Play Ball!

A lot of my co-workers are fitness freaks. They run marathons, do triathlons, ride single-speed bikes, do crossfit, boxed and used to play football. Yesterday we were working at an event outside at a public place. There was a subway station nearby. Two of my co-workers, we’ll call them Tony and Leon, were talking about football, but mostly because they saw someone stop near the subway entrance, put their backpack down on the ground—and open it.

Where I’m from, that means that someone is looking for their phone or they’re making sure they didn’t forget their keys, or maybe they had to make sure they packed snacks or diapers, or a ticket to a game, or their library book. Most of my coworkers are New Yorkers born and raised, and if someone is looking for something in a backpack, it’s always going to be a bad thing. The worst thing you can imagine. A knife. A gun. A machete. A sword. A light saber. Homemade bombs. I’m only joking about one of those things. People have seen a lot of shit happen here, including  a white supremacist kill a black man with an actual sword.

“My spidey senses were up. I woulda tackled the guy. I played football. I still know how to tackle a guy,” said Leon as he explained his preferred method of neutralizing the backpack-opener, if it had come to that.

“You played football?” Asked Tony, who had also been swearing that he would tackle the guy.

“Yeah, until I dislocated my shoulder. You can still see how it sticks out at a weird angle.” He thrust his shoulder in our general direction. He shoulder did have a strange angle, but maybe that’s because he was thrusting it.

“Yo, I played in high school. QB. I was a City All-Star.” Tony then proceeded to tell us how he got cocky about being an All-Star, and when summer came he was drinking and smoking more than he was practicing and during the first game of the season someone tackled him.

“It was like being hit by an 18-wheeler. I felt every bone in my body go cra-cra-cra-crunch!” Tony shook his head. “And that was the last time I played football.”

Which is not something Tony should have told me because he’s been lobbying for Boo Boo to play football ever since he kicked Tony’s hand while in utero. I had invited various co-workers to place their hand on my belly to feel Boo Boo’s little limbs, but Tony was the first coworker he kicked. Other coworkers simply looked at my belly, which was big, and informed me that I would be giving birth to a linebacker.

I relayed this story to Jer-bear, who reassured me that there is no way Boo Boo is going to be a linebacker. We are ectomorphs, he reasoned, and Boo Boo would be more likely to be a marathoner or a basketball player. I was afraid of giving birth to a linebacker, and marathoners and basketball players seemed like they’d be easier to handle.

“There is no way Boo Boo is playing football. Especially not after that story,” I told Tony.

Tony shook his head, tsked and swatted my concern with his hand. “Nah. It’ll be different for Boo Boo. They see Boo Boo out on the field and they’ll get out of his way.”

It was strange to hear a grown man talking about my one-year-old as if he’s already the Hulk. Boo Boo is in the 75th percentile for height and weight. Big, but nothing extraordinary. And no matter how big he is, I’m not letting him play football. I mean, have you seen Rob Gronkowski? He’s massive! Like Paul Bunyan was his great-grandfather. And Gronkowski retired from football at the age of 29 after multiple injuries.

“That’s right. No football. I would never tell a kid to play football,” said Leon. “Six years. That is the average career of a player in the NFL. You know what I’ve been telling my nephew to play?”

“No. What?”

“Volleyball.” Tony and Leon started laughing and then Leon got serious again.

“He’s tall. He’s black. How many black volleyball players do you see? He could be like the Tiger Woods of volleyball. HA!”

Tony shook his head and offered another tsk and swatted. “Volleyball?”

“You know where they play volleyball, right? ON THE BEACH. HA!”

I used to play volleyball in school. I didn’t want to kill Leon’s hopes for his nephew’s future by telling him that I never played on the beach. Only in gyms. The rundown, ascetic gyms of parochial schools in the Archdiocese of Kansas City.

It is true that volleyball is a low-contact sport. You’re more likely to contact the floor than a fellow human. Volleyball would be reasonable, on the beach or at a gym. I also wonder about soccer for Boo Boo. Soccer does have its fair amount of contact, but nothing like the gladiator style shit that football players do. I might lobby for cross country. Jer-bear has aspirations for Boo Boo to play for the Celtics. But that’s too much planning for someone who just started walking, and I would never wish for my son to be so ectomorphic as to pass for a professional basketball player. Basketball players only look normal in the context of the basketball court. Everywhere else people stare at them as if they escaped from a science lab.

Anyway, thinking about what sports Boo Boo will play is a purely selfish endeavor. Getting a child involved in organized sports before they know how to talk or read is purely for the parents’ sake. Not that it’s a bad thing! My friend’s 18-month-old daughter is in a Sunday soccer program for toddlers. Some expectations might have been had, but it was quickly realized that making toddlers interact with a soccer ball is done purely for adult entertainment. And that’s also the point of speculating about what sport Boo Boo will play. If all he wants to do is play freeze tag with his friends, I’m fine with that. Low contact, high cardio, happy mommy.