Doing it together

Who says baseball isn't a team sport?

Who says it's boring and slow?

Who says it can't be a reflection of life, combining all the elements of teamwork, spirit, heartache and joy?

In Metuchen, N.J., 8-year-olds can show the maturity of adults, and pull together to pull off something extraordinarily rare: a complete-game, six-inning no-hitter led by a lanky, soon-to-be-third-grader named Adam Boucher.

On Sunday night, the Bulldogs - my 8-year-old son's team - capped off a month-long, almost-nightly stretch of games with a no-hit championship victory in the Milltown, N.J. baseball Tournament.

In that tournament, they were 6-0 with a combined score of 59-18.

Anchoring the way, of course, was Adam Boucher, a boy with a Mariano Rivera delivery who can do something almost as impressive: He can name all the presidents frontwards and backwards (so says my son, Jonathan).

But this team proved that it takes more than one extraordinary kid to seal a victory. They have to be an extraordinary group, and they made plays they never would have thought of making just two months ago, when they were playing in Little League and they weren't allowed to steal.

Since they weren't allowed to steal, they couldn't throw anybody out at second base. On Sunday, Jared Manley did just that - throwing out a runner just after Boucher struck out a batter from Milltown, N.J.

Manley, just like the others, had to learn to do it quickly, playing baseball games for the first times in their lives where the final score mattered. Jared threw out 8 kids stealing during the tournament season - incredibly rare for an 8-year-old catcher to do it once, let alone eight times.

If they lost any one of those games, their season could have ended days - maybe even a week or two - earlier. But they kept winning, because they knew that one loss would send them home, and break up a group that had learned to play, cry, laugh, lose and win with each other.

They learned to get along, and tease each other without meanness, and play with each other without selfishness. They had parents who shared their joy, who skipped vacations so they could jump in a pool with them at a team party, or stand out in the sweltering heat and watch them play night after night.

They had other extraordinary boys like Joseph Schugel, Liam Walker and Jay Jay Flynn, all of whom had a knack for getting walk or hit at just the right time during this tournament. On Sunday, they did it again, each getting an important hit or sacrifice to drive in the last three runs.

They had my own son, Jonathan Davis, who failed to reach base just once in his last four games, and who also made a short dive to stop a ball with the bases loaded in the fourth inning, with Metuchen up 2-0.

That ball threatened to bounce through the infield and not only end the championship no-hitter, but also win the game for the opposing team, Milltown. He then threw to Michael Fuccile, yet another extraordinary, quick-thinking 8-year-old who safely two-handed the throw to ensure the third out.

At the end of the game, they had the wherewithal to fill up a Gatorade bucket and dump it on their understated coach, Tom Yakowenko. Yakowenko, otherwise known as Mr. Yak, is also a teacher with an uncanny ability to handle children.

Throughout the previous month, he was their catalyst and their driver, always reminding them that baseball is a game, never an ordeal.

He helped nurture boys like Eli Krause, who made an important back-up play in the championship victory; Thomas Faggioni, whose sharp hitting and fleet running made him a constant threat on the basepaths; and Charlie Bradley, whose pitching became sharper and stronger as the rest of the staff began to tire.

They had Alex Holloway, the "chipmunk," whose booming hits and strong pitching ensured the victory in the semi-final; and Alex Yakowenko, Tom's son, whose bat came alive in the final games and helped lead the team to win after win.

At the end of the championship game, they still had that joy, and they showed they can still have the energy to celebrate, smile and cherish something they'll never forget.

When they left the field for the last time, they acted like they were ready to play again the next day - or maybe even later that night.

War is hell, but suicide is worse

The Army is losing its battle to stem suicides among troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a recent report showing that 32 soldiers in one year killed themselves in the war zone, according to The Hartford Courant.

The number of suicides in Afghanistan is climbing, despite multiple new efforts by military officials to improve training and education in suicide prevention and mental health, The Courant reported. Suicide was a leading cause of non-combat deaths in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in three non-hostile Army fatalities.

Army officials who released the report were reluctant to draw a link between combat exposure and suicide, repeating assertions made in past years that failed personal relationships, along with legal and financial problems, were the main factors driving suicides, according to The Courant. But they did acknowledge that long and repeated tours of duty were wearing down soldiers' mental resilience.

"Is it the war? It's unquestionable that the high op-tempo, the multiple deployments and long deployments put a real strain on relationships," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist, in a conference call with reporters. "There's also normal, girlfriend-boyfriend breaking up, irrespective of the war, marital difficulties that arise in both civilians and soldiers. ... We're not seeing a clear relationship between conflict increase and suicide."

Elspeth Ritchie Photo Ritchie and Brig. Gen. Rhonda L. Cornum, assistant surgeon general for force protection, said The Courant that Army leaders would continue to emphasize training programs that alert commanders and soldiers to signs of stress and that encourage troubled troops to seek professional help.

