Take Me Out to the Ballgame

It's just past 7:30 a.m., the beginning of May, and I'm sitting in Bongo Java before work.  Old school it is, as I'm having a Mood Elevator made by Josh, one of my all time favorite baristas.  Anywhere.  Josh is really the last man standing from the old crew at Bongo Java.  He makes the only iced coffee drink I like.

Exams are over and the Belmont U. kids are mostly gone for the summer.  Some of the upperclassmen are still around waiting for graduation later this week.  Parking will be easier for the next 3 months, for sure.  We'll be able to get into Chago's and the other restaurants easier, too.  The quiet summer in the neighborhood begins.  It's the cycle of life living near a college campus.  We've been riding that wave for 15 years.

I wanted to write a bit about Joe's baseball game Monday night, while it was still relatively fresh in my mind.  The Junior Dodgers are having a good season, although with mostly 7 year olds, they're one of the youngest teams in the Rookie division of WNSL.  Moving up early in the fall to hit off the machine as mostly 6 year olds helped tremendously, as I knew it would.

Monday night, we were playing an older team, the Cubs.  As Joe and I walked up to field #4 at Harpeth Hills Church of Christ - my favorite field and one with so many happy memories - a Cubs' player standing near home plate looked at us and said, "we're going to cream you."  In response, I looked at him and said, "you may.  Or, you might strike out four times."

Father of the year.

One of our best players, Trey, busted his lip in warmups when he missed a ball thrown by a coach and it hit him in the face.  Not too hard, but hard enough to bust his lip, which bled and pretty quickly swelled.  Trey sat the first two innings - he normally plays first base - and Joe stepped in at first for him.  Joe's a gamer and did reasonably well even with his infielder's, small glove, getting a couple of putouts.

Early on, it looked like the kid was right, as the Cubs put five on us in the first inning.  We managed a measly run, then the Cubs scored two more.  7-1 after two innings.  It was looking like a long day for us, which in no fun when you're running the pitching machine like I was.  Our boys were struggling at the plate, which adds pressure to me on the machine because I want to try to give them something to hit.  The hard part is, of course, if they don't hit I feel like I don't have the machine dialed in well enough to give them something to hit.

Suddenly, in the third inning, the Junior Dodgers' bats exploded.  Everybody started hitting.  We batted around, scoring eight runs in one inning to take a 9-7 lead.  The Cubs and their parents were shell shocked.  I had the pitching machine dialed in and the boys were dialed in.

The best part of the game - hell, maybe the best part of my Junior Dodgers season - was when George Bell got his first two solid hits of the season.  He and I have put in extra work together with his hitting, at practice and before games, and it paid off Monday night.  When he got his first hit, our parents cheered loudly as I raised my arms in triumph while he ran to first base.  I made eye contact with his parents who could hardly contain themselves.  I ran over to first to congratulate George and slapped him on the helmet.

It was such a great moment and, for me, encapsulated why I love coaching baseball so much.  It's great, of course, to coach my sons.  But it's great, too, and so satisfying to see a boy struggle, work hard and be rewarded for his hard work by experiencing a small measure of success in a game situation.

This is special group of boys, these Junior Dodgers.  7 and 8 year olds are so much fun to coach.  It's a great age.  Competitive but not too much so.  Not much strategy and mostly all fun.

It was a great night.  A happy night.  A baseball night.  These are such memorable times on the baseball fields.  I'm appreciating them now because I know one day in the not too distant future, they'll be gone.