I stepped into the batter’s box and settled into my stance. Knees bent. Elbows high. Bat cocked. Behind me, my son slid a brass token into a slot in a silver console. Sixty feet ahead, the machine hummed and squeaked. I tensed my shoulders, narrowed my eyes, and braced for the first pitch.
It was Rosh Hashanah, and schools were closed, so I had brought my son to the batting cages in upstate New York. He wanted to practice hitting for his next Little League game. I wanted to bond with him —like we had bonded over surfing in North Carolina and going to a Benson Boone concert in Montreal– and maybe reclaim a piece of my distant youth.
The red light blinked. A baseball slid down a chute, then dropped between two spinning discs. Whump. The ball launched, a white blur. I swung and missed. The ball smacked the backstop. Strike one. I tightened my grip and waited for the next pitch.
Second pitch — weak pop-up.
Third pitch — foul tip.
Fourth pitch — solid contact, maybe a grounder between first and second.
“Nice,” said my son, filming the scene on my phone.
Emboldened, I swung harder on the next pitch and missed by a mile.
“Remember to step,” he said, echoing his coach.
On the next pitch I took his advice and smacked a line drive down the middle.
“There we go,” I said.
“Bam,” he said.
Glowing and overconfident, I whiffed the next pitch.
Then I adjusted and connected on the next ten, some clean, some clumsy.
The machine stopped, and I turned to my son and gave him a thumbs-up.
For a moment, I forgot I was 50, not 9, like my son, or 13, the last time I played on a baseball team, and probably the last time I had hit a ball.
Still the outing wasn’t random. This fall, baseball practice has been the new swim practice. Since school started, I’ve hit the pool only a few times. But since fall baseball began, my son and I have been throwing and catching in the yard almost daily, the ball smacking against the leather of our gloves.
For the next hour or so, my son and I took turns in the cage, taking swings against the mechanical pitcher, cheering each other on. Each successive round, we hit the ball harder, more consistently, with less effort.
As a kid, I thought hitting a baseball was an innate gift that I lacked.
Now I realize hitting is a skill you can practice and hone at any age.
For my final round of batting, I upgraded from the slowest cage (45 mph) to the second slowest (55 mph) and to my surprise and relief, I kept hitting the ball. The following week, Yankees ace Cam Schittler would hurl 100 mph fastballs, striking out 12 Red Sox in one game. Just then, another middle-aged dad arrived with his tween son and promptly started cracking balls in the next fastest cage (65 mph).
Maybe next time. But for that afternoon, we were in the perfect place.