A League of Our Own

I knew nothing about baseball, but sometimes parenthood calls us to do the most unlikely things

- RICK HAMLIN

Every spring, the posters appear around our uptown Manhattan neighborhood, inviting parents to sign up their kids for the Hudson Cliffs Baseball League. A fun way to spend weekends in spring, introducing kids to the joys of the game on ballfields down by the Hudson River, in view of those fabled cliffs. The league has been around for 30 years now. And guess who started it?

Me. Rick Hamlin. The guy who knows next to nothing about baseball or sports in general. The one whose most fervent prayers as a boy came when he was stuck out in right field during P.E., entreating God, "Please, please, please don't let the ball come to me." It would have taken a minor miracle for me to catch the thing, and even then, I'd never be able throw it into the infield.

And yet I later happened to become the father of two boys, eight-year-old Will and five-year-old Tim, both of whom were interested in the sport. Saturday mornings, I'd take Will out to the playground and we'd play ball with a few other boys and their dads. I was so glad those fathers could coach and pitch and knew the rules of the game.