A few years ago, my dad and I became obsessed with my son’s Little League team, the Purple Pinstripes. We lived and died by every pitch, exalted by a base hit just inside the line, devastated by a strikeout. We were just as invested in these fourth graders playing for snack bar tickets as we would have been in elite athletes with million-dollar contracts.
We cheered into the dry desert air until our throats were raw. We dissected every play of every inning of every game. We became one with each other and one with our team. That’s how a single season of Little League baseball became our very unorthodox grief group of two, a group that met exactly 16 times at Ingleside Middle School in Phoenix.
This grief group had no moderator and no rules other than those dictated by the Little League of America—and the human heart.
