May 2009 Archives

Despite scandal and questionable bullpen management, my beloved Dodgers, at this writing, have a record of 28-13 and have been, almost unquestionably, the best team in Major League Baseball thus far. My second favorite baseball team, the SIlver Lake Yankees, have endured a tougher season.

The attrition began two weeks ago. First, one of our most enthusiastic players broke his elbow coming off a McDonald's playground slide, cutting our team down to 11. Then, the kid with the 6 PM bedtime kind of faded away. After that, another kid quit, though his parents did make him tell the coach in person and did bring Krispy Kreme donuts for the entire team.

That left us with nine, the bare minimum required to field a teeball team. But then Saturday dawned. One of our remaining number appeared totally uninterested in playing, and spent the entire game moping on his bleachers next to his mom. Another was mysteriously absent. We were down to seven. The umpire let us take the field anyway. Coach had to discard his democratic ways and actually put the best players at key positions, lest every opposing hitter knock an inside-the-park home-run.

About 15 minutes into the game, our eighth player appeared. Apparently, he'd gone into the john with some comic books and had taken his own sweet time. I've been there, kid.

At least, I thought, Elijah has never wavered. But his wavering was soon to come.

Elijah woke up at 7 AM, complaining that his fingers were itchy. Sure enough, they had bumps all over them, so Regina had to take him to the doctor. They determined that it was "contact dermatitis," but Regina, never one to take a diagnosis at face value, had self-decided that it was, in fact, poison ivy. Regardless, Elijah got to school an hour-and-a-half late, his bloodstream fatally compromised by a nuclear-green sucker that he'd received at the doctor's office.

So, of course, we blamed the sugar when Elijah got sent to the principal's office at lunchtime for "defiant" behavior. We got the call, went to school, met with the principal, formulated this month's Elijah-control strategy, and took the boy home. He sat in his room by himself for two hours except for the three times he had to pee and the four times when he needed a drink of water.

Dinner went OK, until Elijah started playing Truth Or Dare. He dared me to stick my face in the dog's butt. I refused. Still, he found the request so hilarious that he repeated it over and over again.

"Stick your face in the dog's butt!" he said.

"No," I said.

"But it's a dare! A dog-butt-face dare."

"No."

"Stick your face in the dog's butt. Stick your face in the dog's butt. STICK YOUR FACE IN THE DOG'S BUTT, GODDAMMIT!"

He was screaming at me, his face furiously red. This was going to be a long night.

Elijah's teeball coach has taken to playing him at second base because the boy actually seems to understand the concept of fielding the ball and running to the nearest base to record an out. Even so, Elijah hasn't yet reached Jeteresque maturity. One day at teeball practice, while yelling at some kid not to hit some other kid on the head with a bat, I looked up to see Elijah standing on first base with his pants around his ankles. When the next player hit the ball, Elijah had trouble making it around the bases while simultaneously pulling up his pants. When I asked him later why he'd done that, he said, "because it felt good."

Another morning, just before the game, coach asked the team, "now what are you supposed to yell when you get the ball?" The proper answer is "TIME OUT!" because otherwise every fourth play would be a grand-slam home run. But Elijah responded,

"Hey hey howdy howdy hi hi hello!"

"That's very original, Elijah," said coach, "but it's not right."

And thus our inaugural teeball season lurches ahead. Last Wednesday, Elijah's Yankees played a 6:30 game in Glassell Park, our first night game and our first one away from the friendly confines of the Tommy Lasorda Field Of Dreams. Because our league is pretty small, we play half our games against Glassell Park teams. For those of you who don't speak East Side L.A. code, here are some of the differences between the Silver Lake and Glassell Park leagues:

The Glassell Park teams are entirely Mexican-American and have about a 50-50 boy-girl split. The players each bring a dozen family members to the games, many of whom appear to have played competitive baseball at some point in their lives. Some of the Silver Lake teams have Mexican players, but mostly, they're as white as the cast of Gossip Girl. Speaking of girls, our teams have one or two, at most. Both parents rarely show up to the games. They're either sleeping off their hangovers or working extra hours to pay for their insanely overinflated Silver Lake mortgages.

Also, while Silver Lake is all about everyone having fun and participating, the Glassell Park teams play to win.