Miracle League — a ballpark experience and its rewards that far exceed anything you could ever do to deserve them.
Much of the talk during this past Major League Baseball offseason was spent on pitch clocks, pace of play and a general concern for how to inject more excitement into a game that was desperate to both retain and (hopefully) add audience eyeballs to its product.
How would these changes affect games? What would audiences think? How did the players feel about it?
All of these were questions that littered the early portion of the 2023 season, though they’ve since largely waned, if not disappeared entirely from the conversation as the World Series just concluded.
Meanwhile, another season began in earnest earlier this year — for the same exact sport no less — only its audience and (especially) its participants would spend all of zero seconds concerned with the ‘palatability’ of the viewing product.
And for good reason.
Instead, if you’d spent any part of a weekday evening this summer out at Wildcat Park on the campus of the University School of Milwaukee you’d have largely been surrounded with some variation of the following inquiries/concerns:
- “Are we batting or in the field first?”
- “When is it my turn to hit?”
- “Is there going to be another inning after this one??”
These are the effect of the Miracle League of Milwaukee — a summer baseball league established circa 2009 through the local YMCA that is designed specifically for persons with disabilities ranging in age from young children to teenagers. It’s a part of an ongoing nationwide effort by the Miracle League organization to expand access to the game for all of those who wish to play.
To say that I’ve had the privilege to lend my assistance to this league on a volunteer basis would ironically grossly undersell and/or misrepresent the definition of both the terms ‘privilege’ and ‘volunteer’ — and it’s also why I’d like to make a distinction as to the message of this piece.
Sure, I could extoll the numerous (legitimate) altruistic virtues of giving one’s time in service of others — particularly young people, and even more so a subset of those young people like this one who oftentimes aren’t afforded the proper care and attention that they deserve by society at large.
It’s 100 percent true that nearly all of us have benefited immeasurably in our lives thanks to the efforts of volunteer workers. Hell, every act by the random Good Samaritan adds up over time to make our existence on this planet a slightly more positive one than it would’ve been without them — even if imperceptibly so.
But at the end of the day, we’re all still selfish human beings. That’s not to suggest it’s malicious in nature, but rather that the strongest sensations we tend to feel revolve around our own immediate well-being.
We all like to feel good.
Eating ice cream makes us feel good. Hearing a funny joke makes us feel good. Watching a beautiful sunset makes us feel good. Riding a Jet Ski makes us feel good.
We’ll do plenty of things in our lives because we have to — go to work, pay taxes, etc. And we’ll do plenty of other things because we know that we probably should — brush our teeth, exercise, clean our room.
But if it was somehow possible to live a fulfilling, meaningful existence by only doing things that were more or less guaranteed to make us feel good most of us would probably do it.
Because again, we all like to feel good.
So rather than sell you on what your volunteerism in this environment can do for others, allow me to instead appeal to your sensibilities as would a cold, creamy ice cream cone on a hot summer day.
Just show up, and the rest will pretty much take care of itself.
I’ll be honest, as I arrived at my first Miracle League game I did so with at least a mild sense of trepidation.
I couldn’t pinpoint the exact source of the apprehension, but in part I’m sure it’s as simple as a general anxiety toward meeting new people — a trait I’d imagine is shared by plenty of you. Of course, I’m equally as confident — if somewhat ashamedly so — that the other side of this nervousness ‘coin’ was likely being informed by an unfounded sense of unease toward interacting with the persons whom I was about to be tasked with assisting.
Typing those words doesn’t feel all that great as I sit here now, but I think it’s both an honest and important element of the message I’m hoping to send here.
All of the folks out there who are already gung-ho about volunteerism — in whatever form it may take — probably won’t garner much from my efforts of persuasion on the matter. They don’t need it.
But if your attitude toward this sort of thing, particularly a project like the Miracle League, is one of ambivalence or even apathy, I’d simply ask that you offer me the chance to change your mind — not by describing the incalculable good you could be doing for others (which you most certainly can), but by detailing the colossal amount of good you could be doing for yourself.
When I showed up at the ballpark that evening my angst lasted all of five minutes — and the only reason it took that long was because the incredible players with whom I was about to spend an evening on the diamond simply hadn’t arrived yet themselves.
I introduced myself to the coordinator of the league, got my official T-shirt and was given a brief synopsis of the player whom I was to primarily be paired with.
- Are they talkative? Shy? Excitable? How much assistance — and in what fashion — might they actually require? Or am I more or less there to cheer them on, offer the occasional high-five and watch them play the game from field-level?
