Tee-ball

At the age of six, I was enrolled into tee-ball baseball, a variation for little kids that does not involve pitching. Instead, the ball is placed upon a tee, where the batter hits it, which should be a sure bet for any competent player, which I wasn't. I didn't have much interest in tee-ball. My thoughts tended to be elsewhere. I had a rich inner world. I believed in magic, God, the Devil, and all kinds of things that I had picked up from Church, television and my friends. I liked thinking about these things rather than things like tee-ball. I liked to imagine that as yet unseen spirits might want to get in touch with me and give me gifts or grant me special powers that would be completely cool and awesome.

Due to all this daydreaming, I was in the habit of striking out or hitting the tee-ball somewhere easy for a quick out. My coach wanted to win. I still remember him even to this day. He was a tall, muscular, good-looking high school stud with dark hair who wore a gold chain and spat, used slang and cursed more than may have been appropriate for our tee-ball league. I disapproved of the cursing because I knew my parents would disapprove, but no one else seemed to mind, so I decided he must be an unusual exception to the no-cursing rule. The parents were overlooking his cursing because he was such a good coach, I decided.

The coach crouched beside me as I swung the plastic bat at the tee-ball. He tried to show me the best way to hit the ball. He even held my forearms and tried to swing the bat for me, using my grip on the bat and his aim. The opposing coach objected to this as cheating, and my coach had to back off, but he stayed nearby to give advice. There was another delay as the opposing coach called a time-out, because one of his players had to go to the bathroom. While waiting, I hummed a parody of "The Batman and Robin Show" that was making the rounds at school:

Jingle Bells,
Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg!
The Batmobile
Lost its wheel
and the Joker ran away---ay!

My coach snapped, "I ain't laid no egg!" I turned to him in surprise. Then I remembered that his name was Robin, and I laughed. He repeated his denial. I tried to explain that the song had nothing to do with him, but I don't think he ever caught the part about Batman. I gave up trying to explain and concentrated on the tee-ball. I scored a hit and made it to the first base, only to be caught out later.

At the end of the season, I think we won first or second place in the league. The parents got together and presented the coach with a bonus check of a hundred dollars, unimaginable wealth to someone like me accustomed to a dollar-fifty a week allowance. I quit tee-ball after the first season because I found it boring, although I liked the coach. I probably would have liked him even more about ten years later.