On the third day of Reverb, a moment came to me…

Day 3: Moment

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

My moment occurred this past summer as I was coaching my 7 year old son’s baseball team. We were playing in the Alabama State Playoffs during a particularly hot July day. It was our first game in the tournament so I did not have a good sense of how our team was compared to the other 9 teams. My son played left field for us because he was pretty consistent in tracking and catching fly balls. And he has a decent arm (for a 7 year old). But he never really put the two together…until this day.

We were in a tight battle with the opposing team. We would go back and forth each inning. Neither one of us able to pull away comfortably. We were getting pretty late in the game and we were ahead by a single run. The opposing team had managed to get runners on 2nd and 3rd bases. There was one out. I knew that we had to keep those runners from scoring. Our team was in the 3rd base dugout so I was right next to my son as he patrolled left field. Their hitter hit a high fly ball right to left field. I knew the ball was caught because I saw out of the corner of my eye that my son was camped under it…waiting. Then I looked at 3rd base and saw that the coach was telling his runner to tag up and score on the catch. Right at that moment, I turned to my son and started yelling “HOME HOME HOME!” I watched as he timed his catch perfectly with a crow hop and then saw him throw towards home.

I turned to look at home plate and saw two things: (1) The coach screaming for his runner to get back to the base; and (2) a perfect one hop strike to our waiting catcher. My son’s heads up throw home prevented the tying run from scoring. Our dugout and fans went crazy. The next hitter hit another fly ball to my son and he caught it for the third out with the same ease as the play before. We pulled away in our next at bat and won the game by 5 runs in the end.

My pride swelled as my son ran off the field, but it didn’t stop there. After the game, I was standing near the concession stand when the Alabama State President for Dizzy Dean baseball came up to me to congratulate me on the win and to comment on the run saving play that my son made…though he was unaware that it was my son. When I told him that it was my son, the umpire of our game also commented about how good of a play that was and that you don’t see 7 year olds make that kind of play. I am always trying to teach my son to play baseball “the right way,” the way they play it in the major leagues. That catch and throw was reminiscent of many of the great outfielders that played the game, and that made me so proud that I was able to be his coach and be able to teach him to play the game the way it was meant to be played.