The After-School Magic of Baseball in a Small Southern Town

On a Friday after school in a small Southern town, we’re at the county ball fields.

Mom and dad bring the kids here. You can buy Cokes and hot dogs at a shed run by the Memorial United Methodist Church. Five ball fields are busy with a couple hundred boys and girls from 5 to 12 years old.

Light towers lean in different directions. The infield dirt is red clay and the outfield grass is tall enough that you can’t see everyone’s feet.

It’s getting on to sundown and the air is made golden by the dying light.

On a Friday in one small town, grown-up voices shout to the kids:

“Boys, you gotta know what you’re going to do with it.”

“You gotta call it, Stacy, you gotta to call it.”

“Attaway to charge that ball, big man, yessir!”

We’re watching boys and girls 7 and 8 years old in a game that is a step above T-ball.

They swing at pitches thrown to their liking by their coaches. There is a five-run rule (once a team scores five runs in an inning, the other side gets to bat). When defenders throw the ball back to the pitcher, all baserunners must stop.

Everybody gets to play and, at game’s end, everybody lines up to trade high-fives. Then they get a can of pop and maybe a brownie from the coaches.

“Hey, infield, touch any base.”

“Quit trying to kill the ball.”

“Hit the ball, David, and run fast.”

Two real estate firms, a tree-cutting service and an insurance agent have signs on the outfield fence. There’s an electric scoreboard in right field with so many burnt-out light bulbs that 9s come out looking like 3s.

We’re sitting on wooden bleachers watching kids play ball when a boy named DeMarcus Miller hits a line drive to right center that rolls so far he turns it into a home run.

Miller celebrates by coming to the second row of the wooden bleachers behind third base. His mom and dad are all smiles and DeMarcus says to his mother, “A bite?”

So mom, in this small Southern town on a Friday after school, gives her ballplayer son a bite of her church-bought, mustard-and-onions hot dog.

“Lindsay, put that cap up where you can see the ball.”

“You gotta swing level, not uppercut it.”

“Let’s hear some chatter. Chatter up, guys, gotta hear some chatter.”

Chris Davison is a shortstop whose freckles dance on his nose as light leaps from his eyes. On this Friday after school, he hits two home runs. Another time he scores with a head-first slide into home plate. In the field, he makes plays that show he knows where the ball should go when it comes to him. He moves with a ballplayer’s instincts. He is 8 years old.

There’s a can of orange pop in his glove and he nibbles at a brownie while a grown-up asks him questions.

Why does he like baseball? “It’s fun to play.”

What does he like most? “Hitting the ball.”

Besides that? With a smile: “It’s nice to get away from home.”

Where’d he learn that head-first slide? “David Justice.”

Marva Davison, the ballplayer’s mother, says he has played since he was old enough to hold a ball. His grandfather and grandmother hit 300 groundballs a day to him. Not long ago, she says, Chris made an unassisted triple play.

How’d he do that? “I caught the ball, tagged the runner going to second and ran to third before that runner could get back.”

Just like that. Nothing to it. Eight years old and a triple-play maker.

“C’mon, Katy, that’s way too low, hon.”

“Taylor, a ball on the ground in front of you, you stop. In the air, stay. On the ground over there, come here.”

“You outfielders, quit taking a bite out of that ball before you get it back in.”

The games are done. Night shadows own the ball fields. The big boys 7 and 8 years old have gone home.

Now a little guy gets a chance. His name is Carson Carroll, he is 3 years old and he wears a batting helmet. His dad is lobbing him pitches and his mom is standing where a little guy’s first base might be.

Carson, who swings from the heels, hits the ball hard, tosses down the bat and takes off running. He has been hitting, his dad says, since just before his second birthday.

“Hit one more and we’re going home,” dad says.

Carson thinks not.

“This many,” he says, holding up his right hand--all five fingers.

The boy hits the one more and then dad gives in, saying, “OK, one more and we’re going.”

“This many,” Carson says again, again spreading out his little hand.

“They gotta lock up the ball field now,” mom says. “We gotta go.”

“Mommy, this many.”

One more is all the boy got.

The one was a line drive past Dad. And when the boy ran to first base, he must have wanted to go back and hit some more because we heard his mom say, there on a ball field in a small town, “Ballplayers don’t cry.”

Carson walks off the ball field with mom and dad. He carries his bat on his shoulder, just in case somebody gives in and pitches him one more.