Reid Plays Baseball, and Sania Eats Cake

That's right. Reid's in a t-ball league. It is often the funniest thing I have ever seen. Several of Reid's school chums are in it, including the indomitable Joseph. But look at the concentration:



He looks great in his A's hat. The entire system is weird and probably illegal. There are four teams in the group of people who get together on Saturday morning to watch children run without any idea what is happening. The teams are two reasonably local squads, the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles. Then there are two other teams, presumably selected because their primary-colored uniforms are completely different from the uniforms of the Nats and the O's. They are the LA Dodgers (blue) and the Oakland A's, or as Reid calls them, the Ahhhhs. (In school, we learn the sounds you make when you read a letter, not the letter's name. A is "ah." It's hysterical.)

Initially, we pitch and catch with the grown-ups, which is an absolute blast because the kids become bored very quickly, and of course there is a massive enjoyable play structure just adjacent to the ball field where the kids are dying to go. If tossing the old ball around lasts about 120 seconds too long, you'll lose 'em.

They don't use gloves (they don't 'catch' in the conventional way anyhow), but rather one half of one of these velcro ball-games. All the children attempt to catch by closing their eyes and holding the velcro disks in front of their faces. This seems perfectly normal to me.

Many of the parents shout encouragement or advice to their children during pitch and catch. I just repeatedly ask Reid to look at me when I am throwing a ball at him. I know he won't catch it; I don't want him to get hit in the face, especially because he insists on practicing for his teenage years by pulling his hat down super-low on his face.



During Reid's spring break he went to a baseball game with his grammy and pawpaw. I seem to recall something being explained about the pitcher's rubber during that experience. As you can see, most of the time, the boys stand directly on the pitcher's rubber (there's no pitcher in t-ball, thank god). As a result of having somewhere to stand, the boys find defense to be much more exciting than boring old batting. If they are looking at the batter (talk about a big if), all the defensive players will run in the general direction of the ball and fall on it, together, while the ball scuttles out from the scrum with exactly no-one giving chase. During one of his at bats, Reid popped a skittering ground ball down the first base line, and as always waited until the ball had traveled a good distance before starting to run (usually toward the mound). This time, though, he ran toward first, and past first, in an attempt (of course) to field his own hit. Awesome.

Nevertheless, I said most of the time the boys stand on the pitcher's mound because some of the time, they crouch on it, playing with the dirt. Obviously.

After 45 minutes of practice and game-play (which is basically each team gets two at-bats, wherein everyone bats, and everyone hits a single, except the last kid who gets to hit a home run and clear the bases, often before several of the distracted children who were on base when he or she hits said home run), the children are finally released (with a random selection of baseball cards as prizes) to attack a task with far more gusto than their fielding duties: Playground time.

One last item: On Sania's actual birthday, we gave her more cake, and she ate it, and was cute.