Thursday, March 18, 2010

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

It was a St. Patrick's Day party, one with adults drinking Guinness and kids drinking juice boxes. My kid ran over to me saying "Dada, dada! Let's play baseball!" He had a gray plastic kid-sized bat in one hand and a fluorescent green tennis ball in the other. I put down my bottle of beer and grabbed the ball from Judah. I threw a slow, underhand pitch to him and he hit it fairly well, knocking it to the tree on my left.

I threw it to Judah again and again, and his batting average was starting to blow my mind. Probably somewhere around .400. Not bad for a four-year-old who doesn't visit the batting cages very often, or at all. I thought it was time to stop when he hit the ball toward the windows of the garage and knocked over some decorative bamboo poles. But some of the other kids saw how much fun he was having, so they started to congregate next to him.

I told Judah we'd better put the baseball bat down so we don't break anything, but he wanted one more swing of the bat before handing it over to the others. I threw it to him and he hit the ball solidly and it nailed me right in the crotch. One other kid ran over yelling "My turn! my turn!" Yeah, right. Like I was gonna allow that to happen again. I was taking my ball and going home.

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