My experience watching the Dodgers - my Dodgers - play in their first travel baseball tournament in Smyrna on Saturday perfectly encapsulated the long, strange trip we're on right now.
The boys are playing travel baseball mostly because our home league - West Nashville Sports League - hasn't started yet because Nashville remains in "phase 2" as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The only way for the boys to play 12U baseball is to travel to outlying counties and play teams that have been practicing and playing a lot more than we have.
I didn't coach any of our three games on Saturday. Instead, I sat away from everyone - distancing - and watched the games with Glenn Brown. In 90 + degree weather, I wore a blue mask almost the entire day, sweating the entire time.
Why? Because during a mediation at work on Thursday, one of the attorneys I was mediating for got a telephone call from one of his law partners, who had just learned that he had tested positive for COVID-19. The attorney got tested on Friday but didn't have hit test results back by the time we played our first game Saturday morning.
Although it was unlikely that I had been exposed to COVID-19, I had been in an enclosed room with this attorney - who is a friend of mine - for 1 to 2 hours Thursday morning. As a result, I didn't feel comfortable possibly exposing the boys or their parents to the virus if, by chance, I had it.
So, I sat in a camping chair along the fence and occasionally shouted instructions and encouragement to J.P. and his teammates.
It was surreal, to say the least.
In my heart, I wasn't sure if the boys should be playing baseball again, with the number of positive tests for COVID-19 ticking upward in Nashville rather than downward. And, of course, there was little or not social distancing among players and families, other than the fact that there weren't to many spectators. I was one of, at most, five people wearing a mask.
On the other hand, watching the boys together, especially in between games, laughing and well, just being 12 year old boys reminded me of how much they had missed being with each other. These boys - my boys - have missed out on so much the past three months because of COVID-19. Baseball, yes, but so many other things. School, friends, and what in all likelihood is the last vestige of their childhood.
In a way, what remained of their innocence has been stolen by the virus, right at the point in time where they're about to be teenagers. Life was already about to become a lot more complicated for them but, in my view, they had another spring and summer to be boys. COVID-19 stole what remained of their youth from them, it seems to me.
That's precisely why I enjoyed watching the boys in between games, spending time with each other, as much or more than I enjoyed watching them play baseball. I didn't much care that they lost 5-3, 6-3, and 12-2. What I cared about was watching them sit in a circle, under the tent, and talk and laugh with each other. Seeing that made my really, really happy.
Afterwards, I asked J.P. if he enjoyed his first travel baseball tournament.
"I did," he said. "But you know what I really enjoyed? Just hanging out with the guys in between games."
I couldn't have said it any better myself.
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