ball. You know, the whole “everyone plays” thing. Perhaps if not for me being on the team, they would have made the playoffs. As with my grandfather, they were also discontented with my lack of athleticism. I don’t think they blamed my grandmother, though.

By the last game of the season we were eliminated from playoff contention. To reward all the dead weight like me on the team for contributing to that stellar underachievement, the coach let us play any position we wanted. What’s the harm, right? To maximize the most of my opportunity, I chose third base because that was the position played by the coach’s son. Even at that young age, I understood the concept of nepotism and figured that third base must be the most plum position if it went to the spawn of our fearless leader. As it turned out, third base was really unpleasant. A lot of balls go that way! Most of them zipped by me. Those I did manage to get a hold of needed to be delivered to the first baseman by way of a throw. My aim being what it was, most of those balls ended up sailing high over his head (it’s a trickier throw than you’d imagine). I did end up catching one line drive, though. That was pretty sweet. During the End of the Year Banquet, the coach called it an “MVP caliber” play. It was the lone highlight he could think of when presenting me the Participation Plaque. You know, the one that everyone gets just for showing up. I liked to refer to it as the “MVP Caliber Plaque.”

That would be my one and only season of tee ball. I wanted to keep playing, but my mom laid down the Mom Veto. I couldn’t play anymore because the games were on Saturdays, which meant I’d miss more Japanese school. She’d made an exception for that one year, but couldn’t allow me to miss anymore learning time. “You’re going to start learning kanjis next year. Which is more important? Kanjis or stupid tee ball?!” I answered “tee ball,” but it turns out my mom was asking a rhetorical question to which the answer was not “tee ball.” My grandfather was relieved he wouldn’t have to watch me flail around out on the baseball field, and my grandmother was relieved she wouldn’t be the butt of anymore jokes. Me? I was disappointed. I was actually getting pretty good toward the end, moving from 13th to 8th in the lineup and from right-right field to just right field. It would’ve been nice to see what would’ve happened had I stayed with tee ball and progressed to regular little league baseball. Maybe I’d be a super star baseball player right now. Instead I’ll have to live my tee ball dreams through my children. And if they’re horrible at tee ball like I was, well, I’ll blame my grandma.