I (62F) have been raising my grandson Darnell (9M) since his mother, my daughter Kezia, passed three years ago. Darnell has cerebral palsy – mild, but it affects his left side. He walks with a slight drag. He runs slower than the other kids. He also loves baseball more than he loves anything else on this earth, and I have watched him practice in our driveway every single day for two months to get ready for these tryouts.
The Westfield Youth Baseball League has a written policy on their website – I printed it out and have it in my purse right now – that says they do not discriminate based on disability and that all children will be evaluated on their effort and coachability, not just raw athleticism.
I drove Darnell forty minutes to that field on Saturday morning. He was wearing his new cleats. He had his glove. He had been up since 5:30 because he was so excited he couldn’t sleep.
The head coach is a man named Troy Basham (I’d guess mid-40s). He ran the kids through drills for about an hour. Darnell tried every single one. He dropped a catch. He was slow on a grounder. He also threw a perfect line drive to second base that made two other dads clap.
After the drills, Coach Basham pulled me aside while Darnell was getting water.
He said, “I want to be honest with you, ma’am. We’re building a competitive roster this year. I don’t think this environment is the right FIT for your grandson.”
I said, “He hasn’t even finished the evaluation.”
He said, “I’m trying to save you both some disappointment.”
I said, “Is there something specific in his performance that disqualified him?”
And he looked at me – he LOOKED RIGHT AT ME – and said, “He’s going to get hurt trying to keep up. You understand what I’m saying. He’s just not built for this.”
Not built for this.
My hands were completely still. I heard Darnell behind me calling out to one of the other boys, laughing about something.
I told Coach Basham, “Thank you for your time,” turned around, walked Darnell to the car, and told him we were going to get lunch and come back for the results later.
I did not go get lunch.
I drove to the league’s administrative office, which was twelve minutes away, and I walked in with that printed policy in my hand.
The director, a woman named Pat Odom, looked up from her desk when I came through the door.
I put the paper on her desk.
I told her exactly what Coach Basham said, word for word, because I had typed it into my phone the second I got to the car.
She looked at the paper. She looked at her computer. She picked up her phone.
I don’t know who she called. But when she hung up, she said there would be a formal review and that Darnell should complete his tryout evaluation – TODAY – with a different evaluator present.
My daughter Kezia’s sister, Renee, says I should’ve waited to see if Darnell made the team before escalating, that I might’ve embarrassed him or made things worse, and that now his name is “complicated” in the league before he’s even played a game.
My friends are split.
But I went back to that field with Darnell and the look on Coach Basham’s face when he saw me walk through that gate with Pat Odom –
What Darnell Knows and What He Doesn’t
He thought we went to McDonald’s.
That’s what I told him when he asked why we were driving away from the field. I said I needed something to eat and we’d go back in a little while. He asked if he could get a McFlurry. I said yes. Then I drove to the league office and left him in the car with my phone playing YouTube, and I was in and out in under fifteen minutes.
He did not know any of it was happening.
That was deliberate. Darnell is nine years old and he has already had to understand more hard things than any nine-year-old should. He understands that his mother is gone. He understands that his left hand doesn’t always do what he tells it to. He has sat in waiting rooms and doctor’s offices and heard people talk around him and about him in that particular tone, the careful one, the one that means they’ve already decided something.
He knows that tone.
I was not going to let him hear it at a baseball tryout.
So he sat in my Buick watching videos about kids building Lego sets, and I walked into Pat Odom’s office with a piece of paper and thirty-seven years of not being ignored by people who thought they could get away with it.
The Paper in My Purse
I want to explain why I printed that policy.
I printed it three weeks ago, before I even registered Darnell for tryouts. Because I have been in enough situations in my life to know that when someone tells you the rules work one way, you need to have the rules in your hand before you need them. Not after. Before.
My late husband Curtis used to say I was paranoid. I used to say I was prepared. We argued about it for thirty-one years and then he died and I was right, but that’s a different story.
The policy is two paragraphs. Clear language. “The Westfield Youth Baseball League is committed to providing equal opportunity for participation to all children regardless of physical ability. Evaluation criteria include effort, attitude, coachability, and demonstrated skill. No child will be excluded solely on the basis of a physical limitation.”
Solely. That word is in there.
I had highlighted it in yellow. I had written the URL at the top in ballpoint pen so nobody could tell me the page didn’t exist. I had folded it twice and put it in the zippered pocket of my purse behind my insurance cards, and it had been sitting there for three weeks waiting for exactly this moment.
Troy Basham did not know about the paper.
That was his mistake.
The Twelve-Minute Drive
I have replayed that drive more times than I can count now.
Darnell was in the backseat. He had his cleats off because I’d told him not to wear them in the car and he’d listened. He had his glove on his right hand, which he does sometimes, just wears it around. He was looking out the window and humming something I didn’t recognize.
I kept my hands at ten and two.
He’s just not built for this.
I thought about what Kezia would have done. My daughter was not a quiet woman. She was funny and loud and she took up space in a room the way some people just do, naturally, like they have a right to it. She would have said something to Troy Basham’s face right there on that field that would have made the other parents turn around.
I am not Kezia.
I said “thank you for your time” and I walked to my car and I typed every word into my phone and I drove to the administrative office with my hands at ten and two.
