The Worst Game I’ve Ever Loved

The Worst Game I’ve Ever Loved

By Matthew Dicks  /  Illustrated By Sean Wang

I’m sitting in a lawn chair along the first baseline. It’s a warm, spring Saturday afternoon. The sun is high in the sky. The grass is a brilliant green. Nine boys in red uniforms are spread out across the diamond and outfield. They are still boys, but they are old enough to be locked in on the game. No picking daisies for these kids.

I love baseball. I grew up outside of Boston as a Yankees fan. My stepfather was a Red Sox fan; so, spitefully, I decided to become a fan of his team’s mortal enemy. That spite evolved into a love for players like Don Mattingly, Dave Righetti and Willie Randolph.

I’ve been lucky enough to be sitting in Yankee Stadium when David Wells and David Cone pitched their perfect games. There have only been 24 perfect games in Major League history — more than 235,000 games in total. I’ve seen two of them. Lucky me.

David Wells’ perfect game happened on Beanie Baby Day at the stadium. At the beginning of the game, fans were handing their Beanie Babies over to small children. But by the seventh inning, they were demanding their Beanie Babies back in hopes that they might be worth something someday. Children wept as large men pulled plush toys from their tiny fingers. 

I have lots of reasons to love baseball, but once my son Charlie started playing baseball eight years ago, that love has been tested for many reasons, including right now.

Charlie is at the plate, bat in hand. The game is tied. His teammate is standing on third base, waiting to score. Two outs, of course. Also, bottom of the seventh, which is bottom of the ninth in Little League, because those extra two innings are apparently too much for today’s fragile youth. 

As a Little League player, I always wanted to be at bat in these moments. I wanted the game on my shoulders. Win or lose, I wanted to be the one to determine my team’s fate.

I don’t know how Charlie feels at this moment as he digs into the batter’s box, but I know how I feel: awful. This is a stupid game. My son is trapped on an island, with the fate of his team in his hands. Every player and spectator has their eyes on my boy. The only two options here are to win or lose. Succeed or fail. Help the team win or ruin their chances of winning forevermore. I hate it. What a stupid game. 

And when you’re emotionally invested and psychologically connected to a player on the field, it’s a disaster. Every time your child stands at the plate or a ball is hit in his direction, it is a chance at abject, unadulterated, indisputable failure, and though it makes no sense, I think — no, I’m sure — it hurts me more than him.

What was Abner Doubleday — the inventor of this insidious game — thinking? I’ll tell you what he was thinking: nothing. He had no children. He was never even married. No wonder he designed this torturous and cruel game. He was never forced to live or die with his son’s performance. 

But it’s not just the game itself that torments me. 

Little League is a monster. The coaches are remarkable human beings. They freely dedicate enormous amounts of time to thankless boys who complain about batting orders and fielding positions, and rotten parents who can’t find the time to volunteer but make plenty of time during the game to contribute their meaningless two cents. I don’t know how the coaches do it.

That said, I suspect that they have confused parents for people absent from lives beyond baseball. The baseball season schedule is released seemingly minutes before the first pitch of the first game, and games and practices are added whenever possible, despite our misguided attempt to have lives outside of baseball during the season. 

Planned a trip to New York to visit the grandparents? Be prepared to cancel those plans halfway down I-95 when the coach sends out a group text announcing a triple header that begins nine minutes ago. 

It’s 30 degrees with wind gusting to 50 miles per hour? Thank goodness it’s not raining. Right? Bring a blanket, a space heater and perhaps some firewood, because…play ball!

Playoff schedule? Fear not. You’ll receive that six days after the regular season has ended and six hours before the first game begins. 

I love my son’s coaches, but they make it hard to love them sometimes. 

Charlie is still standing at the plate. He has run the count to 3-2 after fouling off two pitches. In my fragile state, those foul balls are tiny victories. He hit the ball. The stupid thing went rolling up the first base line, but he didn’t entirely swing and miss. Foul balls are practically hits in my state of mind.

The pitcher prepares to throw what will likely be the last pitch of the inning and maybe this game. It’s a big one. This isn’t a playoff game, but Charlie’s team is 0-5. If he hits the ball, his team will finally win a game.

Charlie once went through an entire season without winning a single game. It was educational and brutal. Even so, his team made the playoffs because it’s 2026 and everyone makes it to the playoffs. Then, in a bizarre turn of circumstances, his team won their first game of the season — their playoff game — which propelled them to the championship game, where they lost by just a single run. I was almost rooting against him that day.

The pitcher winds and throws. The ball is wide of the plate. Charlie does not swing, thus earning him a walk, but the ball gets past the catcher and rolls to the backstop. His teammate sprints for home. The pitcher sprints to cover home but is too late. 

Charlie’s teammate touches home plate. “Safe!” the teenage umpire shouts. Charlie’s team wins their first game.

And Charlie? Is he the hero of the game? Not really. He worked a walk, but it was a wild pitch that really saved the day. Did he fail at the plate? Also no. Working a walk is fine by me. Anything is better than a strikeout. 

His teammates swarm the kid who scored the winning run. Charlie, too.

I breathe a sigh of relief. We survive another at-bat in this endless, unpredictable, spontaneous, glorious and horrible baseball season. Many more to go, but on this day, at this moment, I can breathe a sigh of relief…until the phone dings, alerting me to another game beginning in four minutes. 

Matthew Dicks is an elementary school teacher, bestselling novelist and a record 55-time Moth Story SLAM champion. His latest books are “Twenty-one Truths About Love” and “The Other Mother.”

Sean Wang, an MIT architecture graduate, is author of the sci-fi graphic novel series, Runners. Learn more at seanwang.com.