Practice #18--A revelation

About halfway through Sunday afternoon's two-hour practice, I had a revelation. Now, as you have probably gathered by now, it does not take much for me to have a revelation. It can happen in many different ways. For example, last Saturday morning I had a revelation: when the temperature outside is 55 degrees, and you are originally from North Carolina (and not somewhere up north where they think it's warm when it's above freezing), don't wear shorts and a short-sleeve shirt.

This most recent revelation was a little more global, however. It started gnawing at me during the field portion of Sunday's practice. The Mudcats split into two groups, with half in the outfield and half in the infield. The outfielders concentrated on catching skyscraping tennis balls. A sliding scale was in place; those who met the minimum number of catches for their age group earned a pack of Big League Chew. Yes, this is bribery. Also, it is probably an NCAA violation (I am really up to date on my rule book these days) and all the Mudcats are probably ineligible to play Division I baseball at this point.

Meanwhile, in the infield the other half of the team split into two lines, one at second base and one at shortstop. They worked on fielding ground balls--establishing a wide base and especially setting up and fielding the ball rather than just lollygagging over and meeting the ball. What you might have seen if you watched them was unremarkable and very remarkable all at the same time. It was this: very, very few of the grounders were outright missed. Yes, a couple were bobbled and maybe a couple hit off the heel of a glove. But the vast majority were fielded cleanly and then fired accurately into the catcher. It's not as easy as it looked, especially considering these are 5-, 6- and 7-year olds (and 8-year-olds, as Hayes would want us to point out).

That was the beginning of the revelation. Then the Mudcats moved to the cage, with the usual tee/soft-toss/live pitching rotation. Hitting a baseball has been well established as the hardest thing to do in sports. It's almost become an accepted part of sports knowledge. Some organizations might try to drum up a debate, but really, considering that you can pull an average fan out of the stands and have them hit a free throw to win a prize at a basketball game or kick a field goal for a prize at a football game, you can't compare too many sporting acts to hitting a baseball.

So then you watch the Mudcats take batting practice and you realize something: these kids are pretty good, and there's been noticeable improvement from the first practice to the 18th practice. Back in August, it was mostly about just making contact. Now, as we're over halfway through the season, they're focusing on making good contact. Gum was the prize in the cage, and it was stingily awarded by Coach Andrew only for line drives and well-placed balls.

In the fall of 2008, we did a story at Carolina focusing on the basketball senior class. This was the senior class that included Tyler Hansbrough, Bobby Frasor, Marcus Ginyard and Danny Green. No matter what you think of the Tar Heels, it's fair to say that was a pretty athletic group. For the story, we took them to Frankie's and had them compete in several unusual events--putt-putt, go-karts and the batting cage among them. Danny Green might be a great dancer, but he was utterly hopeless in the batting cage. He missed the first 16 pitches in a row before foul tipping the 17th. When he did, he celebrated like he had just dunked one over Greg Paulus. Even Hansbrough, who I think we could all agree is a good athlete, swung wildly before he figured out how to make all the parts of the swing--arms, legs, wrists, eyes--work together. And he was a 22-year-old National Player of the Year and future professional athlete, not a six-year-old. Based on his performance in the cage that day, I don't think Coach Andrew would have awarded him a piece of gum. The moral of the story? Hitting a baseball is tough, no matter how easy the smaller members of our families might make it look.

After the cage session (during which everyone earned a piece of gum), the team capped their Sunday with cupcakes in honor of Hayes's eighth birthday. Assuming he can get out of his AARP meeting with the rest of the old guys tomorrow, he and the Mudcats have a 5:30 game against the Riverdogs, with pregame at 4:30.