I'm a baseball mom again!

I loved being a baseball mom in the past. It was so exciting to watch Jennifer first take up T-ball at age 5 then move through the groups as she repeated one year after another of baseball. She had a lot of fun and she enjoyed the sport. Even though some bad things happened, she still liked playing baseball.

That love of baseball never left her even after she stopped playing. She still had her heart in the game and her face would light up when watching movies like The Sandlot and Rookie of the Year. (One of these days, I’ll get her to watch A League of Their Own.)

Unfortunately for me, however, I stopped being a baseball mom after Jennifer stopped playing. I could no longer identify myself as a “baseball mom” but I also still loved the game. I often grew wistful seeing pins about Little League baseball that I pinned to my Baseball love board.

For some time, Jesse was not interested in playing baseball. Soccer was his sport. I was fine with that. Fine with being a soccer mom. Then he lost interest in soccer and went into gymnastics.

Recently, however, he told me he wanted to play baseball. That just came to me right out of the blue! And, unfortunately, it came at a bad time too: A couple of days after the deadline to sign him up for baseball. Still, I told him I would look into it and see if he could still play.

So I contacted Kidsports to see if there was any extra room for him on the team. There was! Yay! (They actually ended up adding two kids to the team in all.) I was so glad there was room for him and started the process of signing him up. I had to pay a late fee, but that was okay. At least he’ll get to play baseball!

So I told Jesse the good news and he got excited. We both went to the Kidsports office to complete the registration process.

Today was his first day of baseball practice. He loved it! He told me “baseball is awesome” and that he had a good time. He is pretty sore from practice but his father said he’ll get used to that in time.

The thing that happened at practice, though, is that the ball hit Jesse in the face a few times. It was NOT a hard hit. It was just when the ball rolled right up out of his mitt and bonked him in the face.

Later, while I was cooking dinner, Jesse told me he couldn’t believe that he got hit in the face with a baseball. (That actually happened to me too when I was a kid!) He went on and on about it. Finally, I told him, “You want to talk about getting hit in the face with a baseball, you go talk to your sister. She got the double whammy.” I told him about how Jen once got hit in the face with a baseball so hard, she had blood on her shirt. Later, I showed him the blog post I wrote about it, as well as the pictures of the bloody shirt. After he saw all that, he said, “I’m glad that didn’t happen to me.”

Well, we still love baseball. And so far, that particular horror story has not scared him off from playing on a baseball team. He’ll be heading off to baseball practice again next week and hopefully by then he can figure out a way to catch the ball without it hitting him anywhere.

Here are some pictures I took of Jesse at practice: