On a Sunday afternoon in late July, my son and I headed to the ballfield right after church, eating lunch from a cooler and him changing clothes in the car because his new team was began practicing to get ready for the fall season. He’s played club baseball for maybe four and a half years, and in that time, we have charted the harrowing wilderness between baseball being a blessing and an idol. A terrible god.
Illustration by Jeff Gregory
He first picked up a bat and ball when he was five. He first put on his t-ball uniform, and I could tell baseball was going to be something special for him because he actually posed willingly for a picture. Our family stayed with rec ball (the good old-fashioned come-as-you-are neighborhood leagues) for three or four years. The seasons were brief—five weeks in the spring, five in the fall—but the ballpark was fun. Those were the years of pure joy, and I think we all kind of fell in love with the game. So we started exploring opportunities for our son to try out for a club team. We just wanted more baseball. And we certainly got it—to say the least.
Sometimes, it seems as if parenting, or even existing, in the modern age comes down to a contest of who can be the most exhausted. We tend to wear our busyness as a badge of honor. And youth sports are no different than things like work, school, church, or community in that it takes something fun and beautiful and puts it on a treadmill. Joy turns into hustle. Rest goes out the window and lands in a heap next to a healthy life balance.
As parents of a club baseball player, we experienced the sport as a kind of identity, a place where you’re always fighting to belong. It was indeed sinking sand. The pressure on our family to be at every practice and game was immense. A little devil on my shoulder would whisper, “Miss one thing, and it’s nothing but the bench for the rest of your son’s life.” That same little imp must certainly have loved how often practices and games fell on a Sunday.
I found myself caught like a base stealer scrambling between second and third. On the one hand, I liked family time at the ballpark. But I certainly didn’t want to feel as if we all lived there. What started out as an effort to do more of something we all enjoyed had turned into a grind.
Things became unbearable 18 months ago when our son decided to try out for a AAA team (a higher level of competition with accompanying extraordinary expectations and anxiety, both in the dugout and the bleachers). We were just a few weeks into the season, and I could already tell my son wasn’t playing anymore. He was just trying not to mess up. In the bleachers, the parents all navigated the tension by not saying anything out loud. And the demand on our time became overwhelming—made visible by everything from messy houses and overgrown lawns to the much more problematic string of missed Sunday services.
The cost was proving to be far more than any of us wanted to pay. I’ll never forget standing in line for a roller coaster at King’s Island that summer—dreading an upcoming tryout—and getting a message that the coach was leaving that team and everyone was going their separate ways. I’d never been happier to see God close a door.
When the world tells you to hustle, it always holds out a carrot. Some imagined end that will make it all worth it. Opportunity. Recognition. Living in the land of plenty. We ran on the youth sports treadmill, the speed getting ratcheted up every season, and I never caught even a glimpse of any promised land. No matter how well my son played, there was always the next game. No matter how many hours I spent driving or sitting in the car waiting for a practice to end, there was always another one scheduled the next day.
I’m reminded of two wise observations, one being “Comparison is the thief of all joy.” So much of our drive to hustle is, at the root, fueled by looking at what our neighbor has and wanting the same for ourselves. When you get to the next rung on the ladder, the world will show you someone higher up and tell you it’s time to get climbing. You get a promotion and a raise and move to a roomier house, and right next door will be an even roomier house to start saving for.
There will always be a better ballplayer or a bigger house or a nicer car or a cushier job. Always. You’re not chasing a carrot; you’re striving after the wind. (See Eccl. 1:14.)
Which brings me to the second wise statement, another passage from Ecclesiastes in fact: “One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind.” (Eccl. 4:6). If you are looking for a life that includes rest, you start to weigh “opportunities” much differently. You stop asking, “Is this going to get me where I want to go?” and instead ask, “Is this good?” When you do, you’ll find that God provides many a path that is good. It’s part of His abundance.
That high-intensity AAA baseball team folded right when we were at the nadir of our burnout as a family. We had a choice: Stay on that treadmill, find another team, and keep grinding, or choose something else. So when a coach we’d worked with a few years prior reached out to see if our son wanted to try out for a team he was putting together, we measured how much we’d have to give up for what we stood to gain. Two tournaments a month max, no further away than an hour. Now, baseball fits into our life instead of forcing us to squeeze a few drops of life out of the hours it doesn’t claim. Things feel, in a word, balanced.
The new team is serious enough that everyone tries his best, but nobody’s building a resume for an NCAA Division I school, much less an MLB draft class. The players all truly support each other, and the parents cheer on a whole team. You pursue good things much differently when you’re not placing all your hope in them. Will this path lead to the maximum amount of opportunity? I honestly don’t know. I’m not even convinced that it matters all that much. What I do know, however, is that we’re not saddled with “two fists full of labor” anymore. We can breathe again, and God is proving to us yet again that His promises are always true.
Plus, baseball is fun again. And that’s the way it should be.
