Baseball Ready

Our entire family has embraced baseball over the last few months.  Back in February, I took Declan to the tryouts for the local league.  If you can imagine, we didn’t take any equipment with us and didn’t know what was going on.  All the other boys had bats, gloves, batting helmets and cleats/spikes.  Declan attempted to hit the ball but missed every single pitch and wasn’t even holding the bat correctly.

Declan has put his heart and soul into learning how to play baseball over the last few months.  He’s practiced his catching and hitting and plagues me daily to throw pitches to him.  On Saturday, his team won the Championship and the smile on his face, when he collected his trophy, says it all.

Yesterday evening, we had the team party to award trophies and celebrate the winning of the Championship.  The coach, John Richards, very sweetly gave a short description of each player before he awarded the trophy.  When it was Declan’s turn, he explained that there were 128 players in the league and Declan was 128th to be picked.  And no one wanted him!  Here was this English boy who didn’t have his own equipment or even know how to hold the bat.  John decided to take a gamble on Declan and didn’t like the idea that no one else wanted him.  The coach then told everyone that Declan had turned up at the first practice in February with a wooden bat and a plastic kid’s baseball glove.  They knew they had a project on their hands but they’ve worked and worked with Declan and made him a hitter.  In the last couple of games he scored doubles.  He still has loads of room to improve but has loved every minute of it.  And the coach genuinely seemed to have enjoyed watching his progress.  They even gave him a special Most Improved Player Award.

Not only has Declan learned all about baseball.  But I’ve learned how to be a baseball Mom.  I know now that if the pitcher throws a bad ball and your batter doesn’t swing, you shout ‘good eye!’  If your batter doesn’t manage to hit the ball but just touches it slightly you shout ‘that’s OK, you got a piece of it.’  If the pitcher hits the batter it’s ‘way to take one for the team.’  If the players out in the field aren’t concentrating, you shout ‘baseball ready’ at them.

Now we’ve just finished the season, my son’s team won the Championship.  I like the irony of Declan, the boy that no one wanted, being on the winning team.  Now Declan owns his own bat, glove, batting helmet and baseball cleats.   He’s baseball ready.