Sticking With Shorts: Baseball, Values and Opportunity

Play Ball, A Family Tradition
This Saturday was Opening Day for the Foothill Baseball League. Our Saturday involved baseball, and nothing more.

Despite the fact that neither Brent nor I are even remotely passionate about baseball, the sport has been a part of our family since the first, maybe the second, day of becoming a foursome. Stuck an extra week in Ethiopia due to a hold up with the Embassy, not allowed to leave our guesthouse with our kids except to take care of adoption related business or frequent one of three approved restaurants, we made due with whatever was lying around the compound to keep everyone entertained, including a couple of plastic bats and some half inflated rubber balls. "Baseball?" was one of the first English words the kids learned. We played a lot at the guesthouse and the kids both developed accurate, if not a little tomahawk-like, swings.

Last year after only one month home, Ashagre joined the Tigers baseball team. It was something we never would have even considered signing him up for that early upon his arrival in America, but our friend Greg, who's son Izaak is the same age as our kids (and Elsa's highly competitive math partner at school), was coaching a team that was shy a few players. He suggested we bring the kids down to a practice to check it out. It was too overwhelming for Elsa, but Ashagre was hooked on that first day.

Warming up playing catch with Izaak. First day of baseball practice.

Slugger in the making.

We decided to go with it, no pressure, and pull him out if it became too much. It never did. Knowing no English, he was an astute observer of the game. He learned the rules and objectives by carefully scrutinizing what was going on around him as it unfolded. His skills improved dramatically and his confidence soared. By the end of the season, Elsa, who had attended every practice and practiced in most of them, was quite the baseball player too. She even earned an honorary jersey and a place in the batting line up for the last game of the season.

This girl knows how to keep her eye on the ball.

When baseball season rolled around again this year there was no question. The kids just assumed they would be playing. Izaak had decided to do karate instead of baseball, and Greg therefore wasn't coaching, so we decided to sign the kids up in our neighborhood league rather than drive them across town to play in the league that they played in last year.

About 30 Minutes Before the Opening Day Ceremony Begins
Fidgeting with a piece of ribbon, attached to one of a bunch of many balloons, desperately trying to untangle it from all the others before the warm breeze that is blowing through the canyon on even a warmer day undoes my handiwork and tangles the ribbons up again. 

Seriously? Balloons? Mylar balloons? I woke up an hour early and rushed my Saturday morning to come out here to tie mylar balloons to a fence? Mylar balloons that I will get to take down again in a few hours because, according to the umpire, they will distract the players during the first game of the season? Mylar balloons that a few kids will ask for, play with for a few minutes and then accidentally release to the warm breeze and deep blue sky above us so they can loose their helium and become yet another artifact of humanity's fascination with the frivolous floating around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Mylar balloons that no one else will want that will be shoved into the back of a mini van only to be batted around your house by your kids before loosing their helium and ending up in the landfill? You needed four volunteers to help with opening day to tie mylar balloons to a fence? Elsa and Ashagre know this as unnecessary and wasteful. Elsa and Ashagre, who with no coaching from Mom or Dad, stop to pick up trash on the sidewalk or in the forest, so that it doesn't end up in the ocean and hurt dolphins (they love dolphins) understand that no one's life will be any richer because these balloons were tied to the fence for a few hours.

Fifteen Minutes into the Opening Day Ceremony
I gaze out across the well manicured field, enjoying the absolute adorableness that is little kids in baseball uniforms. We bought Elsa extra small baseball pants. They barely stay up on her. I wondered how the younger kids that played T-Ball would even be able to wear them until I saw them, drawstrings pulled tight around their tiny wastes, uniform shirts tucked in giving them a little extra girth, the extra pant leg fabric folded and bunched at their ankles like rolls of fat on a cartoon elephant. Elsa and Ashagre's team, the mighty Mud Hens, by far has the cutest hats.

New families arrive. I stay vigilant, keeping my eyes peeled. Please don't let them be the only ones. Wait, nope, there's an African American woman over there. Which team is her kid on? Ah, Kristopher. He looks like he's about their age. Maybe they'll play each other. Two out of three out of approximately 275. One percent. Next I scan for girls. The numbers aren't any better. Why am I surprised? We should have stuck with the league from last year - the one on the other side of town. Sure the fields are potholed and some seemingly shady characters (who usually turn out to be parents of players) lurk around grounds, but at least the makeup of the players is representative of the community we live in - about equal Caucasion to Hispanic with two percent African American mixed in there too. At least girls in those families are encouraged to play baseball rather than being pigeon-holded into ballet by age six. At least those families get to know each other on the bleachers as they cheer their kids on, united in their commonality as parents of the kid that picks dandelions as the ball flies by his head or the kid too busy spinning circles in the outfield to notice that her team has gone in and is now up to bat.

