Even in Little League World Series defeat, Bonney Lake-Sumner squad provides life lesson
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older. I suppose it’s inevitable. The aging process waits for no one — no matter how hard you fight it — and youth is fleeting. One day you close your eyes and can imagine all the things your life might become, the next day you wake up, close your eyes, and realize your life is, well, your life. This is it. The book is half written, the protagonist’s origin story fleshed out.
Before we go any further, there’s something you should know: This is not a column about the tepid malaise of mid-life crisis. It’s actually a column about little league baseball. To be more specific, it’s a column about the Bonney Lake-Sumner all-stars, the local 12-and-under team that advanced to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, this month.
Allen Siegler of The News Tribune chronicled the team’s journey. Ranging from 10 to 12 years old, the Bonney Lake-Sumner squad made history by becoming the first Pierce County team to reach the Little League World Series. But the celebration was short-lived. On Saturday, after a second straight defeat — this one to a team from Iowa — the local kids were sent home.
It’s an experience few of us have had. Possibly none of us, unless members of the Bonney Lake-Sumner all stars happen to be reading these words. And yet, even if you never played sports it’s not hard to transport yourself back in time and imagine the emotions, is it? The pure exhilaration. The butterflies. The dreams the night before. Then, ultimately, the crash back to earth, and coming to terms with an ending that isn’t perfect or storybook.
In a way, all of us, at one time or another, have stood in the Bonney Lake-Sumner all star’s cleats. Life, as you have no way of appreciating when you’re 12, is full of such highs and lows. It’s one of the beauties of sport, the way it prepares you for both. The way it seasons a person, building calluses and perspective that can only be acquired from getting knocked down.
I guess that’s what I’m really getting at here: No, the Bonney Lake-Sumner all stars didn’t achieve what I can only assume was the team’s ultimate goal, Little League World Series glory. But in the end, it hardly matters. The human experience, in all its complexity and torment and passion and joy, offers a lesson that we’re lucky to learn before it’s too late — that the defeats and setbacks are just as important as the victories, and in the long run, often more meaningful. Life rarely turns out exactly the way you want it to. At our best and most honest, we’re all just utility players, trying to be a little bit better each day — and it’s a very long season.
I wasn’t a good baseball player. In fact, I was terrible — the kind of kid coaches stuck in right field. Of course, that didn’t stop me from daydreaming, or from spending the summer at the old batting cages in downtown Puyallup, or from wearing my hat backwards like Ken Griffey Jr. When you’re young it’s easy to envision the pieces falling into place just like you want them to, because so much is ahead of you. Time is on your side.
But if there’s one moment I remember, some 30 years later, it’s not a victory or even a crucial base hit. Instead, it’s a towering pop fly sent into the outfield that I struggled to get underneath in the late-morning sun. Ultimately, it’s a memory of the ball that bounced off my glove and fell to the ground — costing us the game.
As our team retreated to the dugout, the disappointment and embarrassment consumed me. Try as I might to contain it, there was no stopping what came next, a flood of tears. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go, and all I could do was accept what had happened — while, somehow, finding a way to get ready for the next game.
Little did I know then what a valuable lesson it would be.
Congratulations to the Bonney Lake-Sumner all stars on a historic season. You didn’t drop the ball, and have every reason to hold your heads high.
Even in defeat, you made all of us prouder than you can possibly realize.