"One of the things that I believe is happening, looking at these reports, is that the Army is very, very busy, and perhaps we haven't taken care of each other as much as we'd like to," Ritchie said.

The increase in suicides in the war zone was one factor driving an overall increase in suicides among active-duty soldiers last year, The Courant reported. The Army released figures showing 115 confirmed suicides in 2007, both stateside and abroad — the highest number recorded since the Army began keeping such records in 1980. In 2006, 102 suicides were reported. The numbers do not include suicides among veterans who left the service.

The active Army suicide rate reached 18.8 suicides per 100,000 soldiers in 2007 — also the highest rate on record and an increase over the 2006 suicide rate of 17.5 per 100,000.

Army leaders said they had scrambled in recent months to hire 180 new mental-health workers to treat troops at home bases, but they did not announce plans to beef up the contingent of counselors treating troops deployed in Iraq, The Courant reported. Despite the rising suicide numbers in Iraq, the ratio of mental-health counselors to soldiers in the war zone has dropped — from one provider for every 387 troops in 2004, to one for every 734 last year.

The Army has made a number of changes to its suicide-prevention and mental-health programs in the past several years, some prompted by a Courant series in 2006 that found the military was failing to adequately screen and treat troops with psychological problems. New policies adopted since then call for closer monitoring of troops on psychiatric medications and limits on keeping troops with mental-health problems in combat zones, according to The Courant.

(This article is an update of a story written two years ago).

Feats of strength

It's no fun to lose. But it's fun to compete, and it's an even bigger relief to finish.

That's what I'm getting out of this experience of watching my son play in an 8-year-old baseball tournament, a task that ain't for the faint-hearted.

I know, I know. A baseball tournament? For 8-year-olds? Puh-lease. Tarballs are splashing onto Florida's beaches and I'm oh-so-concerned (insert violin track here) about my son doing something that not everybody can do?

Yes, I've become the parent I never thought I'd become, the one sitting on the red-hot, silver metal bleacher, with a blazing sun beating down on my tomato-red face, refusing to move out of fear that I'll miss every one of Jonathan's "feats."

Sure. Right. C'mon. What, is one quick visit to the snack bar going to place a hex on Jonathan's head, and some team from Sayreville is going to start pounding away at his 30-mph pitches?

Well, maybe or maybe not. It's hard to say. But there is one thing that's true, and I've gotta admit - I never thought I'd say just weeks ago:

Yeah, I fear it, and I dread it at times, especially when my kid is up at the plate or on the mound.

But, shucks, I kind of like it, too (let me just stop there, because I might get carried away).

I like it not just because it's a sport, and it's showing off my kid as he's playing at higher level.

I like it not just because he gets to wear a hat with his name on it, and he chose the number of my favorite player of all time (Tom Seaver, 41).

To me, it's like a graduation or an honor roll, of sorts. It's evidence of achievement, of good, hard work.

It's something only 12 get to do, though I wish there were more, because I'd pay $100 to see this rather than cough up $2,000 to vacation in Spain any day (well, actually, let me rethink that...).

I hear these horror stories of parents dragging their kids from place to place, bringing their kids as far away as Florida - or even Europe - to play God-knows-who in God-knows where.

And, yeah, those stories sound pretty horrific - especially if you get to go a place like Spain to watch a soccer match involving your 15-year-old but, no, you never get to see Spain.

You want to eat authentic Spanish food but, no, you're stuck at the snack bar or at the Barcelona KFC.

Me? I like taking the little guy with the big "M" on his hat to the dusty fields of Central Jersey, and watching him wind-up like tangled spider before firing into the catcher.

That's cool.

I can say, dang, there's finally some reward for all those hours of going out in the backyard and throwing the dented whiffle ball over and over to these kids, all the way back to the time they learned how to walk.

I can recall with pleasure those days when Jonathan hacked at a plastic ball that sat on a tee, long before he learned to cream home runs into the neighbor's yard.

I can watch my 8-year-old son smile like he does, with his missing two front teeth, because we helped put him in a position of achieving something he deserved.

Sometimes these gifts or rewards are not always tangible. Kids can drive parents crazy because they don't put away their shoes, they don't make their beds or they don't clean up the kitchen.

But here, at the dusty diamonds of Woodbridge, N.J., just miles from Metuchen, we could say, hey, maybe we did something right. It takes brains and confidence to play baseball. It takes a certain courage, too, to play it in front of a lot of people you know and don't know.

Our team lost its first two games, and tied the third. But I can take some pride in seeing my son chew gum as he stands on the top of the mound, tossing the ball to himself as he awaits some batter he's never seen before.

And then, in a flash, he's in that tangled-spider windup of his again, looping one over the plate to the catcher, getting more strikes than balls, and getting more outs than walks.

That was cool.