Soft balls

I loved playing with balls – basketball, volleyball, football and softball. Basketball was the easiest, volleyball the hardest. Football was the most enjoyable, while softball felt the most elusive. None of my playmates really followed the rules of any game and that’s what made it crazy, even terming our own brand of PBA "coconut basketball," a sort of nonsense sport which required everyone in the hard court to play bad. It was extremely good fun, returning the serve even when the ball had been called out, triple dribbling and throwing 10-pointer shots, doing cartwheels and pirouettes en route to a penalty kick, and pitching curves in the most elaborate fashion.

Balls also ruled the food cycle of the young athlete-cum-aesthete: there was a bowl of arroz caldo for breakfast, siopao bola-bola for recess, meatballs for lunch, and fish balls with sago after school. In class pictures and varsity team photos, the roundness of our tummies complemented the semi-circular bulges in our biceps and torsos. But really, it was the coach who had the biggest balls, just to be able stand up to us unruly youngsters and impart good discipline and diet while managing to scratch his crotch and spit at the wind. I remember one in particular, our softball coach in high school, who by some interesting twist also happened to be the school’s military commandant. The traversing of a soft ball in the line of his hard military stance seemed like a travesty of ogre-like masculinity. I don’t remember him getting particularly bothered when he threw the ball gracefully or chased it in perfect Nureyev cadence, a lieutenant and major ballerina. Or when he switched from loose army fatigues to a tight softball uniform like a true fashion paratrooper, unmindful of the furtive snicker or the stolen glance. The bat and the rifle became interchangeable, and the successful way he batted for our team was paralleled by his masterful ability to point his gun at us. The coach and commandant transformed into a hero and a caricature, like the god with a golden ball. Later on in life I would discover mirror balls and crystal balls, and leave behind the non-shiny surface of Mikasa, Spalding and the balding head of any softball coach.

What is it with softness that becomes problematic in bodies, sports and identities? Softball and its numerous nom de plumes might be able to help: mush ball, indoor baseball, kitten ball and ladies’ baseball. Language is never innocent, nor is sports, and nothing in the words pre-fixed to "ball" hardly signify any semblance to strength, energy or speed. Softball thus sounds like a sissy sport, meant for queens, novices or invalids. Baseball, its more virile brother, declares monumentality and a powerful "base." No wonder baseball is America’s national pastime – the sport manifests the country’s obsession with hypermasculinity and conflict. It’s a civilization of hard phalluses, of twin towers, missiles and baseball bats. The trick is in the pitch. Baseball players throw the ball like they’re firing a projectile; softballers toss it as if it were a peace offering. Yet despite the name, the ball used is actually not soft and herein lies another lesson in speech, anatomy and vision (a soft name does not indicate a weak identity).

In the Belgian film Ma Vie En Rose ("My Life in Pink", 1997) the young boy Ludovic desperately tries to toughen up his identity in order to appease his parents. He wears his cap backwards, plays football, grabs his crotch and kisses a girl. The girl’s reaction is short and sharp: "I don’t kiss girls!" He undergoes therapy for correct gender placement and a clipper for a more butch haircut, to no avail. Like most kids who don’t fit the norm, Ludo gets beaten up in the locker room after football practice. He opts for suicide by getting inside the freezer – a death wish to harden his otherwise soft body?

I remember an artist from half a decade ago who stayed inside an ice-cream freezer and chatted to a phallus made of ice for three hours dressed as a Virgin Mary. Did he have the same motivations as Ludovic, to attain hardness via hypothermia? Would the outcome have been less harsh if the bullies had played softball instead? Ludovic offers a naïve but insightful theory: If Boys have XY chromosomes and Girls have XX chromosomes then God must have dropped his other Y chromosome in the dustbin, turning him into a boy instead of a girl. He looks at the crucifix, a slightly bent X, and winsomely says to Jesus, "That’s very cruel."

Another cruelty is the movie Broken Hearts Club (2000) starring TV Superman Dean Cain as one of the members of a gay softball team, made up of a group of close-knit friends and managed by their father figure and coach, Jack. In a reversal of names, Keanu Reeves in Hard Ball (2004) plays the down-and-so-out softball coach of inner-city black kids. More than courage, cooperation and clandestine plotlines, Hollywood softball cinema is all about starring a good-looking hunk to help the lives of sexual or cultural minorities. Funny, none of the actors in Broken Hearts Club are actually gay and Keanu Reeves is as far from being black as Michael Jackson is far from being, well, black, too. What about the plight of real young athletes in non-Hollywood sites such as the Philippines?

Unknown to many, a bunch of 11- and 12-year-old boys from a select all-star team from the International Little League Association of Manila (ILLAM) have been intensely training for the upcoming 2005 Asia-Pacific Little League Baseball Regional Tournament to be held in Fukuoka, Japan, from July 23 to 30. After recently sweeping their games in the recently concluded Philippine Little League Series held in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, these boys earned the right to represent the Philippines in Fukuoka, Japan. With their dads acting as their manager, coach, trainer, sports psychologist, cheerleader and number-one fan, it is no wonder these boys also won in the 2005 Southeast Asia Youth Baseball and Softball Tournament held last March in Singapore. Again, with their dads in tow, let us hope that this team sweeps their games in Fukuoka and eventually represent the Pacific region in the Little League World Series to be held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, USA this August.