Behind the Backstop

He stands behind the backstop because that is where the fathers stand, and the fathers stand there because you can see the whole plate through the chain-link and nobody has to talk to you.

Second season. Ten-year-olds. His son bats sixth, which is a fact he pretends not to have noticed and has noticed every single game since April.

And he is good at this. That is what he would tell you if you asked. He is not one of the ones who shouts at the umpire and he is not one of the ones who has to be spoken to by the coach. He is encouraging. Loudly and constantly and warmly encouraging, and he means every word of it.

Good eye. That's it, wait for yours. Hands back. Way to hustle. Shake it off, next one. Attaboy. Good eye, good eye.

And in the bottom of the fourth on a Tuesday in June, standing at that fence with his fingers through the links, he hears himself.

Every single thing he has said through this fence for two seasons has been about what the boy is doing.

Not one word of it has been unkind. Not one word of it has been about winning either, which he is quietly proud of. But all of it, without exception, has been commentary on performance. Encouraging commentary. Generous commentary. Commentary.

And he stands there and tries to remember the last time he said anything to that ten-year-old that would still be true if the boy went nought for four and dropped a fly ball and got moved down to ninth.

And he cannot find one. Not in two seasons.

And the thing that makes his chest go tight is not guilt about baseball. It is that his son is ten, and he is about to go into a world that is going to have a great deal to say to him about being evaluated, all day, every day, in every direction, and he has been standing behind a fence for two years teaching a boy that his father's voice is a voice that assesses.

And you know that fence. You are a good parent and a warm one and you have quietly built a system in which everything you say to a child is a response to what the child produced.

So take this in before we go a step further. You are not a cold father and this is not the discovery that you have failed him. Psalm 127:3 says children are an heritage of the LORD, and heritage is the language of something entrusted rather than something produced or scored, and the Holy Spirit is standing at this fence with you and is not embarrassed to be here.

What He actually did with them

Come to a scene everybody has seen printed on something, and read what actually happens in it, because the printed version leaves out the part that matters.

People are bringing children to Jesus. And the disciples, who are not villains here and who are doing what any sensible person does with a crowd, start turning them away. There is a schedule. There are adults with real questions. Children are, in the ordinary running of things, a category of person you get to later.

And it says He was much displeased, which is a strong phrase and is aimed at His own men.

And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.Mark 10:16

Three verbs and every one of them is physical. Took them up. Put His hands on them. Blessed them.

Now go looking in that verse for anything the children contributed. There is no test. There is no assessment of which ones were promising. Nobody is asked to perform, answer, behave, or demonstrate anything at all. He picks them up, which is a thing you do to a child who is doing nothing but existing, and He blesses them.

You have been handed the pattern, and it has nothing in it about what the child produced. The written word records three physical actions from Him and not one requirement from them, which means the blessing was never a response to anything; and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into the bottom of the fourth at a Little League field in June.

And notice how He handles the crowd control problem. He does not agree that the children can be seen later. He stops the whole thing and does it now, which tells you where they rank.

Why encouragement drifted into assessment

I want to be fair to you about how this happened, because you did not choose it.

Encouragement at a ball field is structurally about performance. That is what the setting is for. There is an at-bat, and it produces an outcome, and a good father comments warmly on it, and everything about the situation, the fence, the innings, the other fathers, funnels a man toward exactly the vocabulary you have been using.

You did not decide that your son's worth depends on his output. You stood in a place where the only conversational unit available was the at-bat, twice a week, for two seasons.

You were not building a system, and the setting supplied the vocabulary. Isaiah 40:11 says he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and both verbs describe what the shepherd does to an animal that has contributed nothing to its own transport; His Spirit is the one doing that carrying at whatever pace He keeps, and He is not reviewing your two seasons.

And here is the second half, and it is the one that will actually change something. The fix is not to stop the encouragement. Good eye is a fine thing to shout and your son likes it and there is nothing wrong with a father who is loud at a fence.

The fix is that something has to be said off the clock. Away from the plate, away from the outcome, at a moment when nothing has just happened, so that the boy has at least one sentence from his father that is not attached to a result. One. It does not have to replace anything.

You are not being asked to stop anything, and one sentence off the clock is the whole change. Deuteronomy 6:7 says thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way, which puts the important speaking in ordinary unstructured time rather than at set-piece moments; the same Spirit who had that written is the one who let you hear yourself in the bottom of the fourth.

Nought for four is the test

Here is how to know whether the sentence you are going to say is the right one, and it is a simple test.

Would it still be true, and would you still say it in the same tone, on a night when he goes nought for four and drops one in the outfield and gets moved down to ninth in the order.

If yes, that is the sentence.

If it would need adjusting on that night, or if it would be said more gently, or if it would be a bit of a consolation, then it is not the sentence, it is a response to a result wearing a nicer coat.

That is the whole filter, and it will take you about four seconds to run any sentence through it.

You have a way to tell the difference, and it does not require you to be a different sort of man. Scripture says He took them up in His arms and put His hands upon them and blessed them, and nothing in that sequence would have gone differently on any given child's worst day; the Holy Spirit is the one who has been at that fence with you for two seasons of Tuesdays.

So the backstop is not two years of assessment. It is a father who has been warm and loud and generous in the only vocabulary the setting handed him, who has now heard himself, and who has a drive home after this game.

And before the child, you. If there is something under this that is heavier than a page can carry, do not hold it on your own. Find one real person this week who can sit with you without needing to solve it, and if it has gone further than tired, call or text 988 in the United States, at any hour, and a person will answer.