Don’t lose sight of the game

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

There was a time when sports were just about everything in my life. Every summer, my dad loaded us in the car and drove across the country and back to view Major League Baseball games.

Walking out of the tunnel and seeing the ivy for the first time at Wrigley Field in Chicago still ranks as one of my favorite childhood memories.

My dad was a diehard Cubs fan, and there was rarely a day during the baseball season when a game wasn’t playing on the giant wood-console TV that commanded the living room in our log home. It got so that when I heard Harry Caray’s slightly drunken voice calling the games, it was like listening to an old friend.

I wasn’t just a spectator, either. I started playing tee-ball when I was old enough to swing a bat and stuck with baseball every year until Major Little League. I fielded endless grounders in our front yard, oiled my glove and carried it everywhere and even trekked to the batting cages in Post Falls every week or two in the off-season just to keep my swing from getting rusty.

All that changed thanks to one man, a coach who lost sight of the game. Up to that point, my team had won every game that season. We were having fun and playing great baseball, but after a long winning streak we finally fell behind and lost a game due to a few poor decisions on the field.

After the game, our coach lined us up and proceeded to scream at us until every player had tears in his eyes.

He called us “losers.” He said we “don’t care about the game.” He shouted that we would never be great ballplayers, that we were “hopeless” and we might as well just throw our gloves in the trash. 

We were between 12 and 13 years old and baseball was our lives. Our coach occupied a position somewhere behind our parents, but well ahead of any other authority figure aside, perhaps, from our teachers. To hear this kind of talk from our coach was devastating. 

At the end of his tirade, he threw up his hands and said, “I quit. You guys aren’t worth it. I quit,” and he walked off, got in his truck and drove away. We never saw him again.

Baseball changed for me after that. I stopped carrying my glove around everywhere I went. I no longer cared if the Cubbies were on TV and chose not to sign up for the league the following year or any year afterward. This beautiful, pure thing was now tainted, ruined by one man who had no business coaching kids in the first place.

A few years later, I turned to golf. I played on the high school team, got a job at Hidden Lakes Golf Course and worked my way up from cart boy to a teaching professional by the time I was out of high school. 

I enjoyed playing golf because it’s an independent game. If I made a bad shot, it wouldn’t hurt anyone but myself. I loved seeking perfection, all the while knowing it was unattainable. There’s a singular feeling with a perfectly struck golf ball that, if you could bottle and sell it, would change the world for the better.

Back then, my favorite moments involved throwing the bag over my shoulder and walking to the first tee with my golf shoes wet with morning dew, filled with hope that I’d play a round to remember.

All that changed, too. Hidden Lakes started as a quiet, community course and, as usual, the developers and greedheads got hold of it and transformed it into something else. Gaudy homes now lined the fairways and it seemed the game was more about selling real estate than striving for that perfect swing that lies dormant in all of us. They took a beautiful thing and tried to make it “better,” though rendered it soulless and sterile in the process — the story of America.

After the course turned its back on the members who made it special, seeking to replace them with wealthier sorts, I quit. I turned my back on golf after almost a decade, because it, too, had been tainted. Nothing was sacred anymore.

I still play golf sometimes. I still catch the odd baseball game on TV and cheered for the Cubs as they won the 2016 World Series. But the joy is gone, and that’s a damn shame. It has been replaced by bitter memories of the greatness that once was, and the mediocrity we have placed on our altars.

There are many of these examples in our lives today — be it a sport, a hobby, an ideology or otherwise. They once brought joy, but now only leave you feeling empty inside, thanks to the greedy ones who seek profit over purpose and bottom lines over baselines.

More than anything, my experiences with baseball and golf have taught me that as much as you might love something, there will always be those who are waiting in the wings to take it from you when you’re least expecting it. 

I applaud those who still see the game for what it is. They’re stronger than me, because all I see is wasted potential and lost dreams.

These are tough times for joy, sure, but don’t ruin it for the ones who still might have potential to love something. Don’t lose sight of the game.