The other mom I am standing next to behind the t-shirt sales table and have been trying to engage for the past twenty minutes with absolutely no return effort on her part finally asks, "Where are your kids?" as I cheer for the Mud Hens while they ceremoniously run the bases to kick off the season. I pause, briefly, grinning to myself about the level of discomfort I would create if I answered with the most obvious answer of all, and, instead use my pointer finger to identify them. She says nothing in return.

As My Brain Wanders in the Days Leading Up to Their First Game
Maybe I'll cornrow her hair and get beads or cute barrettes that match her uniform to put on the ends of her braids. Maybe I should sew some sort of bow onto her hat. Maybe she can wear a headband so they'll know when she takes her hat off.

Sitting in the bleachers a little boy confirms my suspicions. Mommy, is that a girl or a boy? They have a pink mitt. As Elsa swings the bat and sends the ball hopping past the catcher I clear up his inquiry. "Go Elsa! Run girl!"

Why? She doesn't care. Why do I? Elsa is fascinated by gender roles in America. Things aren't as clear cut as they were for her at her orphanage where everyone had a shaved head and girls exclusively wore dresses while boys exclusively wore pants (poor thing, I can't imagine how awkward she felt when we put her in a pair of shorts the first day we met her). "Mommy! I saw police! Girl in police car! Girl driving police car!" "Mommy, boys no wear barrettes." Brent and I are constantly explaining that, in America, girls can do anything boys can do and boys can do anything girls can do, except, of course have babies. The whole thing tickles her. "Mommy, four boys, two girls." She counts the ratio of boys to girls everywhere we go. I still can't quite understand the motivation for this counting, but am certainly no longer surprised to hear it.

Despite her fascination with gender roles and despite the fact that she is a girly girl at heart learning to live with her far from girly momma, she, herself is not concerned about other's interpretation of her sex whatsoever. As hard as we're working to grow it out, her hair remains relatively short. Other kids, the masters of asking legitimately innocent yet socially unspoken questions, ask their moms all the time if she is a boy or a girl plenty loud enough that we can both hear it. It doesn't even phase her.

Why do I care that Foothill Little League knows she's a girl? Why do I, the mom that is fine being an additional five minutes late for school as I explain in the parking lot that the woman we saw in the coffee shop is not pretty just because she has a Macy's counter full of make up on. That makeup doesn't make someone pretty. That their heart and the love they show others is what makes them pretty. That while, yes, many very pretty people wear makeup some would actually be prettier without it. That, no, Mommy doesn't wear makeup and won't be anytime soon. That she (Elsa) doesn't need makeup to be pretty. That she is already the prettiest girl in the world with her huge brown eyes, radiant smile and tender and loving heart that erupts with explosive sobs at the happy part of Disney movies. That she is pretty because she is who she is, because she's Ethiopian, because she just is. Why?

The Day After Opening Day
Our car speeds up the 33 through the other side of town, the west side, home to the Pony Baseball League, the other league we used to be a part of. The kids are strapped safely in their booster seats. Each one sings some repetitive ditty or another just a little bit louder than the other. Brent and I steal a moment to discuss our housing options.

We could continue to live in our current bungalow. The cute one in the great neighborhood with great neighbors. The one with a slumlord landlord, mold on the bathroom walls, and only two bedrooms. We can continue to sleep with one kid in between us in bed at night (alternating kids so as not to make anyone feel excluded) or we can look for something else. We can rent a new place like the one we are quickly approaching in Oak View. One with three bedrooms, another bathroom and a dishwasher (A dishwasher! Sign me up! I don't even need to see the house!). Or we can look into buying one that our realtor neighbor has in mind for us. One of the houses on the other side of town - the only side of town we currently have the ability to possibly afford in our overpriced beachside community. The side of town that has been "up and coming" for thirty years, but still remains to be considered a good place to invest in housing, unless, of course, you're another slumlord landlord. The sole destination of all the City's redevelopment funds.

I remember a conversation overheard at opening day. Another mom, hair bleached blond, well sculpted body, designer work out clothes and a large diamond ring on her finger marvels at how great Foothill Little League is. "We had to play in the Pony League for a few weeks last year. It was awful. The fields are a wreck, and how can you keep track of the kid's stats with no score board?" She shutters. I shutter, remembering the first morning in a long time where I have felt like the other in our community. Brent and I decide to keep our options open. We take an application for the place in Oak View. We invite our neighbor over later in the evening to discuss the houses she knows of on the west side. I quietly wonder if even west side will offer enough otherness for our family.