Baseball and the Kid Who Needed It

I watched a Baseball Zen video the other day. You know the ones. Those slow-motion MLB clips with amplified sounds. The crack of the bat. The spray of dirt. The steady trickle of sand in the batter's box shaped like a baseball diamond, filling in slowly while you breathe and remember why you love this game.  It is designed to let you reflect on the season that was. To savor what the game gave you. To remember why it mattered.

It worked. But not the way they probably intended.

Instead of relaxing, it sent me back to Bonanza, Oregon. Population small enough that we had to combine age groups just to field a baseball team. A place where the same twenty kids showed up to everything. Football. Basketball. Baseball. Sometimes all three at once if the seasons overlapped, which they did, because rural Oregon does not care about your schedule.

That is where I learned baseball. And that is where baseball taught me so much about life.

I was nine years old the first time I walked onto a field wearing an actual uniform. Not the hand-me-down kind. A real one. With a number and everything. Problem was, everyone else on the team was ten, eleven, twelve. Big kids to a scrawny nine-year-old who had not yet figured out how to be scared of things that mattered.

The coach looked at me, looked at the roster, looked back at me. Then he pointed to center field. I had no idea that was supposed to be pressure. I just ran out there, stood in the grass, and waited for something to happen. Too dumb to realize what I had been handed. Too young to know I should be nervous. Too naive to realize that I was not expected to catch everything that flew my way. I was Andy Pages before Game 7. The Dodgers centerfielder who got inserted as a defensive replacement in the ninth inning of the 2025 World Series and made a game-saving catch at the warning track. Except Pages knew what was on the line. I did not. I just stood out there and hoped the ball did not come to me.

Turns out ignorance is a hell of a performance enhancer.

The first time they handed me a baseball and told me to pitch, I was still nine. Still undersized. Still clueless. I wound up, let it fly, and drilled the first kid square in the back. Twelve years old. Built like a truck. He glared at me from first base like he was adding my name to a list.

Second batter. Same thing. Hit him right between the shoulder blades.

Third kid got the same treatment.

I stood on that mound and cried. Not because I felt bad for hitting them. I mean, I did, a little. But mostly I cried because I thought they were going to beat the hell out of me after the game. Three twelve-year-olds, all with fresh bruises, all staring at me like I had done it on purpose.

Nobody beat me up. Turns out they respected the wildness. Or maybe they just felt sorry for the kid who could not find the strike zone if you drew him a map. Either way, I kept pitching. I had no choice. Coach put me out there so that meant I had to do it.

That is what baseball did. It kept you moving. It gave you a second chance. A third. A fourth. Kept handing you the ball until you figured it out or the season ended, whichever came first.

Dan & Mike Walters - Bonanza little league sponsored by Montgomery Wards.

Baseball in Bonanza was not glamorous. We played in eighty-degree heat when the sun baked the infield until you could feel it through your cleats. We played in thirty-two-degree weather when your hands went numb between pitches and you had to blow on them just to grip the ball. Same season. Different week. That is Oregon for you. Four seasons in a weekend if you wait long enough.

I rode my bike to practice. Three miles, give or take. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with a friend or two. No parents dropping us off in SUVs. No coolers full of Gatorade waiting on the bench. Just a bike, a glove, and the understanding that if you did not show up, the team did not have enough players.

You learned resilience that way. Not because someone taught it to you. Because you did not have a choice.

You learned teamwork because the same kids you played with were the same kids you sat next to in class, the same kids you saw at the general store, the same kids who knew your business before you did because everybody in town talked. You stuck together because there was nobody else to stick with.

Baseball was also one of the few times my older brother paid attention to me. We were on the same team, which meant he needed me to be good. Not great. Just good enough not to embarrass him. So he worked with me. Threw me grounders in the yard. Pitched to me until my hands hurt. Told me what to do and how to do it. Not because he was being nice. Because the team needed me to pull my weight and he was not about to let his little brother be the weak link.

That mattered more than I knew how to say back then.

