I used to love Christmas, especially all the little things that come with it. I was the one who cracked the eggs, measured the butter and flour, stirred up the batter for the cookies. I passed the strings of outdoor lights up to my father on the ladder. I hung the fancy ornaments on the tree; I lit the candles at Christmas dinner.
But I’m seventeen years old now, and the thrill is gone from that stuff, though my parents don’t seem to realize it. As Christmas neared, I heard the same old phrases. “Ryan, you can lick the bowl if you want!” “Ryan, you can put the angel on top of the tree!” “Ryan, I’ll pass the lights up to you and you can hang them!” It’s kind of sad, the way they think that I’m still ten. But it’s irritating too, and it puts me in a foul mood.
My grandfather Kevin always comes a couple of days before Christmas and stays until New Year’s Day. He’s my father’s father, and he’s okay. Other than his fingers, which are gnarled and arthritic, he still looks good. He stands straight and tall; his hair is white and shiny and full; he swims every day. He doesn’t go on and on about how hard things were when he grew up. In fact, the only thing I don’t like about him is that he gets my bed and I have to sleep downstairs on the sofa.
For years Grandpa Kevin has given me a fair chunk of money for Christmas. There’s always been a note with it: “For your college education.” It’s nice of him and all, but since I’ve never been all that sure about going to college, I would have liked to have spent at least some of it right then.
I figured on money again, but Christmas morning there was a big box under the tree marked: “For Ryan, from Grandpa Kevin.” Inside were a catcher’s mitt, chest protector, mask, shin guards.
“Your dad says you’re trying out this year,” Grandpa Kevin said as I stared, open-mouthed, at the unexpected gifts. “You probably don’t know it, but I used to catch. I was pretty good, too. If you want, I’ll show you a few things later on.”
I was plenty glad to get the gear. It was high quality stuff, all name brands, the best. And I let him know that I appreciated the gifts. But listening to tips from a seventy-year-old ex-ball player was not something I wanted to do. “Sure,” I said, halfheartedly. “That’d be great. Later on we’ll have to do it.”
I hoped he wouldn’t bring it up again, but after we’d eaten breakfast, he asked again. “Maybe this afternoon, Grandpa,” I said. “I’m pretty full right now.”
I thought I was being clever, but he smiled in a way that let me know I wasn’t fooling him. “Well, it was just an idea.”
That was it. No lecture on how much I could learn if I’d only listen. As I said, he’s okay.
Around two o’clock that afternoon I thought: Why not? I was bored and there was nothing else to do. Playing ball with Grandpa Kevin might be better than nothing, and it would kill the guilt. So I went upstairs and tapped on my own door. “Grandpa, you still want to show me some stuff?”
His face lit up.
We went to the backyard. He turned a garbage can onto its side so that the open end faced across the yard. On the other side of the yard, as far away as possible, he laid down an old doormat.
“This is home base,” he said, “and that garbage can is second. I’ll pitch a ball to you. You pretend somebody is stealing. I want to see you throw the base runner out.”
“It’s not nearly far enough,” I protested. “You can’t tell anything about my arm from a throw that short.”
“I’m not interested in your arm strength. I can’t do anything about that anyway. I want to see your form.”
I crouched down. He tossed me the ball. Actually that’s not fair. He threw it to me with more steam than I expected. I caught it, stood, and threw to the garbage can: a strike that rattled around inside the metal. I thought he’d be impressed, but when I looked at him he was shaking his head.
“What was wrong with that?” I asked. “It was right on the money.”
“The throw was accurate and strong, sure. But my God, Ryan, even I might have made it to second by the time you got rid of the ball. A speedster would have gone in standing up.”
I didn’t like what he was saying. And I didn’t like the way he was saying it, either. But there are times when people talk and you just know they know what they’re talking about. That’s how it was with Grandpa Kevin. I swallowed my pride.
“How does a catcher throw?”
“You want me to show you?”
“Yeah. I do.”
He reworked everything about my motion. “As soon as a base runner reaches first, you start preparing to throw him out at second. You dig your toes into the dirt a little deeper so you can come out of your crouch faster. And you watch him out of the corner of your eye.
“If he goes, you’re starting your throw even as you’re catching the ball. You swing your mitt and your right hand up toward your right shoulder, taking the ball out as you do it. Once the ball is in your right hand, extend your left arm forward and cock your right wrist at your ear. No farther back than that, or you won’t get rid of the ball in time. As you step toward second, fire the ball right at the bag.”
It wasn’t easy to understand what he meant, and after he walked me through it a dozen times, I discovered it wasn’t easy to do it. He kept telling me I had to be quicker, but I felt all tied up in the gear—the mask, chest protector, shin guards.
It took three cold, drizzly afternoons before I was even okay with the throwing motion. Then he had me work on coming out of my crouch differently. “You don’t want to come straight up,” he said. “You want to come forward and up. That way you get clear of the hitter, you’ve got a better look at the bag, and you’ve got a foot or two less distance to throw. Those two feet can be the difference between nailing a runner and having him slide in under the tag.”
When he wasn’t teaching me, we talked baseball. I’d ask him some simple question like “Did you ever see Johnny Bench?” and he’d describe games in a way I’d never heard them described before—the way a catcher would see them. As he talked, I could imagine the whole field. He told me how a good catcher positions fielders based on the stuff his pitcher has, and that proper positioning sometimes changes from inning to inning, even pitch to pitch. The more he talked, the more I wanted to hear. The cat-and-mouse game between pitcher and hitter—suddenly I could see myself controlling that, deciding when to call for the curve or the slider, when to come with the big heat or the change.
I’d thought that being a catcher was like eating leftovers, something I was going to do because there was no other choice. But Grandpa Kevin changed that.
“Messing up your ankle might be the best thing you ever did,” he said the morning he left.
“How did you figure?” I asked.
He smiled. “Well, otherwise you would never have become a catcher.”
It was a crazy thing to say. Crazier still, I believed him.