Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir by Fred Thompson Page A

high school almost fifty years ago? You look back and right before you is the most beautiful thing you ever saw in your life. It just wasn’t meant to be. You let what should have been slip right through your fingers. You’d give anything for another chance. This was not a girl. It was the most perfectly thrown football I had ever seen, and it was coming right at me as I stood in the end zone.
    Sports metaphors and life lessons learned from sports could fill (and have filled) innumerable books. Usually they have to do with such things as the importance of teamwork and not being deterred by temporary setbacks. Retired sports celebrities receive large fees for reminding companies’ employees that it takes an entire organization “working together” to build a good hedge-trimming machine.
    For the true sports fan, the game need serve no higherpurpose than the game itself. And games need to be played. Every little boy knows instinctively that the ball needs to be thrown, kicked, or hit. Then the transition begins. Having been taught all our young lives to share and be mindful of the feelings of others, we are introduced to the joys of sticking it to our best friends. We graduate from the joyous mayhem of the backyard to the school yard to the adult-supervised contests. And we learn as we grow older that behind every potbellied know-it-all fan and every pencil-necked sports-writer probably lies a bittersweet tale of unrequited love. Once upon a time, if only for a little while, they too were the boys of summer. They were going to be able to run faster, grow bigger, and do all the things that their college and professional heroes did. Then they had their first experience with their dreams not working out.
    For most kids who are moderately interested in sports, reality sets in at an early age. It’s when Dad pitches them “batting practice” (underhanded) for the first time and after forty or so pitches there is no contact between bat and ball. Junior begins to get the picture, his interest with regard to that particular sport becomes somewhat aligned with his ability, and he moves on to other sports or other pursuits.
    However, an intense interest in sports is hardwired into some kids. They may have a bit more ability than the average kid, but that really doesn’t matter so much in terms of their passion. They choose their teams, worship their heroes, andmost of all they want to play. They cling to the notion that someday they’ll be good enough not only to play but to play out their fantasies, too.
    Little League baseball is most boys’ introduction to competitive, organized sports. It is here, among the team selections, intense drills and practices, and tension-filled games, that we learn the true meaning of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”
    Many timid young boys think that baseball would be a wonderful game if you didn’t have to bat. Ironically, it was probably the greatest left-handed hitter of all time, Ted Williams, who gave voice to every little boy’s anxiety who had to come in from right field and bat: “They give us a round bat to hit a round ball. And then tell us to hit it squarely.” It’s not that deep down I didn’t want to bat, I just didn’t care to display my skills in front of all those people watching, since my success rate in making contact with the ball was not very high. For me, the world looked pretty great from right field.
    It is on these miniature baseball fields that some of us experienced the greatest exhilaration in our young lives (as well as some of our greatest embarrassments). Seeing my buddy Wayne hit a grounder back to the pitcher and make a beeline for third base instead of first base, as everybody looked on in amazement and then fell into convulsive laughter, was an all-time winner for me, and it is still the standard by which I measure embarrassing moments.
    It is here that we discover that good guys don’t always finish last—or first, either. Being a