On Saturday mornings during Little League season, my father dragged my older brother and me away from cartoons to teach us how to throw a baseball. Neighborhood friends were envious of these father-son outings. My brother and I knew better.
For something as simple, quotidian, as throwing a ball, we were forced to spend countless hours doing it. My father insisted we learn the ‘correct’ technique, which meant raising the arm to a perfect 90-degree angle, hand tilted back as if carrying a small coffin. Then there was the follow-through, something I struggled to complete.
My brother mastered this motion with consistency, but I couldn’t, clipping my throwing motion too soon. This infuriated our father, and, just as he did inside our home for the smallest of trespasses, he exploded. “What the hell’s wrong with you?!” was his tamest response.
He would make me throw over and over again to him, getting more enraged with every mistake. I would become so paralyzed with fear my throws either rolled toward him in the grass or soared over his head. Once when I was 11, I somehow followed through (a fluke, it turned out), and my father’s mood softened into a proud smile. Capitalizing on this rare ceasefire, I asked what I had wondered for years.
“Why is it so important to follow through?”
He said it resulted in “greater accuracy and speed” and opened the door to a variety of pitches. “Technique matters. Always commit to following through.”
What he forgot to add: Good technique was stifling.
At 14, I quit baseball and pivoted to tennis. This was a sport my father knew little about. And it was the sport of John McEnroe, the mercurial tennis great who never trained off court and rarely followed through in his unorthodox groundstrokes. Inspired by McEnroe, I aped his approach to the game, confident that success would follow.
It didn’t. By my early 20s my middling tennis success hit a dead end and, in one of those fortuitous life decisions that initially seems random, I quit playing and began teaching. I did this on and off for more than 25 years. Through years of teaching forehands, backhands, volleys and serves, I inadvertently learned the sport’s foundational mechanics — especially the importance of the follow-through — and their necessity.
While I have tried teaching my son, Macallah, now 12, tennis for years, sometimes it has been frustrating for both of us. He finally explained why this spring when in a sour mood.
“I’m tired of all this technique! I just want to freelance!”
Now, where have I heard this? I asked myself. “At least remember this,” I said, “always follow through.”
He rolled his eyes, walked away and cut short our game.
This spring Macallah played organized baseball for the second year. Given that he’s playing in a league amongst some 12-year-olds who could have played on my high school team, he’s at a deficit. His coach recently asked me to work with him because he was struggling to catch pop flies in the outfield. I took a deep breath.
As I hit pop-ups to Macallah the next evening, I noticed he was trying to catch balls with his glove near his stomach, and he wasn’t running to them.
“Why aren’t you holding your glove up over your head or running to the ball?” I asked.
“I might drop it,” he replied.
“But if you try you might catch it,” I said. “It’s always better to try and fail. Always commit to trying.”
The next evening Macallah made the final out one inning by catching a high fly. He ran to the ball and held his glove up over his head.
On the drive home, he asked if I would help him with his tennis serve the next day.
“I thought you didn’t want any more instruction?” I asked.
“Dad, don’t give up just because I’m in a lousy mood. Remember what you said — follow through. Commit to trying.”
This was one of those times as a parent you welcome having a life lesson thrown back in your face.
Andrew Reiner (areiner@towson.edu) teaches at Towson University and is the author of “Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency.” (HarperOne, 2020).