Different methods. Same destination.
Pat Odom’s Office
It smelled like a copy room. Old paper and toner and a plug-in air freshener that wasn’t quite covering either one.
Pat Odom was probably late fifties. Reading glasses on a beaded chain. A coffee mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST REFEREE that I suspected was a gift she hadn’t chosen. She looked up when I came in and she had the face of someone who deals with upset parents on a regular basis and has developed a very specific neutral expression for it.
I put the paper on her desk before she could say anything.
I said, “I was just at the Westfield tryouts at Clement Park. My grandson Darnell is nine years old and has mild cerebral palsy. The head coach, Troy Basham, pulled me aside during the tryout and told me my grandson was, quote, not built for this, and that he was going to get hurt trying to keep up. He said this before the evaluation was complete. I have your league’s non-discrimination policy here. I’d like to know how you’d like to proceed.”
She looked at the paper.
She looked at it for a while.
Then she looked at her computer screen. Clicked something. Clicked something else.
“What time did this occur?” she asked.
I checked my phone. “Approximately 10:40 this morning.”
She nodded slowly. The kind of nod that isn’t agreement, it’s just acknowledgment that she’s heard you and is deciding what to do with it.
She picked up her phone. Desk phone, not cell. She turned slightly away from me when she dialed, which told me she didn’t want me to hear who she was calling, which told me it was someone with authority over Troy Basham.
The call was short. Maybe ninety seconds. She said “mm-hmm” three times and “I understand” once and then she hung up.
“Mrs. – ” she started.
“Dorsett,” I said.
“Mrs. Dorsett. Darnell’s evaluation will continue today. We’ll have an additional evaluator present. Can you have him back at the field by 1 p.m.?”
It was 11:15.
“Yes,” I said.
I picked up my paper. She didn’t try to keep it.
Going Back
I told Darnell we were going back for the second part of tryouts.
He said, “I thought it was done.”
I said they wanted to see a few more things.
He said, “Did I do okay?”
I said, “You threw a line drive to second base and two dads clapped.”
He thought about that. Then he put his cleats back on in the parking lot of a Walgreens where I had stopped to buy him a bottle of water and some peanut butter crackers because I had told him we were getting lunch and then not gotten him lunch. He ate the crackers in the car and got crumbs on the seat and I didn’t say anything about it.
We pulled into Clement Park at 12:52.
I could see the field from the parking lot. Some of the morning kids were still there, or their parents were. Troy Basham was standing near the dugout with his clipboard. He was talking to another coach, not looking at the parking lot.
Pat Odom was standing near the gate.
I got out of the car. Darnell got out of the car. He had his glove on before he’d even closed the door.
We walked toward the gate.
Pat Odom saw us and raised her hand in a small wave.
Troy Basham looked up.
I don’t have a word for the expression that crossed his face. It wasn’t shock, exactly. It was more like the moment when you realize the thing you thought was behind you has been in front of you the whole time.
He looked at Pat Odom. He looked at me. He looked at Darnell, who was already looking at the field, already somewhere else in his head, already thinking about baseball.
I did not look at Troy Basham for more than two seconds.
I put my hand on Darnell’s shoulder and walked him through that gate.
What Renee Said and Why She’s Wrong
Renee is not wrong because she doesn’t care about Darnell. She loves that boy. She was Kezia’s sister and she shows up and she calls and she’s good people.
But she’s wrong.
She said I should have waited. Should have seen if he made the team first. Should have kept it quiet and not made his name “complicated.”
Here’s what I know about waiting.
Waiting works when the system will eventually do the right thing on its own if you give it time. Sometimes that’s true. I have waited in my life when waiting was the right call. I know the difference.
Troy Basham was not going to do the right thing on his own. He had already decided. He had looked at my grandson’s left side dragging slightly when he ran and he had made a determination that had nothing to do with that line drive, nothing to do with the two months of driveway practice, nothing to do with the written policy sitting in my purse.
If I had waited, Darnell would have gotten a letter in the mail.
And I would have had to explain to a nine-year-old boy who loves baseball more than anything on this earth that he didn’t make the team, and I would have known why, and I would have known I could have done something about it and chose not to.
That’s not protection. That’s just a different kind of hurt.
Kezia did not raise a child who drags his left side and still shows up every day so that I could stand at a gate and wait.
I went through the gate.
—
Darnell finished his evaluation at 1:47 p.m. on Saturday. There was a second evaluator present. He dropped one catch and made two good throws and struck out swinging on a pitch that was honestly a little outside, and when it was over he shook hands with both evaluators the way I had taught him to.
Troy Basham was not one of the evaluators.
We are waiting for the results. I don’t know what they’ll be.
But I know what I did. And I’d do it again before the car door closed.
If this one got you, pass it on. Somebody out there needs to read it.
For more stories about standing up for your loved ones, check out My Grandson Held His Cleats the Whole Drive Home. I Had a Meeting with the School Board by Thursday. or even My Stepdaughter’s Teacher Said I Wasn’t Qualified. Becca Was Listening to Every Word.. And for a different kind of impactful encounter, read I Grabbed a Stranger’s Arm Outside a Coffee Shop. Then I Said Something I Can’t Take Back..
