Time to Toss a Ball
The Gift of Mattering Amid a Mental Health Crisis
“Daddy, now can we!?!” My voice pleaded.
Easter brunch was in full swing at our house, and family from across town was enjoying food and laughter in our house. But my 6-year-old mind had a singular focus: baseball.
Tossing the baseball with dad, to be exact.
From preschool through college dad and I found countless times to toss. Usually in the front yard; usually in the early evening; and always…
Three items (two gloves and a ball)
Two actions (throw-catch.)
One sound (the thwack of the ball upon leather)
On that particular early afternoon Easter when I was begging to toss, we’d already tried twice. Each time a deluge of rain interrupted us. This time, though, the sun finally seemed to be winning.
I still recall the rainbow canvassing overhead when we returned to the front yard for a third go at tossing.
Truth is, my earliest Easter memories are not about an empty tomb but a full heart.
The sun breaking through the rain.
A soft slide of color holding the sky.
And dad and me, tossing.
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When did it all begin? Hard to say.
About 2 million years ago, according to some researchers at Harvard who suggest we evolved an ability to throw overhand to better our hunting ability. Tossing, then, was about practicing a life-and-death skill. Tossing was about survival.
A 1744 children’s book published in England suggests some early semblance of what we call baseball was being played by children at that time. Some of them took that to North America. An evolution occurred – one still underway as seen by the significant rule changes that Major League Baseball implemented in the 2023 season.
But whether for survival or child’s play,
for food or entertainment,
for muscle or merriment,
the core it all boils down to a toss.
A back and forth.
A simple mutuality.
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I have long wondered what the fascination with tossing is. And if it’s not a baseball then it’s a frisbee or a football.
Or it’s a racquet or a paddle, plus a ball.
Or it’s our feet with a soccer ball.
Sometimes such things are done in very competitive environments with careers and gobs of money on the line. But most of the time?
It’s front yards and backyards.
It’s parents and children.
It’s friends and neighbors.
And I get, the evolutionary thing once made sense. Let’s toss so we can learn how to survive!
But nowadays? How do we explain our continued fascination with tossing?
I have two, highly related theories. Both of them have to do with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
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Theory 1
Jennifer Breheny Wallace, an award-winning journalist and author of Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It, spoke recently about the current mental health crisis among young people.1
Her central insight relates to people of all ages.
She explained how the single most important thing for children and youth to have today is not (at all) related to securing entrance to the top schools, building the best resume, and having all the powerful connections… what matter most for their long-term health and well-being in all facets of life comes down to this:
They need to know they matter. Wallace has a two-part definition for this.
Part 1: “Mattering,” Wallace says, “ is making children feel valued for who they are at their core by their family, by their friends, by their neighbors…”
In other words, a child must know deep within themselves that apart from every success and failure, they matter. They are infinitely valued. They are loved.
You know one reason why I believe tossing is so powerful?
It’s pointless. Ok, sure, like everything you can turn it into a hyper-competitive “let’s toss so you can get better at this sport and get a scholarship to the best school!”
But, generally, tossing has no ‘point.’
No goal to reach.
No next level unto which one might achieve or fail to achieve.
It’s just a leisurely time spent together doing something that equates to nothing on any kind of resume.
What it does communicate? You matter for you. That’s it.
And that’s everything.
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Theory 2
Wallace’s definition has a second part.
Part 2: “(Mattering also means) depending on our children to add meaningful value back to their family, to their friends, to their neighbors.”
Children and youth need to be entrusted with tasks that are not superfluous or extra or always easy. They need opportunities where it becomes clear to them that their input, their effort, and their gifts are needed.
You are an essential part of the team!
Which is to say, Mattering, has to do with:
1) knowing you are loved no matter what and
2) knowing you are deeply, integrally needed by a team.
You know the second reason why I believe tossing is so powerful?
Both participants are needed. The body, focus, and effort of both people is 100% essential for the definition of ‘tossing’ to happen.
It is fascinating and wholly appropriate that it would take the things of matter – three items, two actions, one sound – to communicate the full gift of mattering.
And given our current…
mental health crisis,
epidemic of loneliness,
and the considerable amount of people who do not feel they matter very much…
…honestly, tossing feels like survival once more.
And no, such a simple activity hardly solves all of the significant challenges before us. But it does offer us a critically important picture of the mattering we are aiming to communicate to one another in all endeavors of life.
It’s tangible taste. An embodied glimpse.
Anybody you know who might welcome some fresh mattering?
Someone whose heart pleads, Now can we?!?
And can you recall where you last placed the glove/racquet/ball that can help communicate that next glimpse?
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Last year my dad and I attended a men’s retreat at a conference center in the Texas Hill Country.
“I’m bringing my glove,” my dad told me over the phone before boarding his flight from Cincinnati to Austin.
“Yep. Me too.”
And though the conference organizers brought in a great speaker, relevant workshops, and provided a stunning setting… the thing I remember most is that on Saturday evening of the retreat we took our gloves and a ball down to the grassy banks of the Guadalupe River.
And for the first time in many years, we stood and did what had been the most natural thing in the world for the first twenty years of my life: we tossed.
A few words.
Mostly the ‘thwack’ of the ball hitting leather.
Matter upon matter.
Mattering.
Survival skills honed in the wilderness.
Those in the Austin Area… I am sharing one of my stories on Thursday, September 7 at the Neill-Cochrane House Museum in Austin. Join in if you’re around!
In their words, “Join us on the front lawn for a night of Moth-style true personal stories. Local comedians and storytellers tell personal tales beneath the grand columns of the NCHM porch.” Details here.
As always very relevant to our every day lives. In this age of virtual relationships both personal and business, how can we toss to keep that wonderful connectedness alive?
Let’s toss around this topic next time. Very interesting point of view.