Journal 1990: Coaching My Son's Little League Team

By Joseph Sutton

Journal 1990, like all of San Francisco writer Joseph Sutton's yearly journals, is not only a short history of one year in his life and the country's life, but it also reads like fiction in the sense of "What's going to happen next?" A major portion of Journal 1990 deals with Little League baseball. What's going to happen with Sutton's relationship with his 9-year-old son as he plays Little League baseball for the first time? How will Sutton's team fare in his first attempt at coaching? There are other parts of Journal 1990 that deal with the first war with Iraq, getting a book published for the first time, plus the highs and lows of being a writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Sutton
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005168322

Joseph Sutton

Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in philosophy. He earned a teaching credential and a degree in history at Cal State University Los Angeles and taught high school history and English for many years. Sutton, who has been writing for more than 50 years, has published over two dozen books. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

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JOURNAL 1990

Coaching My Son's Little League Team

by

Joseph Sutton

Copyright 2022 by Joseph Sutton

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Description

Journal 1990, like all of San Francisco writer Joseph Sutton's yearly journals, is not only a short history of one year in his life and the country's life, but it also reads like fiction in the sense of What's going to happen next? A major portion of Journal 1990 deals with Little League baseball. What's going to happen with Sutton's relationship with his 9-year-old son as he plays Little League baseball for the first time? How will Sutton's team fare in his first attempt at coaching? There are other parts of Journal 1990 that deal with the first war with Iraq, getting a book published for the first time, plus the highs and lows of being a writer.

Monday, January 1, 1990

Democracy is Taking Hold

It's the beginning of a new decade. There were so many articles and TV shows that had their Best of the 1980s or Top Ten of the '80s. That's all we heard about in the last two weeks of December.

The big story of 1989, or maybe of any year since World War II, was the peaceful revolution that took place in Eastern Europe, where countries like Hungary, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and East Germany removed their dictatorial, one-party systems and are now striving to become democracies. All of this has taken place in the last couple of months. The world is becoming democratized. People in those countries can now have an outlet to express themselves.

China's dictatorial government was on the verge of change this past spring but their revolution failed because the hardline leaders were more intent on their own power instead of change, and because of that, many Chinese were killed in the streets. South America, in the last decade, has become more democratic, as has the Philippines. There's still a way to go, but it seems that democracy in Eastern Europe has gotten over the hump and is now on its way. Russia is also on its way to becoming a democratic country. Mikhail Gorbachev is the main man for all this change in Eastern Europe and Russia. In my mind, he's the man of the second half of the 20th century.

Monday, January 8, 1990

My Family

My son Ray, 8, is having confidence and sleeping problems. His third grade teacher says he doesn't have confidence in his abilities. At night, around 11 or 12, he cries, gets up, checks to see if Joan and I are in bed, then goes back to bed again. This has been going on for a year and a half. It's so frustrating to see him suffer like this. I tried to help him with his confidence this past Holiday season by showing him how to throw and catch the football. He seemed pretty good at it, too. Oh, how I feel for him when he cries out at night. I hope it's not some mental thing, but it probably is. It's depression of some sort.