Play Ball!
Why do we love baseball so very much?? It is after all THE great American past time, but if that weren’t enough, one could only look at the skill it takes to play the game well. Please understand that it’s not lost on me how bored some people get while watching an MLB game on tv (those people are crazy though). When you see a game in a place like Kauffman Stadium, someone like Moose comes up to bat and you hear that crack of the bat connecting with the ball. The crowd goes wild. The outfielder is scrambling to catch the ball, only to drop it, or better yet misjudge it and not catch it at all, allowing the batter to transition into the runner on first! Man, I got chills!
Now, let us talk about when they are little. Let us start with the instructional league. Have you ever seen anything cuter?? Those little bitty babies with that big helmet on their little head, causing them to look like a living little bobble head? Adorable! We aren’t really watching for skill at this point, more for entertainment purposes. Then they move up to tee-ball and are just as cute, and still quite bobbly headed, now the entertainment value is coupled with a never ending battle between the little All Star and that blasted tee.
Now they’re into coach or kid pitch and whoa! These kids are learning so much about the game and are expected to know it every time. Of course that’s what we want. We want to win, right? We want our children to be successful. We want them to learn the importance of being on a team and what that means. We want them to take guidance from their coaches and learn from their mistakes. There’s so much going on with them at this age already, and watching them learn to play the game we love so much? It’s a wonderful thing to see. We have no idea what their future holds, maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see them make it to a great college team, maybe the minors, and who knows maybe even the bigs. But for now we’re going to enjoy them right where they are and cheer them on like they’re playing at the K.
