It's Baseball season

I had an interesting week when my wife and daughter headed for Ashville NC to the Billy Graham evangelical conference. We are Methodists but our church sent them as they figure it is something our church can use more of. They left Monday and came back Friday leaving me with my Grandson Sam for that amount of time also. You see, Sam didn’t have school this past week and I had to work. My wife is the Superintendent of the cemetery and I work for her so when she is gone, I also take over Superintendent duties. Needless to say, for an old man I was way over my head and there was nothing amusing about it. Perhaps I should change the name of my Blog to ………? Sam is 8 and baseball little League’s are in full swing so every chance we had we practiced in addition to the organized practiced sessions. Playing catch with him has taught me how to jump again. In normal life I don’t have much occasion to jump except in such situations as “Jumping out of the way” saves my life from some wild, woman driver trying to multi-task by smoking a cigarette, talking on a cell phone and trying to negotiate the parking lot and position in the drive-up line, all at the same time. Happened twice this past week at McDonalds. The jumps with Sam are straight up in the air or madly to the side to keep the ball from rolling under a vehicle. He lacks a little in his ball throwing control. On our first practice day, I figured I could catch him bare handed because I’m good and he doesn’t throw very hard. After 15 minutes I was looking for a glove. Dumb! This has been the first I have put on a glove in about 45 years and I have not forgot very much except the value of a good jock strap. 20 minutes into the third day and he threw me a hard grounder. The rest is history. No more kids for me. On our first practice session that I went to, with the team, the coach sent home a letter of regulations, rules and expectations. They were all to remember to bring a hat and gloves to each practice session and especially games. At the last session, 4 kids forgot to bring their gloves. They are not allowed to say “you suck” or they are sent home. One of the earlier practices, one of Sam’s teammates repeatedly kicked a mother, from another team, in the shin and didn’t even apologize. I’m not making this stuff up as it is verbatim from the coaches letter. He said jock straps are required and cups are recommended so we went out and bought Sam a jockstrap with a cup mounted into it. The thought of turning around in the seat and seeing him with the jockstrap around his head and the cup over his nose throws me into hysterics. Sam’s 1st time at bat, that I saw, he hit it and ran to first after some difficulty locating the base. [I have since found out that the reason for that is that the boys all tend to kick dirt wherever they are and they dig such a deep hole that they have to move the bases out in the tall grass to keep the runners from breaking their legs and no one can find them. Yup, kicking dirt and spitting are big. Sam has now taken up chewing bubble gum] The next batter got a little hit and as it was rolling out to right field, Sam, who is now running from 1st to 2nd stops, picks up the ball and fires it to 2nd for an out.? Some of them can catch but not throw, some can throw and not catch and some can do neither. In their simulated practice games the pitcher pitches the ball and the catcher misses the ball and runs back to the back stop to get it and fires it back to the pitcher who doesn’t catch it and being the 2nd and short stop are busy kicking dirt the ball rolls by them to the outfielder who picks it up and fires it back but once again 2nd and SS are kicking dirt so no one can catch it. It makes for long practices. I’ve noticed that, now one of the coaches is behind the catcher, with a glove on, calling balls and strikes and another one is out by centerfield to catch the balls that roll by everyone else. God bless the coaches. I can’t wait for the 1st game. In our spare time we laid around watching the Red Sox kick butt on TV.

After any type of practice Sam and I go to McDonalds for supper. Sam is in another growing streak and has moved passed the Kids Meals only so far as I have to buy the kids meal for the stupid toy and supplement this with extra hamburger or chicken. Meals tend to be quite expensive. Hopefully his new baseball spikes will last the season before he grows out of them. We managed to eat all of our meals out, for the week. This made for less dishes to wash on Friday but didn’t help with the laundry and the overall dirt that had managed to accumulate in the week they were gone. Friday was a little bit tough as the plane landed at 11:00am. Oh and by the way we had to paint the master bedroom, lay new carpet and have a new bed installed [one of those numbers things]. It was a busy, hectic,week but Sam and I, two dogs and the guinea pig all managed to survive and be stronger for it. Overall it was a really cool guy’s week.