Baseball: Rubber Hoses, Broomsticks, and Beliefs

This time of year is special to me. The beginning of summer. Baseball season.

When I was in the second grade I wanted to play baseball, but no one could teach me how because I had this cool unique design feature of cerebral palsy, which affects the right side of my body. I have limited use of my right hand.

Westchester Lutheran School sat about three miles from the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Its after-school program was where I first watched and observed my schoolmates play this wonderful game called baseball. I studied it. I even discovered that there were these things called baseball cards — a cool action picture of the player and their statistical accomplishments. I would sit in front of the TV with my cards and try to map out the batting lineups and defensive positioning while KTTV Channel 11 broadcast the Dodger spring training game from Vero Beach, Florida — Vin Scully calling every pitch like some kind of poet.

After a few weeks of watching, I got the courage to go attempt to play with the others in the afterschool sandlot. To play, you would line up against a brick wall that faced the third-base side of the baseball field. Two team captains — each counting as one of their nine — would pick eight more kids to fill out their roster. There were seventeen of us in that line. To my surprise, I kept being number ten. Which meant I was out. Not good enough.

I got tired of that. How do you practice a game no one will let you play?

So I went home, found a tennis ball and started throwing it against the garage door. And I kept throwing it. And kept throwing it. I did this for weeks – for months – after school. I started figuring out my reflexes — what my hand could do, what my body understood.

At some point my dad came home after work and asked if I would be interested in swinging a bat. He built a hitting tee from a rubber hose and broomstick, wedged between cinder blocks in the yard. And just like the garage door, I started hitting the tennis ball and going to fetch it after I hit three. We only had three.

Mom was my biggest fan. She would come out and root for me and tell me about her experience as a girls' softball pitcher. That sounded cool to me. A pitcher.

As my reflexes got better with the garage door, I started transitioning to the front street curb. I found that if I hit the curb just right, the tennis ball would jump off the pavement like a pop-up and I could practice my best Dusty Baker or Kenny Landreaux impression, along with this new rookie named Steve Sax. Those were the guys I watched on KTTV.

The physics of my game

One day as I was practicing in front of the house, a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) motorcycle officer drove by and stopped. He asked what I was doing, whether I liked baseball and the Dodgers. I said yes to all of it. He reached into his saddlebag and gave me LAPD Dodgers baseball cards. I thought this was the coolest thing. He didn't have to stop. He didn't have to give me those cards. But he did. Just like Mom and Dad. He saw me. He encouraged me to keep going.

Every day I would line up to get picked, and every time I was number ten. I never played for a team at Westchester Lutheran.

We moved to Santa Barbara, California. And to my wonderful amazement there were chalk-painted baseball lines on the asphalt street in front of our new house. The kids in the neighborhood played baseball and traded baseball cards. Heaven.

But I was never picked for a team there either.

By this time I was good enough to use a glove, and we didn't have a garage at the new house, so my dad and mom would play catch with me in the backyard , I would practice throwing and then transitioning the glove onto my same hand. My own system. The only one that worked for me.

One day a kid in the neighborhood got sick and one of the teams was short a player. To this day I remember the disgusted team captain's voice: "Alright, we'll take him. We don't have another choice."

Not exactly a glowing welcome. But I had my opportunity.

I remember being up to bat for the first time. There was a man on second and I was batting ninth — last. The pitch came and I hit it. First pitch. Right down the middle. I hit the ball so hard it went over the centerfielder's head — he was playing in, believing I could not hit. The ball bounced off the fence. While I was running to first base I heard the pitcher yelling: "He can hit! Bobby can hit the ball! Oh my God — he can play on my team!"

I stood at first base, grinning. For the first time in my life, a stranger, someone other than mom and dad had saw what I could do.

The centerfielder played shallow because he had decided something about me before the pitch was thrown. That's not a scouting error. That's a belief — and beliefs make you vulnerable to the person who doesn't share them. Roger Bannister understood this. In 1954, he ran the first sub-four-minute mile not because human physiology had suddenly changed, but because he refused to accept a limit that existed only in the minds of the people who hadn't tried. Once he broke it, the barrier lost its power. My sandlot proved the same thing, one line drive off the fence.

Baseball and sports have always been my gateway. I learned to play baseball. Then I wanted to learn to drive a car at fifteen. Then I wanted to go to college — which meant learning to type with one hand. After college, I wanted to get into law enforcement. Each time I showed up for something the world said wasn't built for me. Each time, I built my own practice system first.

There were people who believed in me when others did not. My dad, who cut a broomstick and fashioned a hose into a batting tee. My mom, who stood in the backyard and cheered like the game mattered — because it did. An LAPD officer who stopped, asked a question, and handed me baseball cards like they were credentials. Peers, colleagues, employers who vouched for me before the evidence was in.

There are people who believe in you — even when, in the moment, that doesn't appear to be the case.

So play ball. Embrace your design features. There is no one else like you. This world needs your perspective, your angle, your particular way of seeing the pitch come in. Let someone cut a broomstick, fashion a hose into a batting tee and cheer for you. Swing. Hit. Practice. Study own brand of physics. Do the reps. There will always be a centerfielder playing in. Let him.

All the best — Bobby