The promising baseball career of William Jackson Davis, age 4, took a detour this week, when my son declared he was done with tee-ball at J.P. Hudson Park.

Jackson’s tee-ball team, “Rusty Vaughn Farms,” has yet to play its first game. So technically Jackson was announcing his retirement from tee-ball practice, which is sort of like getting cold feet before you whip out the engagement ring. But when you know, you know. You know?

Jackson had everything he needed to play — the glove, the helmet, the bat, the cleats, and pants. All that was missing was his heart and his heart just wasn’t in it.

What’s a daddy to do?

At the first tee-ball practice, my son’s heaven-sent smile turned downwards and stayed that way. The tears started flowing and would not stop. I remember Shannon and I looking at each other dumbfounded, wondering why our always-smiling Jackson was crying like it was time for the shot at the doctor’s office.
My heart twisted in my chest and it’s twisting even now, because I realized too late Jackson was chasing balls and running bases to please his mommy and daddy.

It took several weeks to figure this out, because the simple explanation  — hey dummy, he doesn’t like tee-ball — just seemed too simple for our parental minds. After all, how can you hate what you haven’t done?

At the first tee-ball practice, Jackson was all-smiles when I rolled him grounders as his teammates gathered on the field. When the team spread out to practice, the tears started and kept coming.

The second T-ball practice went better. Fewer tears were falling so Jackson was catching balls and wiping tears, sometimes at the same time. By the second practice Coach Trevino and the assistant coaches knew Jackson was “the crier” on the team, so they went out of their way to encourage him and give him plenty of high-fives. But it just wasn’t meant to be.

I have told Jackson stories about how his daddy played outfield at J.P. Hudson, where more than once I threw out a runner with a straight shot from centerfield. On the way to that first tee-ball practice, I pointed out the old fields on Boothe Street where Daddy used to play.

Jackson knew all those stories already, and the names of players and coaches, and tales of fastballs and stealing bases and eating snow cones after the game.

In his bedroom, Jackson has a framed picture of me with my Stubbs teammates on coach E.V. Ware’s team from 1985. I’ve told and retold the names of the other “big boys” on the team, Chris McMinn and Chris Ware and others, and Jackson has studied the picture of his daddy in the blue baseball uniform.

“Daddy,” Jackson eventually asked me once, “why do you have on blue shoes?”

“So you noticed the shoes, huh?” I said, because it’s apparent in the photo that all the other boys were wearing cleats while his daddy was wearing some blue shoes with Velcro.

“Probably because Maw Maw and Paw Paw didn’t have the money to buy me cleats,” I further explained, which is something Jackson thinks he can relate to, his overflowing toy box notwithstanding.

I felt embarrassed at those blue shoes but apparently Jackson didn’t care if his daddy is wearing blue shoes or purple ones. He has claimed ownership of that picture and it’s sitting on his dresser and probably won’t ever move from there until he says so, replacing it with a picture of some floozy girl in 2024.  

That’s how I feel about my boy, too: I never felt embarrassed about the crying and the tears, but I wanted to know why he became so upset when it was time to practice.  

“Why are you crying, Jackson?” we asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he told us over and over again. “I don’t know.”

On his feet, Jackson was wearing the coolest pair of black-and-white cleats, which his mommy bought at Hibbet Sports after she baked bread for a customer. Shannon could have spent that money on herself — that was the original intention — but it went for Jackson instead. She bought the practice tee with the same money and Jackson’s daddy bought the glove with my coveted mileage reimbursement check.

The cleats and glove and tee will all go in the closet now — unless Jackson wants to get out in the yard and hit and catch, which is doubtful because right now he’s busy building houses.

When I got home from work Tuesday night, he had pulled together a rug, broom, a box, his John Deere tractor trailer, the Little Tikes basketball goal, and my beloved antique milk crate to make a home, all of this on the carport.

With a toy hammer in hand, Jackson lounged in his Lightning McQueen chair and invited me to come in.

“Come on in, Daddy,” he said, waving his arm for the invitation. “See my house.”

Jackson has no problem telling his mommy and daddy what he likes, which is why the toy box overfloweth. But until tee-ball he didn’t know how to tell Daddy what he doesn’t like, knowing the thing he doesn’t like is something his daddy cherishes.

Jackson, what I like most is for you to know I love you no matter what you do.

Well, except for the milk crate.

It had to go back inside the next morning. You have to draw the line somewhere.