Monday, April 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
FEW CRISES IN LIFE are more traumatic than your first Little League slump.
It colors your whole perception of the world and where you fit in it.
Pitchers start looking like Bigfoot in a baseball cap. The cheers of the "crowd" begin sounding like the blood-thirsty screams of a Roman Colosseum mob. The bat turns to lead. The ball rocketing toward you looks the size of a pea. Your mouth is dry. Your breath is short. Your stomach feels like it's full of rattlesnakes.
Life, in short, is bad.
I know from brutal experience. My slump lasted for the better part of two years.
I was handicapped, however, by an abnormally large strike zone that had hopelessly outpaced its muscle support system. (Take heart, oversized Little Leaguers, the stretch frame will come in incredibly handy when your muscles catch up and you start playing basketball -- but that's another story.)
Suffice it to say that I know too well the peculiar agonies of the swing and the miss.
Now, 30-some years later, I'm going through it all again.
My 9-year-old son, Matt, in his first year of organized competitive baseball, is 0-for-the-season after five games.
He's come a long way with the glove and his throwing arm, but he still hasn't figured out how to hit "fast" pitching when it counts.
This, believe me, is not something he's happy about.
So we go out and practice. Soft toss after dinner in the back yard. Fast pitch on Sunday at the high school.
We talk about keeping his eye on the ball, swinging level, taking the stride early, meeting the ball in front of the plate.
Little by little his skill improves.
The team, too, is having its problems. The Orioles are 2-3 right now, with a couple of tough losses, including a painful bottom-of-the-sixth collapse.
So we go out and practice. Batting, fielding, base-running, hitting the cutoff man.
We talk about learning from mistakes, playing hard, encouraging your mates.
Little by little the team improves.
There is no denying that wins are more satisfying than losses, but more is going on here than bats hitting balls and runners crossing the plate.
And therein lies the true beauty of Little League.
The kids are learning to work for a goal, to focus their attention, to shake off scrapes and bruises and errors and losses and keep playing.
They're learning, in short, about life.
The parentally correct philosophy has been to de-emphasize competition and build self-esteem. Competition means losing and children are supposed to have fun and feel good about themselves.
The problem is, what if the kid never builds up any skills to feel good about?
What you get is a bunch of egotistical adolescent slackers heading for a fall in the real world.
Think that will be fun or feel good?
There's no doubt that too much pressure to perform can stunt a child's growth, but without any expectations, a child becomes lazy and self-absorbed.
Esteem -- like respect -- has to be earned.
And that, too, is the beauty of Little League.
As a unique combination of team and individual, baseball not only teaches kids to rely on their teammates to complete a play, but also to rely on themselves to get a hit.
That's the battle that Matt -- and thousands of other Little Leaguers -- are fighting this spring.
Matt, like many on our team, knows the mechanics of batting. What he's fighting for is the confidence to do all those things when a pitcher is trying to get him out, when everybody is watching, when it really counts.
It's a fight worth fighting.
Because, while there may be nothing worse than a first slump, there are few things better than a first hit.
Standing on base, basking in the cheers of their teammates and coaches, the young faces light up in incandescent delight.
Now that's something to feel good about.
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