Pop Flies in the Sun

I have a friend, Kate, who tells about her son’s frustrations on a baseball team here in Arizona. The coach, a rather strict disciplinarian, has all the members of the team catch pop flies in the sun. A pop fly is, for those of you unfamiliar with baseball, a ball hit ridiculously high into the air. Pop flies are routinely caught by professional players, but can still cause lots of problems for the under-initiated.

This is because as soon as the ball is hit, it can seem to disappear into the sky and then, just as quickly, come hurtling back to earth. With the sun in your eyes, this difficult task can become nearly impossible. You try to shield your eyes with your glove, your hand, your cap, but the sun is ALWAYS larger than the ball. You try squinting or looking at a different part of the sky, but as the ball approaches you say, “To heck with this!” and brave the pain of direct sunlight. Since you are crazy enough to put your FACE between the ground and this seemingly meteoric object, you are absolutely certain that you are about to be bludgeoned to death. And just before impact, you have a deepened appreciation for a peculiar law of nature: staring at too much light causes you to see pitch black.

Can you imagine how you would feel if your coach actually MAKES you endure this exercise. On purpose? And not only make you catch one pop fly in the sun, but make a repeated drill out of it.

As I mentioned, Kate’s son comes home upset. “Coach made us catch fly balls in the sun!” he complains. He continues his tirade by expressing how it doesn’t make any sense, it hurts the eyes and the face, and he doesn’t see the correlation between burned eyes and actually playing in a baseball game.

It isn’t until game time, however, that coach’s seemingly cruel drills pay off. The team is in the midst of a crucial game. Kate’s son, predictably, plays in the outfield and, as is the case in Arizona, is facing the sun (inexplicably, this happens in Arizona no matter what direction you are facing). A ball is struck, disappears high in the air, and then descends upon our hapless player. He stares at the sun in hopes to see the ball, grits his teeth, and with the determined ferocity and tenacious hope that comes with practice, he catches it. This causes the team to burst into celebration. A crucial game is won.

Kate relates this story to the student/teacher relationship inside the classroom. The coach is the teacher in a classroom; Kate’s son is a lot like the students we teach. They tend to complain and to moan when they don’t understand our purpose, and sometimes even see us as cruel dictators intent on harming them. Sometimes, I submit, that is true (teachers can be a melancholic bunch), however, more often than not, teachers aim to prepare students for future contexts. Teachers, good teachers, seek to anticipate what the students need even before the students know it.

You see, teachers, good teachers, love their students. Burned corneas and all. And that is why I invite you to go out to the middle of the field and prepare to be bludgeoned. Just trust me.