Last night was the first game of the spring baseball season. This is Jackson’s second time to play, but it’s still something new. Last fall he played in a coach-pitch league. Now he’s in kid-pitch. While it might seem scary to have eight and nine year olds throwing fastballs at each other, none of the batters were hit by any of last night’s pitches. That’s more than I can say for the first game of our coach-pitch team.
But that really doesn’t have anything to do with what I want to say today. It’s just funny.
The season-opener was last night at 7pm. I cringed when I got the news. The game starts at seven? On a school night? Oh, boy. Our kids usually go to bed at 7:30. Life is just plain easier when they go to bed on time, but sometimes we just have to let that go. It’s the season-opener, after all.
There were some challenges, of course. Jackson spent much of the afternoon in uniform. We ate a wind-blown picnic dinner at the ball fields while wondering if we were indeed in the right place. Parker is a restless little guy, who doesn’t enjoy sitting on bleachers for extended periods of time. The boys went to bed two hours later than usual.
But all of these challenges are also provided great moments to be enjoyed.
Jackson spent much of the afternoon in uniform, including the time spent with our HomeTeam. How cool is it to go to non-sports-related places while dressed in your full uniform? Yeah, I play baseball. We’re headed out to the fields right after this. My uniform IS awesome, isn’t it? I know he likes running around in that getup.
We ate a wind-blown picnic dinner at the ball fields. We didn’t see any of J’s teammates, so we kind of wondered if we had come to the right place. But that’s only because we were really early, so we got to take our time enjoying our meal. It was windy and a little chilly, but a beautiful day. And I would always rather be cold than hot. Eating at a ball field picnic table is different than eating in my dining room, but it was a chance for my family to sit down around a table and share a meal. I can’t ask for more than that! When we were done eating, Andy and J went to warm up and Parker and I read a chapter from a library book.
Parker doesn’t really enjoy sitting on the bleachers to watch the game. We can only manage to focus his attention on the field when Jackson is up to bat. Even then, he may not watch the whole thing. Instead, Parker scaled the chain link backstop, ran footraces with Andy, and paced back and forth on the low stone wall between our field and the next, lost in the world of his imagination. Every outing with Parker is an adventure.
When we finally got home and got the boys showered, brushed, and jammied, it was 9:30. Exhausted, they happily fell into bed and quickly drifted off to dreamland.
While we won’t be taking the whole family to any more 7pm school-night games, I’m glad we were all there last night to kick the season off right. I’m looking forward to the rest of the games, watching Jackson play and entertaining Parker (or should I say being entertained BY Parker) in the stands.
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