Tim Wildmon
AFA president
June 1995 – Ever since I can remember I have been a sports fanatic. I’ve loved playing and watching football, basketball and baseball since I was a kid. The older I get the more I enjoy watching and the less I enjoy playing, or so says my body. When I was eight years old I used to carry around a transistor radio and listen to the St. Louis Cardinals all summer. I knew everything about the Cardinals. Batting averages, ERAs, Lou Brock’s number of stolen bases, you name it. Baseball, bike riding around the neighborhood, swimming and the Cardinals on radio – that was my life in the summer of 1971.
It was about that time my dad began taking me to Mississippi State football games. I became a loyal fan of the Bulldogs. It was then I learned of humility (and humiliation) every time MSU played the legendary Alabama teams of Coach Bear Bryant. Sports has always been a big part of my life. In fact, to this day, the first part of the newspaper I read each morning is the sports section.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that from time to time I have gotten this love for sports a little out of perspective. For instance, talking Alison into going to St. Louis for our honeymoon. Now hold on there, ladies, it’s not what you might think. I mean, sure we took in three Cardinal games, but we also went to Six Flags, the arch and Grant’s Farm. (And it doesn’t get much more romantic than going down the “Screaming Eagle” hand in hand.)
Now it’s 1995 and my oldest son, Wesley, is five, and he has begun to show some interest in sports. Soccer, however, just wasn’t his bag. So I decided to let him try T-ball and I would take my coaching skills from church league softball (no victories in three years) onto the T-ball field. (For the record, I never had any material to work with in church league softball. My guys – the laughing stock of the league – were the Bad News Bears 20 years later. On a “good” day, our team was very, very bad. Otherwise, we were absolutely pitiful and completely inept.)
Ever since I told Wesley I was going to coach he kept asking me about every other day when we were going to start. “Soon, son,” I would tell him.
“Does that mean tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or the day after that?” he would ask. (This was several weeks from our first practice.) Finally, our first practice arrived Saturday morning in late April.
Now, keep in mind here, these 12 kids (five-and six-year-olds) I had drafted had never had any experience in organized baseball before. I didn’t know but three or four of them, they didn’t know me, and most of them didn’t know each other. I sat down on third base and told them to gather around. Everyone got a piece of gum, we had a short prayer, and we started talking baseball. We talked and then we practiced – if you can call it that – for about an hour.
One field over was another team coached by a friend of mine. It was probably their third or fourth practice. On our water break he challenged me – in front of my players –to a short game. “Yea, coach, let’s play them!” a few of my players said to me. What was I supposed to say? “No, kids, we’re going to work on the fundamentals,” would seem like I was ducking the challenge. It also sounded boring. I remember when I was a kid I wanted to play, not practice. So I decided to take a step on the wild side and play after practicing just one hour. So we took our gear next door and I explained to my team what “on deck” meant, not to sling their bat, and listen to their base coach. “Oh well, you learn by doing,” I thought to myself.
My first two batters did o.k. They hit the ball and ran to first base. This is going pretty well, I thought. Then my third batter came to the plate. The little guy took a good whack, hit the ball, and began to run his heart out. He was fast too. He was “diggin’ it” as we say in baseball circles. My little man was runnin’ hard. There was only one problem. You guessed it. The lil’ fellow was running to third base, not first.
As you can imagine the adults – including the little fellow’s dad – were bending over in laughter. I couldn’t help myself either. I told the other coach my guy meant to do that just to throw his team off. The other team – having practiced more than we – were all laughing as well. However, I knew I had a long way to go when I looked over at my dugout and saw my little girls and boys yelling for their teammate to keep running to the next base – wherever it was!
The dad went over, bent down and put his arm around his son, and told him what he did wrong and what to do next time, all the while trying to hold back his own laughter.
The basics. The fundamentals. The rules of the game. In the Christian life we often spend a lot of energy blowin’ and goin’ in the wrong direction, don’t we? And this many times, with the best of intentions, when what we really need to do is stop and listen to the Master teacher through the reading of His word and through prayer. I’ve been really convicted recently of the importance of these two things. I have asked the Lord for a new hunger for prayer and daily devotional time so that I may know His direction for my life both generally and day to day. The Lord says if we will seek Him, we will find Him. But how much time do we spend seeking? More time than we spend reading the sports page, I hope. Ouch!
It’s going to be an interesting two months of T-ball ahead. It’s going to be fun. And, oh yes, the name I chose for our team – the Cardinals, of course, who else? 
