Where have all the sandlots gone?

Once upon a time, kids ran around in open fields with no fences, tamping down dirt with their bats and using cardboard to mark the bases.

(Photo by Ed Grisamore)

I don’t know whatever became of sandlot baseball. It just started vanishing, like phone books and full-service gas stations.

Once upon a time, you could see kids running around in open fields with no fences, tamping down dirt with their bats and using cardboard to mark the bases.

"You know what's killing baseball today?" a wise old man once asked me. "You never dream. It used to be that all baseball players were made in backyards and on vacant lots. There's nobody playing sandlot baseball any more. We've got too much to do in this world. They're inside watching TV. Very few people are getting their yards messed up with baseball. And I'll tell you something. If kids quit playing in the yard, pretty soon we ain't going to have any baseball players."

No, you don’t find kids gathered on school playgrounds or along the edge of dusty pastures.  You don’t find them thumping old gloves and having to chase down foul balls because there are no backstops. 

You don’t find them making their own rules. Any ball hit over the ditch is a home run. Anything that ends up in the kudzu patch is a ground-rule double. Keep score in your head.

You don’t find them learning to settle their own differences, without adult intervention. 

We still have young baseball players. Only now, if given a choice, they retreat to air-conditioned rooms to watch YouTube or play video games with names like Minecraft and Super Smash Brothers. Their fingers are wrapped around electronic devices, not the seams of a baseball.

And instead of organizing and improvising their own games with their friends,  they are involved in a structured activity with an almost overwhelming adult presence. Grown-ups bark orders at them from behind chain-link fences, telling them – often at the same time – to throw home, tag the base runner or toss the ball back to the pitcher.

Now, 10-year-olds carry around expensive backpacks stuffed with aluminum bats and  bright-colored water bottles. They get snacks after the game, and sometimes during the game. At the end of the season, they have team parties … and everyone gets a participation trophy.

Sigh. Where are the grins? It’s supposed to be fun, you know.

Perhaps one of the reasons past generations will forever be endeared to sandlots is because those were the games we remember most.