Not Everyone is a Centerfielder

Every spring for the past 75 years, a ritualized tradition is quietly re-enacted across the land: Boys from all walks of life pack up their big league dreams, grab a glove, and try out for their local little league baseball teams. With the help of dads, moms, and baseball coaches, the players sort themselves out into positions at the beginning on the first day. The scrappy smallish kid is put at 2nd base. The lanky left-hander is given the funny glove and told to go to 1st. The strong stocky kid is handed the catcher’s gear. And so on.  Everyone either self selects, or is placed according to his dreams or the traditions of the game. (After all, who ever heard of a lanky left-hander playing 2nd?) As boys, it is handed down to us right at the very beginning that not everyone is a centerfielder.

In thinking about the Journey Toward Deep Fatherhood, todays fathers (unlike previous generations) are expected to take part in prenatal classes. We are now in the delivery room. These changes may have been instituted in an effort to tie the father more closely to the new mother and child. Given the divorce rates and levels of infidelity for couples at this stage of relationship, one could argue that this strategy is not working. I take a controversial stance and argue that it may even be detrimental, at least for the male.

Women have been delivering children since the dawn of creation without the help of the father. Fathers have historically waited outside the cave, the hut, or the delivery room. All of a sudden, in the last 25 years fathers have been invited or have been expected to be in the delivery room, playing centerfield, as it were. Watching vaginas dilate and transform into organs of delivery is certainly a miracle. However, I am curious to know the impact on the father’s deep psyche. He now knows that what was once a sex organ for him, an organ through which he experiences the depths of his own intimacy, masculinity, and humanity, is now something entirely different as well. How does this experience impact the way in which he views both his partner and himself? How does he juxtapose his passionate sexuality and his yearning for deep physical connection with the biology of motherhood? Is he able to hold both of these psychically? The levels of infidelity and the divorce rates may suggest that the answer is “not without great difficulty.”

So, you players – you guys who have grabbed your gloves and your dreams of being a big league dad, give it some thought! Despite the fact that the culture is now expecting it, you might not actually want to play centerfield! You (and your relationship) may be better served in the long run by having you be an assistant coach that day, or scorekeeper, or bat boy. After all, we can’t all be Mickey Mantle!