Take me out to the (new) ball game

A regional kids' tourney reminds me that this isn't your grandfather's youth baseball experience anymore

MERIDIAN, Idaho—It is a surprise, this trip. We had done a similar one before, to Coos Bay: showed up unannounced at a weekend baseball tournament in which one of our grandsons was playing, hoping that our presence would be seen as asset, not intrusion.

She Who Loves a Good Adventure and I were welcomed with open arms, especially when we paid for dinner for all seven of us Friday night at the SharkBite’s Seafood Cafe, whose prices had spiked in the post-Covid world.

But this is a bigger risk: a thousand-mile roundtrip to a 10-team tournament, the 12U Cal Ripken Regionals, whose winner would represent the Northwest in the national championships in Branson, Mo., come August. Not only was our grandson, Lincoln, 12, playing shortstop for the Willamette Valley Nationals but our son, Jason, 42, was the head coach.

More pressure. More on the line. More moving parts in a farther-away place with more traffic, more logistical challenges and costing more money.

But when I pitch the idea, She Who swats it into the centerfield of my heart with a quick yes.

Later, I realize it would be fun to bring you readers along to help you understand the changing world of youth baseball—not that I’m used to, say, AI announcers and “walk-up” music selected by, and for, each player when he comes to the plate.

For starters, let’s talk about what’s on the line in Idaho: Win the tournament and, yes, your team gets to play in the national tournament, but you also must raise more than $50,000 in a frantic 10 days to pay for the team’s trip. And commit to spending 10 days in a Midwestern city whose humidity makes the air stickier than pine tar.

Two years ago, Lincoln and his 10U team played in the nationals in Indiana, and it was an unforgettable time for the whole family. The team finished fourth out of 20 teams, Linc earned a Gold Glove award at shortstop and the host town, Vincennes, won rave views from our team for having locals “adopt” players and their families to help them feel at home.

Still, a trip to nationals throws a lot of families into a logistical, and financial, quagmire. It is the Dickensian equivalent of the best of times and the worst of times.

Alas, I’m getting ahead of myself. Nationals is a moot point if, at first, we don’t win regionals, which brings us back to Meridian last weekend.

“We’ve got a good chance,” my son Jason tells me.

“We’ll be following every pitch at home,” I lie.

After a 500-mile, 10-hour drive—much of it through smoke from fires in the Cascades and, later, in northeast Oregon—we arrive in Meridian, whose name means “Land of mile-long blocks, eight-lane roads and gigantic car washes.”

The next morning, we show up at the park.

“You forgot your sunflower seeds,” says She Who to Lincoln’s two other brothers, Keaton, 14, and McCoy, 10.

Their eyes bulge.

“What are you guys doing here?” says daughter-in-law Deena as she hugs us, causing her self-made baseball earrings to dangle. (Jason is off being a coach, but I’ll give him a good-luck hug later.)

“Heard there’s some good baseball to be seen,” I say. “We didn’t want to miss it.”

We are here to watch our son and grandson but also to support them. If simply following the games was our only interest, we could have done so on an app called GameChanger.

It’s how youth coaches today communicate with their players and parents; how each kid knows, for example, which of three uniform combinations the team is to wear or at what pizza joint the team is gathering after a game.

GameChanger allows you to follow every pitch—a visual “GameStream” or AI audio, take your pick. You can see an up-to-the-moment box score, your grandkid’s up-to-the-minute batting average and video footage of every play.

Before each game, a parent straps an iPhone camera to the back of the chain-link backstop to make such footage available. GameChanger filters the footage so you can, say, watch only your grandkids’ at-bats.