The Stakeout

My father, Tim, like most red-blooded, Southern men, is a die-hard sports fan. He enjoys watching most athletic events- football, basketball, golf, you name it- but baseball has always been his passion. Tim played through childhood, high school, and even did a brief stint in the minors. However, that shit is competitive, so instead of pursuing his own field of dreams my dad went to college, started a family, and became a ballin'-ass salesman.

He's in his mid-fifties now and past his prime- and by prime I mean nothing more than running from home plate to first in under a minute- but he plays in a men's baseball league (fastpitch, none of that church league crap) and his commitment to watching the Braves rivals the one he made to my mother on their wedding day. I suppose it's to be expected that merely becoming an adulthood and having kids does not mean abandoning your personal hobbies, but rather equates to projecting these hobbies onto your offspring. This is exactly what my dad did with me and my younger brother, Trent.

Before I fully embark on telling this story, let me set the scene. It's important to understand just how seriously Tim takes baseball. I knew what the infield fly rule was before I could write my name, and my name only has six letters. When I was in preschool and my dad came home from work in the evenings, he'd have Trent and I fielding grounders, and at the dinner table, my mom would roll her eyes and groan as Dad quizzed us with MLB trivia. Trent and I started playing rec-league baseball (softball for me, unfortunately) at age five. Trent played until he was fourteen, and my dad coached him every single season. Oh, and now, as I am twenty-three years old, I receive a text every year in the middle of February that says, "Pitchers and catchers report" in reference to to start of spring training. So that's what we're dealing with.

When my brother was six- that's right, six- his T-ball team went 18-0. Under Coach Tim, they had a perfect season, which had never before happened at George Pierce Park. This is ridiculous, because it's T-ball, but still impressive, because they went undefeated, and the record-breaking season put my dad's coaching skills on the baseball community's radar. He kept coaching and his teams kept winning. As Trent grew older, the games grew more competitive, and my dad began to gain a new reputation. To date, my father holds the record for most rec-league ejections at George Pierce Park. If Bobby Cox weren't a man, he and my dad would be a couple. Okay, if Bobby Cox weren't married he and my dad would be a couple.

So, one particular argument with an umpire landed my dad a one-game suspension on top of his ejection from the rest of that game. This infuriated him, as the next game, the one from which he was banned, was the first round of the play-offs. Not only were my brother and his teammates in high school, the team was also stocked with two assistant coaches (my dad's friends). Would it really make a lick of difference if the head coach misses the game? We'll never know.

An hour before the game began, my mom and I drove to the very back of the park where the adult softball fields were located. This was about a mile and a half from the field where my brother's game was, and this is where we dropped off my dad. He was dressed in camouflage from head to toe. He told us to "act natural" and that he would see us after the game.

Just before the game started, Ken, the assistant coach, approached the umpire, who was a friend of my dad's and was thoroughly amused by his heated antics, to give him the batting line-up. The umpire scanned the field and said, "I know Tim's out there somewhere. I can feel it." He was right. My dad spent the entire two hours hiding out the the woods behind the field, watching every single play. Not only this, but he actually called both assistant coaches from his cell phone, advising them of adjustments that needed to be made throughout the game. When they stopped answering, he called the team mom (who was drinking margaritas) repeatedly until she hung up on him.

Luckily, Trent's team won the game 5-0. Who knows why they played so well? It could have been that they were pumped up knowing their coach was watching and expecting great things from them, and it just as easily could have been that the other team played like shit. All I know is when we drove to the other end of the park, my dad sat waiting for us on the sidewalk- dripping with sweat, covered in pine straw, and bearing scratches on his arm, muttering that he hated squirrels.