I’ve written plenty about baseball in my own childhood — about dusty diamonds, scuffed cleats, and summer evenings that seemed to last forever. But this story isn’t about me playing baseball. This one belongs to a different season of life. It belongs to the years when my son Jake played Little League — and when, without fully realizing it at the time, I found myself quietly stepping back onto the field too.

Jake was probably nine years old when we heard the news. It was winter in Story City, Iowa, and someone mentioned, almost casually, that Little League was coming to town. Story City wasn’t exactly a baseball hotbed, so the idea carried some weight. It felt like an opportunity. Not just for Jake, but for us.

Up until then, Jake and I hadn’t really played baseball together. Not in any meaningful way. He hadn’t grown up tossing a ball around the yard or playing catch in the driveway the way I had. He didn’t have older brothers and his cousins lived in another state. Baseball hadn’t yet found its way into his hands — or his confidence. And suddenly, with Little League looming on the horizon, it felt like time to change that.

So we started small. Very small.

Three or four feet apart. Underhand tosses. Soft throws that barely left my hand. The goal wasn’t distance or speed—it was comfort. Catching the ball. Feeling it land in your hand. Learning that it didn’t hurt. Learning that he could trust his hands.

And then we’d take a step back. And another. And another.

It was incremental in the best possible way. Each session built just enough confidence to stretch things a little further. The throws got firmer. The catches cleaner. The fear slowly disappeared, replaced by a quiet pride I could see growing in him.

Of course, no baseball story really begins until the glove enters the picture. There’s something sacred about a kid’s first baseball glove. The smell of the leather. The stiffness of it. The way it feels far too big and far too new all at once. We bought Jake his glove, and I knew immediately — I’d need one too. If we were going to do this right, we were going to do it together. So I bought a glove for myself. Mine is still in the garage.

And just like that, baseball became part of our spring and summer rhythm. Catch in the yard. Throwing in the park. Evening light stretching longer as we worked our way through drills that didn’t feel like drills at all.

Jake took to it quickly. Faster than I expected. He wasn’t just learning — he was enjoying it. The game made sense to him. His coordination sharpened. His confidence grew. And before long, he wasn’t just keeping up — he was good. And he was fast!!! The games were fun, of course. I coached my share of teams. I stood on baselines and in dugouts, offering encouragement, instruction, and the occasional calm reminder to breathe. But if I’m honest, the games weren’t the heart of it for me. We voted to have the kids pitch in the games. I voted for a pitching machine. At 9 years old, most of them didn’t have the strength or the coordination to be consistent on the mound so walks on four pitches were more the norm. This is much different when I played as a 9 year old and faced 14 year olds.

It was the practices. With my son.

It was standing on a makeshift mound, ball in hand, tossing pitches to Jake as he stood at the plate. I had been a pitcher growing up— Little League, Pony League, all of it. I had good hand-eye coordination. I knew how to throw. And now, years later, I was drawing on those same instincts, not to win games, but to build my son’s confidence.

Pitch after pitch, I watched him learn not to bail out when the ball came in. I watched him stand his ground. Swing away. Miss. Adjust. Connect.

That moment — when a kid stops flinching and starts trusting himself — is a quiet miracle. You can’t rush it. You can only create the space for it to happen. He turned into a a very good hitter and was fearless at the plate. One memory is still very vivid in my mind.

There was one pitcher in particular from nearby Gilbert — his name is lost to time, but the sound of his fastball is not. The ball whizzed across the plate and found the leather of the catcher’s mitt with a sharp, unmistakable pop, the kind that makes a dugout go quiet for a moment. Someone said he was throwing close to 70 miles per hour, which in Little League terms felt like 92 in the majors. One by one, our hitters stepped into the batter’s box, but no one really dug in too deep — there was a healthy respect, maybe even a little fear, of that ball coming in so fast.

Then there was Jake.

In his three trips to the plate, he stood his ground, stayed calm, and simply waited. He didn’t try to overpower anything — he just timed the pitcher and put smooth swings on it. Two solid hits. Two balls driven deep into the gaps. I think both turned into doubles. He barely looked like he was swinging hard at all.

Watching him stand in there, unflinching, against a very good pitcher was one of those quiet moments of pride that stays with you — a father realizing his son had found his confidence at the plate.

We did plenty of fielding too. Grounders hit just hard enough to challenge him. Pop-ups drifting lazily against an Iowa sky. It felt cinematic at times — like a scene straight out of The Sandlot. I half-expected to tell him to just hold his glove up while I dropped the ball into it. I was Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez to Jake’s Scotty Smalls. Hey, I can have my dreams too.

A couple times, it nearly worked that way.

Those afternoons stretched on, filled with laughter, repetition, and the kind of tiredness that only comes from being fully present. I was in good shape back then. Strong. Quick. I loved chasing fly balls, snagging them at full extension, showing the kids—and maybe myself—that I still had it.

I loved warming up with the team in the outfield. Loved pitching to the kids. Loved the simple joy of movement and muscle memory returning.

But more than any of that, I loved what it represented.

It felt like I was reliving my own childhood — not by replaying it, but by watching Jake experience something entirely his own. I wasn’t trying to mold him into me. I was simply walking alongside him as he discovered something new.

There’s a special kind of magic in that.

You don’t realize it in the moment, of course. At the time, it just feels like summer. Like practice. Like another evening where the sun dips low and the grass smells sweet and familiar. But years later, those moments rise to the surface with surprising clarity. The sound of a ball popping into a glove. The rhythm of a swing. The look on Jake’s face when something finally clicked. Those were gifts.

Little League came and went, as seasons do. He continued to play baseball when we moved to Ham Lake, MN and he was older. But interests later shifted to working out with weights, cross-fit, and olympic lifting. Life moved forward. But that chapter — those years in Story City, Iowa, when baseball stitched us together — remains one of the quiet highlights of my life.

Not because of wins or losses. Not because of stats or trophies.

But because of time well spent.

A father and a son. A ball and two gloves. And a summer that, even now, still feels endless when I think back on it.