Teenage Wisdom is Better Than Dad's

Our son made one of the most important decisions for our family—a decision I didn't want to make

Fall of 2020 began a new world for us. Our boys started at a new school. Courtney stopped working at their old school. (I’m not sure they would’ve asked her back even if she would’ve said “yes,” which she wouldn’t have.)

And me? I stepped into the world of coaching recreational youth baseball.

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash (Not my kids)

I had never played baseball. I sat down with friends to learn how to run a practice.

“Do you know what a double cut is?”

“A double what?”

“Double cut.”

“No. Sounds important. How do I teach this to eight- and nine-year-olds?”

(Note: was not important nor could they do it.)

I pieced together lineups, practice plans, and game plans. I bought books on coaching and more than one gimmick. In future years, I made a document (complete with GIFs) on batting stance, launch position, coiling, and throwing mechanics.

RIP Uninjured Version of Mike Trout

I rotated pitchers. I had kids play positions of which they had no knowledge. I got mad at parents and they got mad at me. I lost sleep wondering what I did wrong when we lost a game. I made great friends.

In sum: I loved it.

The Youth Sports Death Grip

Recreational ball is my speed. The competition? Pretty bad. The fun? High. I miss the ballparks. I miss coaching with my friends—Matt, Lupe, Adam, Dave, Bret, and Scott, to name a few. Good men, good leaders, and engaged parents. There are worse things to be.

But I also got caught up in the never-ending cycle of “more” that goes along with many youth sports. Baseball got way too much of my attention. After a year or two of rec ball, you gotta make a change. If you want your son to have a chance to be the starting shortstop for the Astros, you have to play on one of the ten billion select teams around led by someone who might’ve played low-A ball.

So you do. You buy a new bat every year. You steal from college savings to pay the insane gate fees. You mortgage away half of your weekends to sit at ballfields while your youngest son beats his head against the bleachers out of boredom. You do it for your kid—he's your retirement.

You also do it for the relationships you’ve formed and the people you’ve gotten to know over years.

You also sort of do it for yourself—well, I did.

And we were pretty tame with it. Baseball was mildly disruptive to our larger commitments. We’d leave practice early to head to student ministry events. We only played locally. Never did one of the 700 world series events you could do. If a game was on a Sunday, we’d head out early, probably lose the 8am game, and then drive to church. If we won the game, we’d still go to church, then head back out afterward and go lose that game.

But it was a lot. Anyone in competitive anything will tell you it’s a lot. They just get mad when you say that maybe it’s too much. I’d get mad at you, too.

Teenage Wisdom

Thus, the prayers for our family started early. While we loved it—while I loved it—I can’t always promise I loved it for the right reasons. So I’d pray that we wouldn’t make an idol out of baseball. I’d pray for wisdom. I’d talk to friends. I coached in some iteration four seasons. We tried to make it a family affair.

One of our boys played an additional three seasons with different groupings of friends from those rec days.

Then, it ended.

I committed, as much as possible, to be the baseball dad. It was a part of how I bonded. One week, Courtney texted that our son might want to be done playing.

This news came as a surprise to me.

However, on a drive home from practice one night, I heard it from him.

“Mom says you want to be done.”

“Yeah. I don’t like that baseball takes so much time away from the family. From important stuff. I don’t want to spend all my time there.”

“Yeah but are you sure? Maybe you should talk to people who know this world more. Talk to Andrew [student minister]. Talk to Nolan [great guy at our church who played college baseball].”

What am I doing? On one hand I’m enormously proud of him and want him to process with other people who love him. On the other hand I’m sort of hoping he backs out or can be convinced otherwise because wHaT aBoUt Me?!?

“I mean. Have you prayed about this?”

“Yes. One of the reasons I think this is the right thing to do is because it wasn’t on my mind at all when the season started.”

“Then let’s enjoy the rest of the season and ride off into the sunset.”

I’m grateful for the men who invested in our family through baseball. I still keep up with many of them. Last week I grabbed coffee with one to talk life, parenting, and faith. I work with another one now—he helped hire me here in Texas. I swap family pics and videos with a third. And I still text a friend and dad who was one of our son’s biggest fans—the one who helped us make sure he got to all those games.

It was sad to untether that.

I had to grieve (and realize how quietly fanatic I had become).

The Best Decision is the One I Didn’t Make

Honestly, our boy’s better wisdom to take a big step and quit baseball was one of the best decisions our family has ever made. And I didn’t even make it.

I credit him, a thirteen-year-old at the time, with changing the trajectory of our family for the better.

I tell him regularly, “You quitting baseball was one of the best things that happened to us.”

“Really? Cool.”

Courtney and I want to teach our kids to pray, use wisdom, and trust God to give them direction. But we didn’t really think it would work. You need to be at least voting age before you make those decisions, right?

However, I can say without a doubt that our family is in a much healthier spot because our son made a decision I wasn’t ready to make.

Thanks, son.

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What does he do with his free time? Well, some of it includes making content for a YouTube channel he has with his friends.

This is better, right? Please tell me this is better. At least we’re still using the bats.

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