Justin Halpern: Sh*t My Dad Says

The argument spiraled out of control, ending with him screaming, “Coach your own goddamned team, then, and kiss my ass,” to a group of fourteen kids and one terrified assistant coach named Randy, who was only coaching the team because his wife had left him and he wanted something to take his mind off of his misery. Randy wasn’t the most emotionally stable human being at the moment.

“It’s all yours, Randy! Have a blast!”

My dad stormed off to his car and took off. Unfortunately, in his anger, he had forgotten that he was my ride. We were three miles away from home, and at that moment, I wasn’t about to ask anyone else’s parents for a ride—the kids were all staring at me, and Randy looked like he was about to start crying—so I decided I’d just walk home.

An hour later, when I was about two blocks away from my house, my dad drove up alongside me and rolled down his window. “Shit. I forgot to pick you up, didn’t I?” I nodded yes. “Sorry about that. Also, I’m not coaching that fucking team anymore.”

After he removed himself from the head coach position, my dad still came to all of my games and followed the team closely. He and I would have our own practices on days when the team didn’t practice.

“Randy doesn’t know shit about the game. He throws a baseball like he’s a woman playing darts.”

So two days a week, we’d practice pitching, just him and me. Then one day as we were driving to the field for one of our practices, he took a different route.

“Where are we going? The field’s the other way,” I said.

“We’re picking up Roger. He’s gonna play with us,” he said.

Roger was the weirdest kid on the team by far. He smelled horrible, like rotten fruit mixed with Old Spice. He was actually a pretty good pitcher, but he’d have mental breakdowns in the middle of innings and completely implode.

“Why are we picking up Roger?” I asked.

“I’m teaching you pitching. He’s the other pitcher on the team. Figured I’d teach you both at the same time,” he said.

We stopped in front of an apartment where Roger was waiting. And for the next couple weeks, Roger came and practiced with us. Afterward my dad would buy us both ice cream. I told no one, because I already wasn’t the most popular kid on the team, and the last thing I needed was to be associated with Roger.

At our second-to-last game of the season, my team played one of our better opponents. I had pitched the first three innings and kept the game close. Then Roger came in and pitched the fourth and fifth and shut them down, as we took the lead in the bottom of the fifth. In the sixth, as Roger walked out to the mound, one of the parents from the other team got up from his seat in the bleachers and stood behind the fence that was ten feet behind home plate. His name was Steve, and he was a burly guy with a large beer belly. He looked like someone Popeye would fight while on shore leave.

Every time Roger started to throw, Steve would try to rattle him. “He can’t throw strikes, just take the pitches! He’s going to walk all of you,” Steve yelled to his son and his teammates.

Steve shouted undercutting comments like that every single pitch to psych Roger out. And Roger kept throwing balls, each one worse than the last. Eventually, he was crying on the mound, throwing balls that were six or more feet out of the strike zone. Randy walked out to the mound and took Roger out, and when Roger sat down on the bench next to me in the dugout, he was sobbing. Randy put his kid in, and Randy’s son, also named Randy, threw just like his dad and gave up about six runs. We lost handily.

After the game, my dad approached me and said, “Wait here with Roger. We’re giving him a ride home. But I need to take care of something first.”

He walked over to the parking lot, where Steve was helping his son pack up his stuff. I waited about thirty seconds, then followed, even though he told me to stay, mostly because I didn’t want to hang out with Randy and Randy. They both always hugged everyone good-bye, instead of waving or giving high fives, and it crept me out.

As I approached them, I saw my dad and Steve talking heatedly. “It’s part of the game, Sam,” Steve said.

“Bullshit,” my dad replied.

“Watch yourself, Sam.”

“The kid’s dad’s a drunk. His family’s a goddamned mess, and you know that. And you’re sitting out there screaming at him, trying to rattle him like this is the goddamned Major League so your kid can win a Little League game? You’re a grown man, goddamn it. What in the hell is wrong with you?”

At that point, Steve mumbled a few more things, then got into his truck with his son, Kevin, and drove off.

My dad took me and Roger for ice cream before dropping Roger off. We didn’t say much on the ride home. I wasn’t exactly sure what had gone on, but I knew that my dad was angry at Steve, and I figured maybe I could make him feel better somehow.

“I don’t like Steve either, Dad. He’s fat, and so is Kevin, and they think they’re good at stuff, but they’re only good ’cause they’re fat and bigger than everyone else,” I huffed.

My dad was silent as he parked the car in our driveway. Then he turned to me. “Son, I didn’t understand one goddamned thing you just said. Take your cleats off before you get inside the house, I think you stepped in dog shit.”

“They’re celebrating you graduating from eighth grade? We just went to your sixth-grade graduation two goddamned years ago! Jesus Christ, why don’t they just throw a fucking party every time you properly wipe your ass?”

“How’s puberty treating you?… How do I know you’re going through it? Oh I don’t know, maybe it’s the three hundred dick hairs you suddenly leave all over the toilet seat that clued me in.”

“What do you want — the candy? They’re throwing people in the fucking gas chamber, and you want a Skittles?”

“Snausages? I’ve been eating dog treats? Why the fuck would you put them on the counter where the rest of the food is? Fuck it, they’re delicious. I will not be shamed by this.”

“I ain’t letting you try out, you’re too skinny…. No, I hate to break it to you, but you can’t do whatever you want, and you most certainly are not a man.”

“Remember that face. That’s the face of a man who hates himself.”

“Nobody is that important. They eat, shit, and screw, just like you. Well, maybe not just like you. You got those stomach problems.”

“You worry too much. Eat some bacon…. What? No, I got no idea if it’ll make you feel better, I just made too much bacon.”

My dad has always valued education and hard work. “If you work hard and study hard, and you fuck up, that’s okay. If you fuck up and you fuck up, then you’re a fuckup,” he’s said to me on more than one occasion. But there are a lot of other factors besides effort that go into a successful and enjoyable school experience. Probably the most important one is how you fit in socially.