Facing time: Trying to slow down the ticking clock on my baseball playing days

Posted by Zach Mentz on July 27, 2011 · 1 Comment 

I can hear it. It’s louder than ever, and I can promise you this: I’m not ready for it. I’m racing to slow time down like a quarterback running a two minute drill with no timeouts. I’m attempting to slow time down and let this moment live forever, but like the quarterback with no timeouts, I’m not having any luck.

I’m not trying to score the game winning touchdown though. No, instead, my battle against time is much, much different.

For me, the clock is rapidly ticking on my youth hood. I’m nineteen years old, and I’m trying to stop time from moving before I get any older.

Why, you might ask?

You see, fourteen years ago back in the early spring of 1997, my dad introduced me to the sport of baseball. At first, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Baseball, at the time, just seemed like something I would do on early Saturday mornings with my dad instead of watching cartoons on TV. Like the millions upon millions of kids who at one point or time tried the sport of baseball out, I was just trying to have a good time out on the diamond. At first, I was more concerned with sifting through the infield dirt with my hands rather than actually fielding the groundball that was hit to me. I remember the days where I wasn’t even sure what side of homeplate I should stand on while batting, as I was just dabbling in a sport that at the time seemed so foreign to me.

Fast forward the clock fourteen years later and here I am, writing this column, realizing the magnitude of what Thursday, July 28th means to me. Since that first early Saturday morning back in the early spring on 1997, everything has changed for me. And at the same time, nothing has changed. That’s the irony of it all. In the previous paragraph, I said that baseball used to seem “foreign” to me. Ironically, baseball is now quite the opposite for me. Rather than seeming foreign or difficult to understand, it’s now everything I know, and everything I look forward to every single summer.

Now though, I may not have baseball to look forward to next summer. Sure, the College World Series will still take place next summer and the 2012 Major League Baseball season will be in full swing, but it’s possible that I won’t be. Being nineteen years old has it’s perks, as does every age I suppose. If there’s one thing I don’t like about being nineteen, it’s the fact that I’m getting old. Now I don’t mean old in terms of overall life span, because nineteen is nowhere near “old”. I’m speaking in terms of baseball, in terms of my youth.

I currently play baseball for Fairport (my hometown) Little League under the “Big League” division, which is a 16-18 year old division and the oldest age division in little league baseball. I’m lucky to have been born on May 3rd, 1992 because had I been born even as little as a few days earlier, my life would be completely different. How? Well, the only reason I’m currently playing in this 16-18 year old division of little league baseball is because of my birthday. The rules are that any eligible player has to be eighteen years old or younger by May 1st of the playing year. In other words, I made the cut for the 16-18 year old age group by two days. Two days. Hell, had I been born just a few days beforehand on April 30th, 1992 -  there’s a very, very strong chance that I wouldn’t be playing baseball at all this season.

Dating back to those early (and sometimes frigid) Saturday mornings in the early spring of 1997, there’s one thing that I can say with confidence: I was born and raised on the sport of baseball  – and I’ve been hooked on it ever since.

Here's a picture of me at the age of five on one of those early Saturday mornings where I first met baseball

I use the term “hooked” because, to me, baseball is my drug. I’m addicted to it and there’s no getting away from that fact. But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Over the course of the last fourteen years with baseball, we’ve been through it all together. Like a married couple, baseball and I have been through the worst of times and we’ve also been through the best of times. The baseball diamond has always been a safe haven for me. Baseball was always something I could escape to, no matter what was going on in my life outside of baseball. Throughout the good and the bad and no matter the circumstances, I knew that the baseball diamond was always a place where I could feel at home. To me, a baseball field has always represented everything good in life. It’s represented a place where I could just go and forget the rest of the world, even if only for a few hours.

There’s been times where I’ve felt like I was on top of the world while playing baseball. On the other hand, there has also been times in baseball where I felt like I was at absolute rock bottom. But, you see, that’s exactly it. Look closely at what I just said, and let me ask you – whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, what has been the one constant in my life?

You guessed it – it’s baseball.

This past season of baseball has been a significant one for me. Over the course of this past season, the sport of baseball has tested my love, my will, and my dedication to the game. This season was my third and final season of eligibility for playing in the Big League division, and it was by far the most difficult and challenging season. After losing in the championship game during my first season of Big League, the talent pool for who we could get to play for our Fairport team in Big League dropped significantly. Many of the more talented players play Legion Ball in the summer, which starts almost immediately after varsity baseball seasons end.

