There’s an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” where Ray has a lot of trouble watching his son play youth basketball because he continually runs down the court with his hands thrust down his shorts and coming out of the leg holes. Since Ray is a sportswriter, he feels self-conscious that his son isn’t athletic and doesn’t really care.
I now live that episode on a regular basis.
Marty, who tried team sports one other time and lasted about two weeks at it, has decided to play soccer in what amounts to a parks & recreation league. They don’t keep score and it’s supposed to be about the kids participating and getting some exercise. All that would be good, except that he really doesn’t participate and only occasionally runs.
His little brother is in his second year of T-ball and, while he’s more naturally athletic than his sibling, his level of caring about it is roughly the same. In the year since last season, Casey has forgotten just about everything – where to throw the ball, how to throw the ball, what to do after hitting the ball, etc.
It doesn’t help that his on-again/off-again girlfriend since preschool is on the team with him. He spends most of his time just trying to look cool, and no matter how many times that I tell him that it doesn’t look cool to have the ball hit you in the chest because you’re looking the other way, he doesn’t really believe me.
He spends the other half goofing around with another of his classmates. His friend is African-American and they greet each other when they cross paths with a bro-hug…which is kind of like watching Charlie Brown exchange a handshake with Franklin.
Casey at least listens to what he’s supposed to be doing. Group activities, like team sports, seem to take the “high functioning” designation from Marty’s autism. He might know on some level that he’s supposed to do what they other kids are doing, and we’ve had a talk about the responsibility of being a good teammate, but once he’s out on the field, most of that vanishes.
During his first game, he kept trying to take himself out of the game by going to stand next to his coach. Unfortunately for him, his team has just enough players so the coach kept pushing him back onto the field.
Sometimes he practices karate moves while he’s out there…again, something that would be more understandable if he actually knew karate. I tried to make a rule that when he’s on the soccer field he can only play soccer…not some other imaginary game that he decides to make up. He agreed to this rule, but apparently he believes that since his games are imaginary that I won’t notice him having battles with an invisible nemesis.
In any case, as someone that writes about sports on a regular basis I sometimes have trouble watching the whole thing. Most of the parents (although not all) are extremely supportive of Marty and try to give him plenty of encouragement when he does anything correctly. I try hard to be on board with that, but then part of me always thinks that if Marty just always has low expectations for what he’s able to do…well, what’s going to convince him to push beyond that?
I do, however, realize that the bigger issue just lies with my own self-consciousness though. My kids seem to share my interest in writing, storytelling and comedy…I should be able to handle the fact that they don’t care about sports beyond very nominal interest. But, I can’t. I keep hoping that one of them will suddenly discover some hidden talent…like, sure they’re not good at baseball or soccer, but man, can they smash an overhead serve. Or hit a drive straight down a fairway. Or stick handle with the best of them. Something. Anything.
I probably have no chance of that happening, but if I was going to take that tact I wouldn’t keep buying $10 of lottery tickets every week.
On a largely unrelated note…I only cover high school sports and I’m hardly ever home in the evenings during most seasons. How the heck was a New York sports columnist home every night like Ray Barone was in “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Always liked the show, but never knew quite how he worked that.
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