Major League Baseball – here we come!
The first day of pee wee baseball starts with a parade. They call it a parade but really it just a bunch of kids walking down the street in uniform with no direction or no idea why they are there. Oh wait, yeah I guess that’s a parade. Half way through the parade J sees an entrance for the F train and tells me that they are done with the parade and want to take the F train home. I ask them if they are ok with missing the grand finale at the end and they both shrug and look at me as if to say, yeah, this pretty much sucks balls. My favorite part of the parade was right before. We are standing on some corner between random and nowhere and K sees the Brooklyn cyclones mascot. The mascot is a guy in a bird costume – akin to a Chuck E. Cheese character – he walks around and hangs around and takes pictures with kids. Well K hates Chuck E. Cheese and all characters in general. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech – he really tells me “daddy I hate Chuck E. Cheese”. So anyway, K sees the mascot coming towards where our team is standing and high-tails it in the other direction. Pulling me with him and me pulling J with me. I don’t know how far is far enough but apparently we haven’t gotten there yet when K sees a dog coming from the other direction. Wait, Stop. Ok, need to tell you a little something about K and dogs. At any given time, if we are waking on the sidewalk and K sees a dog, given an option of staying on the sidewalk or running into the street – K would choose the melancholy of oncoming traffic. The first time he did that I called him a fucking little shit. What??? He scared me and I swear when I get scared. The second time he did it I explained how cars hitting people is not a good thing for health reasons. One time he did it in front of his mother and she freaked and called him a fucking little shit too. No, she didn’t – but I bet to hell that she wanted to. Ok so he sees this dog and at the same time the mascot is still coming towards us. So which way to go? Right. K starts climbing up me as if he were a squirrel and I were a tree, meanwhile screaming at me like I am the one who put the dog there. It’s always my fault. Always.
Pee Wee baseball is pretty much the best thing ever. It really is. It’s the most organized managed chaos you’ll ever see. Think of drunk little mice running around in a maze and that’s what fielding is like. Think of the worst piñata contest you’ve ever seen and that’ll give you everything you need to know about batting. Don’t ask me why, but parents of pee wee kids on the same team start out as best friends. By the time a game is done, your cheeks hurt from laughing so much and high fives are pretty much doled out like every single second. At any given point someone is giving some kid a high five. Doesn’t even need to be YOUR kid. I touched the ball. Hey, high five. I threw the ball. Hey, high five. I caught the ball. Hey, high five. My balls itch. Why the fuck not, high five for that too. So, anyway its game day and the boys are in their uniforms looking very cute and very awesome. I gotta say – they are cute little bastards. So first they go into the field. Everyone is going to the sidelines and telling their kids to do something. So I figure I should also – “ummmm, keep your eye on the batter and if they hit, get the ball if it comes to you”. I turn around and when I look again, yep there K is – picking his nose. Nice!!! To his credit, he is actually very impressive with getting the ball once it comes his way. Then he holds it for about 3 minutes trying to decide where to throw it – I like the fact that it doesn’t bother him that he has 10 kids and 14 adults screaming at him to throw the ball. Big decision, can’t rush it. Not that I can say that about J. The closest J got to fielding the ball was when some kid hit it and it rolled into his foot. I’m not saying that it rolled nearby; I’m saying that it literally hit his foot and stopped. J just looked at the ball and then looked at everyone else as if to say “well, is someone going to get this fucking ball or what?” Yes, that actually happened.
Batting is fun. They go up there as if they’ve never held a bat before in their lives – and at first they look at their mommy – which would be cute if they didn’t do it while the coach was throwing the ball – with this look like “mommy, aren’t you proud of me?” Proud of what? Hit the fucking ball. So we get past that – “don’t look at mommy, look at the ball”. Then when you finally get them to swing – it feels like it’s in slow motion. You think for a second, wow this must be so special that my mind is slowing down time to enjoy it. Then you realize that nothing else is in slow motion and the bat is actually moving that slow. When they finally do connect, the ball rolls all of 3 feet and everyone starts screaming for the kid to run. It’s like Forest Gump. Run Forest, run. The kid stands there, looking at everyone and then they finally start running. It’s a coin toss – half of them for first base and the other half run for third base. One scientist actually ran for second base – I couldn’t understand that at all, but when he got there he looked like he had cured cancer. So K goes up to bat, he swings 5 times and on the 6th swing he connects – it’s a good hit (you know, nine feet) and he makes for first base. They are supposed to run and make believe a lion is chasing them. As in, fast. K must like lions or something, because at one point I thought he was actually running backwards – maybe he wanted to pet the fucking lion or something. I should have told the coach to tell K to pretend a tiny little Chihuahua was chasing him. Then J goes up. For some reason people always think that twins need to go back to back. J swings 6 times and none of them even pretend to come close to hitting the ball. You get 7. His confidence had been building, but today he had been striking out the last few times at bat. I look at my wife. We are both holding our breathe. We are WILLING him to hit the ball. We want it so bad. Then the ball comes and he swings – bam! I want to say he hit the ball, but it was more like the ball hit the bat. We don’t care. It barely moves 2 feet. We don’t care. We tell him to run. We are cheering, we are screaming. You’d think the Yankees were about to win the world freakin’ series – which is funny because most games end in a tie.
mydarlingdevils 