Years later, I found that same connection with my Air Force brother Al. We were both photographers in the service, navigating our way through assignments and deployments and all the things the military throws at you. Al loved the Twins. Worshipped them the way kids in Bonanza worshipped whatever team was winning that year. We got to photograph them once during a game. Two Air Force photographers sitting in a photographer's box with cameras pointed at major leaguers. Living a version of the dream we both understood.

Mike Walters & Al Rubenstein, my Air Force brother. The kind of friend we all wish we had.

Whenever things got awkward between us, which was rare, we had baseball. It centered us. Gave us something to talk about that did not require explaining ourselves. We could argue about stats, debate lineups, relive great plays. Baseball was the language we both spoke fluently, even when everything else felt foreign.

It is funny how a game follows you like that. How it becomes the thread connecting different chapters of your life.

My son chose acting over sports. Different dream. Different path. But we still have baseball. Nights at Angel Stadium together, watching the game unfold, understanding without having to say it that we are watching people chase something the way he chases his craft, the way I once chased mine. The journey of trying to win. The beauty of the attempt. The respect for anyone willing to step up and take their shot.

Baseball gave us that common ground. A place where we could sit side by side and appreciate the struggle, the hope, the refusal to give up even when you are down by three in the ninth. He gets it. Not because he played it the way I did. But because he understands what it means to pour everything into something that matters, knowing full well you might fail.

That is the gift baseball keeps giving. Connection. Across generations. Across different dreams. We learned to take risks because what else were you going to do? Sit on the bench? There was no bench deep enough to hide on. If you were on the roster, you played. And if you played, you messed up. And if you messed up, you got another chance because there was nobody else.

Baseball had rules. Clear ones. A defined beginning. A defined end. Three outs. A set amount of innings. Fair or foul. Safe or out. In a childhood where not much felt steady, baseball was the thing you could count on. The lines were always in the same place. The bases were always ninety feet apart. The strike zone was the strike zone, even if the umpire disagreed.

It gave you structure when everything else felt like guessing.

Mike & Alex Walters, Angel Stadium. Treasured Moments in a parents life.

Watching that Baseball Zen video reminded me of something I had not thought about in years. The unmistakable sound of a bat connecting with the ball. The feel of dirt under your cleats. The weight of a glove on your hand. The way the game slowed down in the moments that mattered, even when your heart pounded out of your chest.

At nine years old, I did not know I was learning how to compete. How to fail. How to get back up. How to trust the people standing next to you even when you were all just kids pretending to know what you were doing.

I knew I loved it, but why? The thrill of a win that felt like you had conquered the world. The agony of a loss that sat in your stomach all the way home on your bike. The camaraderie of a team that fought together, laughed together, and showed up for each other because nobody else was going to.

I never made it to the big leagues. Never even tried. Life took me in a different direction full of obstacles and challenges that baseball prepared me for. I dreamed about it like every kid in America dreams about it, though. Standing on a major league mound. Hearing the crowd. Seeing your name on the back of a jersey that people actually bought.

Watching that Baseball Zen video, I thought about the guys who made it. The ones who get to do this for a living. How incredible must that be? To wake up every day and play the same game you worshipped as a kid. The game that taught you how to fail and get back up. The game that made you feel like you belonged to something bigger than yourself. To have your moment become baseball lore. Gibson limping to the plate in the 1988 World Series. Freeman's walk-off grand slam in 2024. Moments that kids will talk about forever, the same way we talked about the games that mattered to us. The way we dreamed. I have hit those pitches to end the game. Albeit in my mind, but none the less, legendary.

They are living the dream we all had. Grown men playing a children's game. Getting paid to do what we used to do for free on dirt fields in towns nobody ever heard of. That is not lost on me. The magic of that. The weight of it.

Baseball did not care if you were nine or twelve. Scared or confident. Ready or not. It just asked you to step up, take your swing, and see what happened.

That is what it taught me. That is what it still teaches me.

Life does not come with a manual. It does not wait until you are ready. It hands you the ball, points to the mound, and says go.

Sometimes you throw strikes. Sometimes you hit three kids in a row and cry your eyes out.

Either way, you keep pitching.

Because that is what you do. That is what baseball taught a nine-year-old kid in a town so small it barely showed up on a map. You show up. You take your shot. You trust your teammates. And when it is over, you ride your bike home, ready to do it all again tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.