The opposite of hardball

“This is gonna be fun,” said the T-ball coach. Ray Bellini, a genial teddy bear of a guy, surveyed his team—a dozen little girls, half of whom didn’t own a baseball mitt and had never even worn one. I’m ashamed to say that my seven-year-old daughter Marie was among the uninitiated. This was one of three teams in our local girls’ T-ball league.

T-ball is the opposite of hardball, especially the way Mr. Bellini coaches it. It’s entry-level baseball—the bat is the size of a policeman’s nightstick and the ball isn’t pitched, it’s batted off an adjustable rubber tee.

Because I was just loitering, keeping half an eye on my four-year-old daughter Sally, who was horsing around with some other T-ball siblings, Mr. Bellini gave me half the girls and a ball and told me to play catch with them. A tenet of T-ball is: Everybody plays. And, by deputizing me as a coach, Mr. Bellini had extended that idea to nonathletic grownups.

When Mr. Bellini called all the girls together for some instruction, they roamed toward him with mild curiosity to see what he’d say. Sally, feeling a little left out, took me aside to play catch with her “Big Mousie,” a stuffed animal, about 18 inches tall. “We’re playing mouse-ball,” she said as we threw the thing back and forth.

Some of the ballplayers looked over at us with interest and I had the feeling that their attachment to the great sport of baseball was so new and tenuous that they could just as easily take up mouse-ball. Since I didn’t want to coach it, I took Sally away for a stroll.

At the end of 75 minutes of practice, the coach took some lollipops out of his equipment bag and the session was adjourned.

It was another two weeks before I made it to another practice. Mr. Bellini’s girls were officially called the B-team, and they were all sporting purple T-shirts. (The A-team wore peacock-blue and the C-team wore raspberry.) In a simulated game between the A’s and the B’s, the girls were now hitting the ball and running the bases while the defense was learning to capture the ball and throw it toward first base. The batter who failed to beat the throw would go sit down with her teammates. No one had hinted yet to these kids that an “out” was supposed to be a negative thing.

The two-month season, consisting of two practices a week, culminates in The Tournament. I assumed that A and B would play a game, with C challenging the winner to select a champion. But I had reckoned without the broad streak of sanity that runs through the sport of T-ball. It was a hot June day and the girls were wilted and complaining.

The A, B, and C teams were mixed and divided into two opposing forces that would play one game of only two-innings. Inspired by the weather, Mr. Bellini named the teams the Fireballs and the Icecubes. Shirt color had no meaning beyond decoration.

I was appointed to T-ball’s least important position—scorekeeper. Again, Mr. Bellini was letting me play.

The girls had come a long way in two months. They had a general idea of the game, but still did not know the meaning of pressure or embarrassment. A girl would stand at the tee and take six practice swings followed by a clumsy chop that whumped the tee a full six inches below the ball. And then try again completely undaunted. This was baseball in the old Garden of Eden style, played completely without shame.

The innings passed quickly enough. In T-ball, the entire team bats each inning and the side is retired, not after three outs, but when the last child has had a turn at the plate. So a team of kids who can’t catch does not languish in the field forever while getting shelled by another team’s heavy artillery.

The Fireballs shaved the Icecubes 17-13, but the girls were much more interested in the ice-cream sandwiches that were passed out after the game. Driving home, I couldn’t remember whether Marie had been one of the victorious Fireballs, so I asked her, “Did your team win?”

“How should I know, Daddy? You’re the one who was keeping score,” she said as though to a moron.

Not offended, I continued the debriefing, “Do you want to play T-ball next spring?”

“I think so,” she said. After a moment, she asked, “If we get a mean coach, would I still have to play?”

“No,” I said. “This game is for fun, right?”

“Right!” she said.