My Miracle Leaguer for the evening walked into the dugout, we said hello, shook hands and then I was immediately whisked over to consult the lineup sheet for that night’s batting order.
(From what I can recall she was just fine with hitting in the five/six hole.)
My fondest memory from that game was the impromptu sing-along that broke out to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” as we stood together in the field along the third baseline. For whatever reason that tune immediately sparked her interest, and there wasn’t going to be any stopping it even as we jogged back to the dugout at inning’s end to prepare for the next at-bat.
There wasn’t a single extraordinary thing that I did during those 3–4 minutes to warrant the good feelings that swelled up inside of me — which is the true secret to the emotional ‘heist’ I felt as though I was pulling off.
All it took was simply showing up and being a living, conscious bystander to one young person having themselves a fantastic evening at the ballpark. Do that and you’re damn near guaranteed to leave at the end of the night feeling immeasurably better about both yourself and the world at large than you did upon showing up 60-something minutes earlier.
In keeping with the baseball theme, it’s basically akin to Shohei Ohtani taking batting practice at your local slow-pitch softball league — a surefire emotional moonshot of a home run every single time.
Wanna have a catch?
Now lest you think that a spontaneous karaoke session is the only avenue for you personally to derive immense joy from Miracle League proceedings, I’ll counter with perhaps the most singularly inherent element to the game of baseball itself — playing catch.
On two different occasions I had the immense pleasure of tossing a ball back-and-forth for the better part of 10 minutes — once before a game and once after another had long since concluded.
The first time was with a young teenager who’d arrived well in advance of first pitch that night. He was a really shy kid, not appearing all that eager to make much in the way of conversation with a stranger (me) as the two of us sat on the bench in the dugout, so I asked if he wanted to go throw the ball around.
That idea seemed to pique his interest, so out in shallow right field we set ourselves up and got started.
In that moment it felt like one of the simplest things in the world. I’d throw the ball — some high looping tosses, some (hopefully) right at his glove, others so they’d bounce up comfortably off of one hop — and whether he caught it cleanly or not the subsequent response was always the same.
He’d grab the ball out of his glove, look up, and with a small grin on his face fire it back in my direction.
Aside from some intermittent encouragement there wasn’t really anything else said between the two of us. There didn’t need to be.
We probably could’ve gone on like that for an hour had the rest of the players not started to arrive and a game needed to commence.
He seemed for all the world to just be thrilled to be playing catch, regardless of who it was with. And the longer it went on the less and less I was able to distinguish whether or not the joy I was feeling had come from my role in making that happen, or if just like him I myself was simply thrilled to be playing catch with someone else.
The second instance in which this very simplest of interactions had me on cloud nine occurred following the last game of the season.
Following a group photo, players from each team were milling around the pitcher’s mound and either offering one another congratulations, strategically positioning themselves in line to receive a medal, or both (a degree of craftiness that I very much respect). As I stood there holding a ball in my hands my ‘buddy’ from that particular evening began motioning for me to toss it over to him.
And so, it began.
As everyone else from both teams eagerly collected their medals from the league’s director and posed for more pictures I stood just behind the mound and had a catch.
Back-and-forth we went, only a few feet between us but seemingly the entire world at our feet.
Yet again, an end to proceedings only seemed to encroach upon us because another pressing matter — in this case darkness, a ride home with his mom, and naturally the picking up of that medal of his — needed attending to.
But had it not, I’m not so sure we wouldn’t still be playing catch behind that pitcher’s mound right now.
It certainly doesn’t sound like a bad idea as I sit typing at my desk…
Whatever your reason, just volunteer. It’ll be worth it for someone — probably everyone.
Here’s the thing, I’d like to believe that my efforts with the Miracle League have made a positive impact on these amazing young people.
From my perspective it certainly seemed as though they enjoyed our interactions and were receptive to/excited by seeing me each game. But I can only believe those things to be true with but an approximate degree of certainty.
It’s not my place to presume with total conviction that my participation was the crucial element in creating/bettering the experience for any one of these kids — so I won’t.
What I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, is that the impact it had on me personally was both a profound and lasting one.
So, whatever it is that you’re looking to get out of your volunteer efforts — first and foremost just make the effort.
I can’t fathom a scenario in which a person could do so via this incredible organization and not leave the experience walking a little bit taller and feeling a whole lot better about their overall lot in life.
And the fact that I can almost guarantee that outcome to anyone willing to spend an hour-and-change at the ballpark is a little miracle all to itself.
Try it once though, and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.