My dad taught me to be a pitcher when I was little. He got me a ball glove and he got himself a catchers mitt and we spent hours throwing the baseball. I was probably about six. He taught me all about pitching, showed me how to hold the ball with two fingers on the threads where they are close together and told me after I got good I could change up my pitch by gripping the ball in different ways. He showed me how to keep my eye on the target and I threw pitches.

We worked all summer and into the fall. Can’t play much baseball in Denver in the winter, but we would go out if it was not too cold, so I had a little better than a year of intensive throwing practice when he told me I could play Little League the next summer when I turned eight. And he signed up as coach. We got a team, some uniforms, bats, balls, and baseball stuff. And we started practicing. The league was for eight and nine-year-olds, so most of the kids knew next to nothing about baseball. And I knew it all. I could throw hard, I could catch my dad even when he threw hard. I knew strategy, how to swing a bat, how to hit the ball, how to catch a grounder and the rules of the game. And most of all I could pitch.

We had a couple of kids who could actually play ball and knew how to play the game, but most learned what they could learn in the few weeks of practice we had before our first game. I was feeling really good about how I was going to perform, especially watching all the other guys try to play, hit, run, catch, and throw.

Our first game day came and we had to drive across town to another ballfield. And we all piled into a couple of parent cars and my best buddies and I got into the bed of my dad’s pick up and we went to the ball field.

If y’all played little league you know; those games take forever. It’s always walk, after walk, after walk, until runs start accumulating from walk in’s. That’s how it started for my side. It took a long time for the home team to get us out and we had a load of runs when we finally took the field. I knew I was gonna blow these kids away, their pitcher didn’t have any gas at all on his pitches and I figured he was probably the best they had.

When I took my warm-up pitches the other kids were watching and I could feel their disbelief and fear about how hard I was throwing. The first kid steeped into the box and I rared back and fired my first pitch. It hit him in the back and he cried. He finally stopped crying after being administered and took his base. I felt really bad, I’d never hit anybody with a baseball before. The second little kid stepped in, but I could see fear in his eyes and the ump kept having to tell him he had to stand in the batter’s box. I rared back and hit him on the arm. He cried, I felt bad, and he took his base. I may have gotten the next kid out. So far I’d thrown five or six pitches and hit two players.

That game went on forever. Their pitcher walked us or we hit the ball, which usually cleared the bases by the time someone actually corraled the ball. And I hit kids all day. They had bruises but they were scoring runs. I felt bad and stopped throwing as hard as I could so the kids hurt less and less as we went.

I think we won and the score was astronomical and I must have hit every batter at least twice, most more than that. I was happy we won, but I learned a lesson about knowing my limitations. I will never forget the look I got from one of those little kids the third time I hit him. He took it personally, I could tell, but I had the ball back so he didn’t come after me. Humility dawned on me, and my dad and I worked on control…hard.

I finally got some control of my pitches and I hit fewer and fewer kids every week, and I felt less bad bit by bit. The next year I only hit one or two kids per game. I still always felt bad. That’s baseball guys.