For the Fun of the Game
There was a little girl at the Atlanta Braves game this week who reminded me why we love sports.
Her name is Calia, and she was celebrating her sixth birthday at the ballpark.
It was already a pretty good birthday. She was at a baseball game. She was surrounded by thousands of people. She was watching major league baseball being played right in front of her.
And then something extraordinary happened.
Cincinnati Reds third baseman Eugenio Suárez came to the plate and hit a home run. But this wasn’t just any home run. It was the 350th home run of his major league career, a significant milestone in the career of a professional baseball player.
The ball came flying into the stands.
And Calia caught it.
On her birthday.
You can imagine what happened next. The people around her understood immediately that this wasn’t just another baseball. This was a piece of baseball history. A milestone home-run ball can be extremely valuable to collectors. Depending on the player and the significance of the achievement, such a ball can be worth thousands—or potentially much more.
So what did Calia do?
She threw it back onto the field.
Of course she did.
When she was asked why she had thrown it back, her answer was wonderfully, gloriously six years old:
“I don’t know. I just wanted to throw it.”
And there it is.
I think that little girl may have taught us something.
Because somewhere along the way, many of us have forgotten why we love sports.
We have turned them into businesses, industries, statistics, arguments, fantasy leagues, television contracts, advertising platforms and objects of enormous financial value. We debate batting averages and quarterback ratings. We calculate salaries and contract values. We analyze draft picks and playoff probabilities. We measure everything.
And there is nothing wrong with any of that.
I love statistics. I love arguments about sports. I love the history and the strategy and the drama.
But sometimes I wonder if, in all of our measuring and analyzing, we forget the most important thing.
We play because it is fun.
We watch because it is fun.
We go to the ballpark because we want to see what might happen.
We cheer because something inside us still wants to jump up and shout.
We play sports because, for a little while, we get to be children again.
And perhaps children understand this better than we do.
Think about the little league player standing in the outfield, picking dandelions while the game is going on. We laugh because he doesn’t understand the seriousness of the moment.
But maybe he understands something we don’t.
Think about the child who strikes out and then runs back to the dugout laughing. The parent may be thinking about batting mechanics, confidence, competition, and whether the child is developing.
The child is thinking about the fact that he gets to play again.
Think about the kids who invent their own rules when they play in the backyard. They don’t care whether the game is being played according to the official rulebook. They care that everybody gets a turn.
That is what Calia gave us at the Braves game.
She didn’t know she was holding something valuable.
She didn’t know that adults might pay money for the ball.
She didn’t know that the ball represented a milestone in a professional baseball player’s career.
She knew only one thing:
It was a ball.
And she wanted to throw it.
There is something almost spiritually beautiful about that.
Because the ball was valuable precisely because we had assigned value to it.
We had taken an ordinary object—a baseball—and attached to it a story. We gave it meaning because of what had happened before it landed in that little girl’s hands.
But Calia saw the ball differently.
She saw an object that was meant to be thrown.
Maybe that is what children do for us.
They strip away the meanings we have piled onto things and remind us what they are.
A baseball is meant to be thrown.
A swing is meant to be swung.
A game is meant to be played.
And a birthday is meant to be enjoyed.
There is another reason I find this story so moving.
Calia had no idea she was making a choice between money and joy.
She wasn’t calculating opportunity cost.
She wasn’t thinking, “Should I keep this because someday it might be worth a lot of money?”
She was simply responding to the moment.
And perhaps that is one of the great gifts children offer us: they inhabit the present.
Adults are so often somewhere else.
We are worried about tomorrow.
We are regretting yesterday.
We are calculating what something will mean five years from now.
We take pictures because we are already thinking about remembering the moment instead of experiencing it.
Children don’t usually do that.
They are there.
They see the ball.
They catch the ball.
They throw the ball.
And then they move on.
There is a lesson here for those of us who teach children.
Whether we are parents, teachers, coaches, clergy, grandparents—or simply adults who have children in our lives—we have an enormous responsibility.
We are not simply teaching children how to succeed.
We are teaching them how to live.
And sometimes the best teaching happens when we allow children to teach us.
We want our children to be successful. We want them to work hard. We want them to achieve. We want them to take their responsibilities seriously.
Of course we do.
But if we aren’t careful, we can teach them that everything has to have a purpose.
Practice because it will make you better.
Study because it will get you into a good college.
Play because it will look good on your résumé.
Participate because it will help your future.
Everything becomes preparation for something else.
And suddenly, childhood itself becomes preparation for adulthood.
Calia reminds us that there is another possibility.
Sometimes we do things simply because we want to.
Because they are fun.
Because they make us laugh.
Because we are curious.
Because we want to see what happens.
Because there is a baseball flying toward us and we have the chance to catch it.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach children discipline or responsibility. It doesn’t mean achievement doesn’t matter.
It means that achievement cannot be the only measure of a life.
There has to be room for joy.
There has to be room for play.
There has to be room for doing something simply because we want to.
And perhaps that is why sports matter so much.
Sports are one of the few places left where we still give ourselves permission to be completely absorbed in something that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter very much.
The game matters desperately while it is happening.
And then it is over.
The Mets win. The Mets lose.
The Braves win. The Braves lose.
Someone strikes out. Someone hits a home run.
And then tomorrow there is another game.
That is part of the magic.
Sports teach us how to care deeply about something without pretending it is everything.
They teach us disappointment and resilience.
They teach us teamwork and individuality.
They teach us that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
They teach us that you can practice for years and still strike out.
And they teach us that occasionally, if you are lucky, you catch a ball flying into the stands on your sixth birthday.
And sometimes you throw it back.
I hope Calia’s parents aren’t too upset about the ball.
I hope they don’t spend the next twenty years reminding her that she could have kept it.
I hope, instead, they tell the story over and over.
I hope someday, when she is an adult, they say, “Do you remember that baseball you caught when you were six?”
And she will probably laugh.
Maybe she’ll remember that it was Eugenio Suárez’s 350th home run.
Maybe she won’t.
Maybe she’ll remember the crowd screaming.
Maybe she’ll remember her birthday.
Maybe she’ll remember the feeling of the ball in her hand.
But I hope most of all she remembers this:
She was six years old.
She was at a baseball game.
She caught a home-run ball.
And for one perfect moment, she didn’t care what it was worth.
She just wanted to throw it.
And perhaps that is exactly what we need to remember.
Not everything valuable has a price.
Not everything meaningful has to become an achievement.
Not every experience has to lead somewhere.
Sometimes we play because we want to play.
Sometimes we sing because we want to sing.
Sometimes we dance because there is music.
Sometimes we go to the ballpark because we want to watch a baseball fly through the air.
And sometimes, when life gives us something wonderful, the right response isn’t to calculate what it is worth.
Sometimes the right response is simply to enjoy it.
That little girl caught a piece of baseball history.
And then she gave it back.
Maybe without knowing it, she gave something else back, too.
She gave us a reminder of why we started playing in the first place.
For the fun.
For the joy.
Because we wanted to.
And because, somewhere inside all of us, there is still a six-year-old who just wants to throw the ball.
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