Playing Catch

I go to a lot of the baseball academies across Long Island and see lots of dads (and some moms) hanging out while their sons work with pros, former pros and almost-pros. As a parent I know we feel good about providing these opportunities for our kids - opportunities that most of us did not have when we first dreamed of being in the big leagues as kids. Ask any male over the age of 35, for instance, about the "baseball academies" of his youth and most likely he will laugh.

The closest thing to an "academy" we had growing up on Long Island in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a strike zone painted on the side of a school building. Here was your basic baseball lesson: Throw the ball and hit the strike zone on the wall in a way that prevents the batter from striking the ball. Do that more frequently than your opponent and you win.

One of the advantages we did have, however, was more opportunities to just play catch - throwing the ball back and forth. (Of course, we had this opportunity because we did not have video games like those that are available today. I am sure if the same dads who lament the amount of time their kids devote to playing video games had the same access to those games when they were kids, they would have played the video games just as much.) Video games not withstanding, however, not enough young ball players today play catch. Ball players can never be too young - or too old, for that matter - to take a few minutes to throw the ball back and forth with a parent or a friend in the backyard or down at the local field.

It is a ritual that dates back to the origin of the sport, of course, and it helps limber up the body. But it also gets you into a baseball frame of mind, reinforces your eye-hand coordination skills and, when conducted outside, introduces some much needed fresh air into your lungs. A "catch" also provides an excellent opportunity for its participants - particular fathers and sons - to talk about whatever's on their minds.

If nothing else, the sound of a baseball slamming into a leather announces the impending arrival of spring better than anything else.

-- Michael Watt

Pitchers and Catchers and Other Reasons To Go On Living

As the oil burner pushes steam through the radiators in my home and serenades me with a song of shelter from the brisk cold of a February morning in New York, I read about pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training this week and all is good with the world.

As usual there are a ton of questions yet to be answered in both the Mets and Yankees camps, but whether A-Rod can find true happiness (while counting his ever-growing pile of cash) is not nearly as interesting to me as what is transpiring on Long Island. Hundreds if not thousands of players who play for the love of the game are already limbering up their arms and legs - if they indeed ever stopped playing over the winter - in anticipation of spring baseball. Bring it on! Not that I am looking forward to standing on the sidelines under several layers of jackets while my sons endeavor to hit the ball out of the infield without feeling as if their hands are going to fall off, but even that is better than feeling confined to my home without nothing on the tube but those indoor sports that insist on letting a timepiece tell them when the game is over.

Baseball is upon us, my friends. "Pitchers & catchers" is more than just a phrase employed by talk-show hosts to keep us interested until something interesting happens. It is a phrase that tells us we survived another winter. It tells us that it is just a matter of time before we hear the sound of baseballs being slapped by wood bats into leather gloves. It tells us that before we know it, we will feel the warm sun on the backs of our necks as we anticipate the outcome of the next pitch, and the pitch after that and the pitch after that.

I can't wait.