Put me in coach - baseball

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on April 26, 2015 1:45 PM

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It took three weeks, but the rain finally subsided and the schedules matched up so that I could get back on a practice field.

I headed out to The Swamp to join Spring Creek's baseball team for a practice.

I was reluctant to actually participate in baseball, because, as some of you may know, me and baseball have a past. I was an addict. I couldn't get enough. I actually skipped my senior prom so I could get extra batting practice (and go to an Asher Roth concert).

For a good portion of my life, I worked toward the sole purpose of being able to continue my career after high school -- never realizing that now and then you need to look up and appreciate where you are rather than where you want to go.

I worked hard enough to get an opportunity to continue playing in college. That's where me and the game grew apart. Everybody has to let go at some point, I guess. I realized the game wasn't fun for me anymore. I made a personal vow to myself that when I was done, I was done. I did my best to stay away -- I even stopped watching it on TV and going to games.

So going out and playing again had me a little worried. I didn't know if I could view the game as fun anymore. I didn't know if the addiction would come back and I would go baseball crazy all over again and not be able to get away from it. I feared what I didn't know.

I don't know if I should credit the game or the players on Spring Creek's team, but I haven't had that much fun in a long time. Probably since I was them.

When I was their age, my high school team was making a run for a state title and that is the last time I remember having that much fun.

I saw my teammates in them. I saw my friends Victor and Sean in Chad Spurgeon and Trey Hammonds with their constant banter back in forth. I saw Eddie, our rightfielder, in Allen Coor as an absolute hitting machine who is quiet and goes about his business the right way.

Baseball is nostalgic. It's a romantic game. I never wanted to be the adult who talks to people about his glory days as a ball player and tries to live in the past. But these guys took me back. They made it fun again.

I'm sure you guys are more entertained when you're reading about how bad I am at these things. So I can't imagine you'd want to read about me actually still being pretty decent. You don't want to read about my footwork (which is still pretty darn good), or the little things my coaches taught me (like following a pitch all the way to the catcher's mitt) that still somehow stuck with me even today.

And you probably don't want to read about my timing being off in the batting cage so I just missed squaring most of the pitches up. You might like to read about how I almost killed our photographer with a line drive, but that story is for another day.

Instead, today, and just for today, you're reading about what this game, and more importantly, these guys made me feel.

The thing that impressed me most about the Gators wasn't how hard they worked. And they do work hard. It's not how good they are. And they are pretty good. But it's how they embrace the process.

The games are fun. Everyone knows that. But it's rare that you can find a group of guys who appear to be having so much fun during practice, while still getting better. That's called embracing the process.

It's what I stopped doing. That's why I quit playing.

It's refreshing to see kids who are still embracing the moments this game gives them. Because they don't know it yet, but they're going to blink tomorrow and when they open their eyes they'll be 23 years old behind a desk typing on a computer and not able to play this game anymore.

But they will have those memories to fall back on. When they look back on their playing days, their memories hopefully won't be clouded by one bad year that took away 10-15 great ones of playing such a wonderful game.

Hopefully, they'll be able to remember how fun it was. Hopefully, they'll remember the games, the practices and the bus rides. Hopefully they will save all the lineup cards that coach Heath Whitfield gave them for having a good game at the plate.

Who knows, maybe they'll even remember practicing with the newspaper guy and Spurgeon telling the newspaper guy that if he's part of the team he needs to pick up the baseballs in the batting cage, too. And maybe they'll remember the mouse on top of the batting cage that accidentally hung itself. Poor guy.

Wherever they wind up, I hope they have a better relationship with the game than I had until this week. It's too great a game to let go.

I thank them for helping me realize that.