THE PHONE CALL THAT DIDN’T COME



Memories flooded back this week around the homestead, watching the anticipation rise with every ring, and dampen with the response to each “Who’s calling, please?”

LOST’s family is blessed and benefited by so many great things. One of the greatest blessings are the LOST boys, who come in two sizes, but who are giants in so many ways that LOST cannot begin to describe. Sometimes it is easy to forget they’re not adults, with their outlook, awareness and vocabularies. And its painful to watch and feel them hurt.
This is especially true for the littlest LOST, who often shows gritty determination not found in his father, and missing from many, many people among LOST’s generation.

Last week, little LOST had his tryout for Majors in Little League. Little League – that traditional athletic repository for the blue-collar pageant parent mentality. Little LOST did his usual creditable job. Little LOST has never been the best hitter on his team, doesn’t have the strongest arm, and by far will not be the tallest or fastest person on a team. He’s just a gamer, a coach on the field who’ll do what the coaches ask and more. For two seasons, he’s been the kid the coaches have tossed out on the pitchers mound to “save” the game – because nobody else on the teams weathered that kind of pressure so well. This year was starting off rough already, as Little LOST's long-time assistant coach had moved across state lines last Summer, and late word from the League's Board was that Little LOST's manager for the past three Seasons was being nosed out of a Majors team, despite having volunteered as a coach for nearly a decade.

The “draft” of players for Majors was Tuesday. Surely the phone would ring Tuesday night? The call would come then. Okay, maybe Wednesday evening then? Both nights, calls came, but not THE call. In the meantime, stories of other kids from last years games getting their calls were flying about. A resigned 12 year old voice saying to his dad, Wednesday night: “If I’m not drafted, I don’t want to play.”

Thursday, with crushing certainty, the message was in: there was no draft for the fireplug. Another year in Minor A’s awaited. There were tears – so foreign to this stoic child's face, and sobs and there was the searing pain of rejection. Whether 8 or 80, rejection is among the worst sensations we humans can feel. And it puts out a second hand toxicity that could make cigarettes seem benign by comparison. LOST offered his dejected son the support of a father, but the caution that decisions of "what to do next" should never be made while the hurt is greatest. For the regret that flows from a bad decision hurts, too, and can last much longer. The sobbing boy was told that we create ourselves, we build ourselves by how we respond to negative situations. The boy was told that both Mom and Dad made decisions to give some sports pursuit up at the wrong time, and that three decades later the pangs of regret still reverberated. The boy wise beyond his years understood through his hurt. Before bed time, Thursday night, the gritty twelve year old voice declared, “Dad, I want to play this year.”

The boy, like his brother who made a similar decision about a play two years ago, is already a champion, before the first pitch has been thrown.