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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

From Mudville Mom to Proud Mom

(Warning:  "Mudville Mom" is taking a break from her snarky, tell-it-like-it-is, opinionated views to bring you a heartfelt account of her life as a baseball mom.)

Hello, baseball fans!  It's been a while since I've blogged, because honestly, there hasn't been much worth blogging about lately.  I was going to write about Nolan Arenado's hitting streak, but it stopped at 28 games.  Yu Darvish's no-hitter?  No, it was broken up in the bottom of the ninth inning.  José Fernandez being on the DL?  That's just so devastating for baseball that I don't even want to think about it.  So instead of blogging, I've been enjoying my son's Little League baseball games and beaming as a proud mom.

My son is 10, and by no means is he the next Babe Ruth.  He tried machine-pitch baseball in first grade, but thought that he was better-suited to play soccer, which he has played since Kindergarten.  I can honestly say that he's lightning-fast, but he's way too nice on the soccer field.  The competitive Puerto Rican in him has not come out yet, and he's more of a "No, it's OK; YOU go ahead and kick the ball!" type of kid.  But he's been with the same teammates since first grade, and he genuinely likes to play soccer every fall.

This spring, Son decided to give baseball another try.  He has always enjoyed watching baseball with me, and now that he has a good understanding of the game, he figured he could give it a shot.  So we took him to tryouts and were disappointed to find out that Son was placed on a machine-pitch team again, while his best buddy was moving up to the Minors.  Son was devastated, and I thought "Boy, this is going to be a LONG season!"  I thought he would whine about having to go to practices and we would have to drag him to all his games.  Well, putting my kid in machine-pitch turned out to not be such a travesty after all.

For those of you not familiar with Little League rules, machine-pitch is a level where they focus on instruction, skill development, and fundamentals.  They don't officially keep score at the games (though there is always someone keeping very detailed track of each at-bat, hit, out, and run), and each game lasts less than two hours.  You also aren't allowed to heckle (gone are the days of "go batterbatterbatter, SWINGbatter!" and "We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher!"), and all the parents had to take some sort of oath on Opening Day promising they weren't going to be obnoxious potty-mouths and were going to behave themselves appropriately while spectating (they clearly haven't seen me during a baseball game).  Now I must say, I've been pretty good so far, though I have questioned two plays with the coach and have asked if the infield-fly rule is used in Little League.  I'm sorry; I know the game, so I'm going to question!

So why has my son had such a good experience so far?  First of all, he's one of the biggest kids on the team (since he's on the older side for machine-pitch), so he's naturally beyond the "playing with the dirt in the infield and looking at the birds in the outfield" phase.  He always plays hard, and because he knows the game, he knows where to stand, who to throw the ball to, and how to get someone out (when playing first base one time, he decided against trying to make a leaping catch because he figured it would get him off the bag, and as the catcher at last night's game, he made the last out because he knew he had to cover the plate and tag the runner coming from third base when the ball was thrown to him).  He also has a very good coach, a parent-volunteer who stresses fairness and good sportsmanship and has even called out a few opposing coaches who have not played nice.  His kid is not the best on the team, which my son finds refreshing, and he genuinely likes to teach little kids how to play good baseball.

My son still has a long way to go - remembering not to slow down as he's reaching first base (he's afraid of running into the kid covering the base); working on catching fly balls; following his swing all the way through so his hits can someday leave the infield - but he's already come a long way, and whether he decides to play baseball in coming years or not, at least I know I'm raising a kid who plays hard, can think under pressure, and gets along with his peers.  I may consider myself a die-hard baseball fan, but I am a mom first and foremost, and my kids make me proud every day.

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