Saturdays in the T-ball Park - Watching Little Ones Play Little League T-ball is Grandparent Bliss

Grandparents.com

I've taken more than 200 pictures. A few are okay. You take photos of little kids in baseball uniforms and you're sure to get some decent shots. But not one of them comes close to capturing all that's been happening at Devoll Field in Canton, Mass., for the last six weeks.

Every Saturday morning at 8:30, the field swarms with the smallest players in town. It's Little League, T-Ball division, and the place is packed not just with kids but also with their biggest fans: their parents and their grandparents. The 5- and 6-year-olds pose in uniforms that some of he town's businesses have supplied. They bend their knees. They cock their heads. Their shirts slip off their shoulders. Their hats slide down over their eyes. It doesn’t matter. We beam because the kids are cute and sweet and earnest. Plus they're ours, sons and grandsons, daughters and granddaughters, waving and smiling and running straight past first base, sometimes straight to us.

My granddaughter, Lucy, wears No. 2 for the Athletics, and her cousin Adam wears No. 6 for the Indians. Six weeks into the season and it's still more theater than competition for them and their friends. "Hey, Mimi!" Adam shouts from the infield where he stands holding his glove. He waves. He smiles. His best friend, Mattie, gets a hit, runs to first base, gets a high five from his coach. Then he runs to his mother for a kiss.

The Major Leagues cannot hold a candle to this.

One of the kids asks a group of us, "Do you like my costume?" and his father rolls his eyes but his mother and grandmother laugh.

The coaches are men with full-time jobs and little time for much else. But they make time for this, to show children, some who have never held a baseball bat before, how to stand, how to hit, how to field, and how to run the bases.

Parents and grandparents watch from the sidelines, some in chairs, some leaning against the fence. The kids swing and hit, a few on their own, but most with adult help. Everyone yells and cheers every time a ball makes the slightest contact with a bat and every time a kid lands near a base.

There are a few ringers, of course — kids born to the sport. They have all the moves, the grip, the stance, the furrowed brow, the swing, the ping. And it's GONE! Over the heads and between the legs of children still in their puppy stage.

We cheer for them, too. 

You can't get this kind of entertainment even on Broadway.

My son, a grown-up now, who lives with his wife and children in Manhattan, played on this same small field many years ago. It wasn't called T-ball then. It was Farm League and there were rules: Three strikes and you're out. And infielders and outfielders. And no coaches helping you swing the bat. He played first for the Brewers, then the Indians, the Athletics, the Braves, and the Mariners. I remembered just one of the names, but, when I called him, he rattled them all off.

He doesn't remember what he did yesterday. But he remembers all this.

He was serious when he played ball. Knees bent, hands tight on the bat, an almost scowl on his little-boy face. He used to slam down his bat when he struck out. He used to have to get angry so that he wouldn't cry.

I like that nobody strikes out in T-ball — that it's relaxed, that all the kids get to hit and all the kids get to play. 

I like this annual rite of spring that is endemic to towns and neighborhoods and old fields that have been trampled by kids for decades. 

And I like that from the sidelines, we grown-up kids, so many of us grandparents now, have this surprise opportunity to watch and cheer and smile and shout “Nice hit!”

And snap some pictures again.