Kicking the Ball Around (One Sixty-Two: Day 157)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Fifty-Seven: Jeff Francoeur, Texas Rangers

Chelsea is a bit of a free-swinger. When I toss this 5-year-old some pitches in our backyard, she doesn’t care if the ball is in the strike zone or not. She just rears back and unleashes a blur of yellow Wiffle-ball-bat motion. If she followed pro baseball, Chelsea might find a bit of herself in a hitter like Jeff Francoeur of the Rangers, who rarely sees a pitch he doesn’t like, and who has turned pitches far outside the strike zone into plenty of singles and doubles, as well as more than a few strikeouts.

But Chelsea knows nothing about Jeff Francoeur or the Texas Rangers. The thing is, the kid doesn’t really like baseball all that much. She and I have bonded over Play-Doh, as I’ve written before, but we don’t have major Daddy-daughter moments when we’re playing baseball in the backyard. We get some nice exercise for a few minutes, and then she gets bored and starts using the plastic bats as walking sticks for some make-believe hike through the yard. There’s no genetic handoff of baseball passion here.

Yesterday morning, though, Chelsea started a new sport. She strapped on some knee-high socks, a pair of shin guards and new cleats, then walked a few blocks to a neighborhood field for her first soccer practice. The verdict: She absolutely loved it. Chelsea kicked, she ran, she listened to her coach and she left the field feeling a bit like a jock. She walked with a little strut, and said she was looking forward to next week’s practice.

Later on in the day, we found ourselves in a dog park with our golden retriever, and Chelsea had located an old soccer ball that had been left there for the dogs to use. We began kicking it back and forth to each other, and you could tell after awhile that Chelsea was feeling the kind of visceral comfort that comes with doing something you really enjoy. She kicked, I kicked. She kicked, I kicked. Then she spoke.

“You know,” she said, “when I’m on the bus going to the Y after school, and we pass the school where you work, I always say ‘Hi, Daddy’s school.’ I say it to myself, not out loud. But I always say it.”

We chatted a bit more, and kept kicking the ball until dusk sent us home with the dog. When we got home, I helped my little girl clean the soccer and dog-park dirt off her body in the shower. But there was no wiping away the memory of our soccer time together.

It wasn’t a catch or a bit of batting practice that brought these words out of my daughter. Just a ratty old soccer ball, and a few moments of uninterrupted play. To say it made my day is an understatement. I think I’ll go shine her cleats.

Sammy Sou-sa

Throughout their lives, my mother’s parents shared a deep love for baseball with my brother and me. Warm, compassionate grandparents, they often expressed their love to us through animated conversations about the Yankees, Mets, or our own Little League and high school teams. One of the most enjoyable aspects of these baseball talks was my grandparents’ incredible ability to destroy the pronunciation of players’ names. This side of Babe Ruth, there wasn’t a player whose name they didn’t butcher.

That new outfielder the Yankees had just signed from Japan? Mat-soon-i. The home-run-hitting outfielder for the Cubs? Sammy Sou-sa. The clutch lefty pitcher in pinstripes? Penn-itte.

My brother and I would joke good-naturedly with my grandparents about this, and they’d laugh along with us. I wondered to myself whether these mispronunciations were due more to their education level (one had graduated from high school, while the other had left high school before earning a diploma), or whether it was due more to geography and ethnicity (a combination of Irish-German-English descent placed on the North Shore of Staten Island – a place where you’d hear many a native ask for earl and vinegar in a restaurant, and where you’d hear them say the gas was cheaper in Joisey). When I heard them say the words “Derek Jeey-ta,” I wondered whether this mispronunciation was due to a real deficiency in literacy or to a simple combination of genetics and learned behavior. Whatever the reason, I felt sure that my brother and I – writers both – would not have such struggles.

My grandparents have both passed away in recent years, leaving us with just memories of hearing about “Joe Gir-al-di” or “Jorge Po-san-a.” Until …

My mother. She was talking to me the other day on the phone. She wanted to know if I thought the Yankees would trade for that Cleveland pitcher.

“Which one, Mom?”

“Sa-na-thee-a.”

Silence.

“Mom, do you mean C.C. Sa-bath-i-a?”

“Yes, him.”

More silence.

“Mom, you’ve inherited it.”

“What?”

“The name gene.”

She is almost 62, and I see now that she is well on her way. My mom is fast becoming a major-leaguer at mispronouncing names. We shared a laugh over this realization, and then moved on to other things. But as I hung up the phone, I thought about it some more, and started to get nervous.

When will I start doing it?

I pore over the names in box scores, and say them over in my head. “Fukudome. Pierzynski. Francoeur. Gallardo.” I will not succumb, I say. Genetics or not, I can stave off this grammatical glitch.

From their lofty perch, my grandparents smile. “Just you wait,” they surely say. Just you wait.