Each of the last two seasons – my team has finished the regular season with an overall record of 5-11. While in both seasons we may have had identical records, there is no doubt that this season was much more difficult for me. After losing our season opener by a score of 21-2 (this opposing team had won the league five of the last six years), things only kept getting worse.

We followed up our season opener by getting mercy ruled (when a team leads the game by 10+ runs after four and a half innings) in each of our first three games. In our fourth game of the season, the umpires never showed for the game, yet my dad (who coaches the team) decided for us to play a scrimmage against the other team since we were all already there.

The scrimmage was a mess. I started the game pitching, and couldn’t control my pitches at all. I was struggling to throw strikes, struggling to get outs, and defensive mishaps etc only were making things more difficult. I pulled myself from the mound, went into the outfield (my natural position), and tried to shake everything off. Tried to stay optimistic, as I always do when the going gets tough. I was so fed up, frustrated, disappointed, and sad that this was the way my final season of baseball was going. Our team, at the time, was an absolute joke. Sure, we had talent, but for some reason we looked eerily similar to the Bad News Bears. After a half inning of scrimmaging, our team trailed 9-0 or so after using a few different pitchers. I was at my breaking point. Selfishly, I told my dad that I wasn’t batting in the bottom half of the inning despite the fact that I was due to bat leadoff that inning.

I was feeling sorry for myself, and I selfishly took myself out of the game so I could continue to sulk in the dugout. Being the only college kid on the team and the oldest player by over a year, I assumed a leadership role in the dugout from day one. But at that moment, sulking in the dugout, I was anything but a team leader. If anything, I was a cancer. I felt no allegiance to my teammates, no allegiance to baseball, and it was one of the most confusing times of my life.

My dad pulled me to the side during that bottom half inning and told me simply that if I was going to act like this, then he thought it was best that I just go home and not be around the team. Being my stubborn self, I told my dad “Fine” and walked to the car, putting on a front that I was unaffected and didn’t care as usual, as I’m not one to wear my emotions on my sleeve at all.

While sitting in the car, I remember the millions of thoughts racing through my head. Why was this happening? I didn’t deserve for this to be the way my final season of baseball ended. To be honest, a part of me even felt like hanging up my cleats right then and there – for good. While a small part of me definitely felt like that, I knew that there was no way in hell that I would actually go through with that plan. I love baseball too much to quit on it now – even if I felt like baseball was giving me a raw deal.

The following game, we picked up our first win of the season & followed it up by winning the following game, giving not only our team back to back wins, but those two wins also restored my confidence in baseball once again.

A wise man named Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” And that’s exactly what I did after that disapponting scrimmage. I knew at the time that had I quit baseball following that scrimmage, I would take it to my grave. I’d never forgive myself for giving up on baseball, especially considering baseball has never given up on me.

Now it’s just past 10 PM on July 27th, 2011. The regular season has ended for our team, and our 5-11 record earned us the 7th seed out of the eight teams in the playoffs this year. Our playoff game takes place against Penfield, the town right next to Fairport and Fairport’s biggest rival in every sport. While this isn’t varsity baseball or anything affiliated with high school athletics – you can still feel that intensity, that buzz that surround when Fairport plays Penfield. We want to beat them badly, and they want to beat us too. They finished their regular season in 2nd place with a 12-4 record, and they mercy ruled us both times we played them this season. Penfield also ended our season last year when they defeated us in the first round of the playoffs.

I’m not ready for the doors of my baseball playing days to be shut just quite yet though, and especially not at the hands of Penfield. I wish I could hold on to my playing days of baseball forever, because I know that twenty or thirty years down the road from now, I’ll be going to sleep dreaming of these days. I hope by then that someone has perfected the first ever time machine because I know that my baseball playing days are the first days I’ll re-live. Unfortunately, time isn’t on my side right now.

Next season, my only playing option is to play in the NABA (National Adult Baseball Association). From what I know, you usually have to be invited to play on a team in that league. I suppose you could start your own team, but that’s only if you have enough players. In summary, next seasons playing options are up in the air. Maybe I’ll have the chance to play baseball. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll have an internship for the duration of next summer as I continue to try to break through in the sports journalism world. Like I said though, it’s all up in the air.

Time, unlike most things, is something that no human can have any effect on. We can’t  change it, we can’t slow it down, we can’t speed it up. We can’t go forward to the future, and we sure as hell can’t go back in time. All we can do is abide by times rules and make the most of our time while we still have it, because eventually everyone’s clock stops ticking.

While there’s no doubt that the sound of the clock is ticking away louder and louder by the second on my baseball playing days, I’m doing the only thing I can do: I’m not listening.

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