Glove is a Many Splendored Thing

 To reiterate...Baseball 2012 was little on the shaky side. Our first e-mail came from the coach, who stated that he was our coach 'because no parents stepped up to take over.' So, great. A bunch of deadbeats who are going to be coached by a gruding parent. But it got even better: Billy Lyons, our Lions' coach, is a 22-year-old employee of the Rec Center who was assigned to us because of our deadbeat status - we were so deadbeat, we didn't even reach grudging level.

Matt served as Assistant because of his commitment to Ty's team, and there was no shortage of parents who 'didn't have time to coach', who nevertheless attended every practice and from the sidelines insisted they knew how to run a practice and would often tell the coaches what they should be teaching. Two coaches, surrounded by boys who can't follow directions, stop telling their teammates how much they suck, or be considered, by any criteria, universally familiar with the concept that you run to first before you run to second, and yet they should be learning learning hand signals on day one. So good times, right from the get-go.

Shane did well at first and catcher...when coach handed him his end-of-season trophy, he mentioned that Shane was the most knowledgeable about baseball, which he comes by naturally, living in this house. The other boys, for the most part, had never played baseball before, which is neither here nor there in the face of the fact that all but two of them had never played on ANY team sport before, which was glaringly obvious given their trouble learning sportsmanship, courtesy, appropriate language, respect, support, accountability, and the many other character traits to be gleaned from such endeavors. Good ballplayers, actually, but in the face of attitude, it didn't seem to account for much.

 In the spirit of not dwelling on the negativity...Shane ran and caught, but batting was nonexistent, for just about everybody: it's the first year of kid pitch, so if you didn't get hit, you were walked. Most innings were called by runs scored, not by outs. But once you made contact, there were many in-the-park doubles and triples and RBIs - football scores, just about every week.

So proud of Shaney, who really hung in there, and consistently attended practice and games, given the utter lack of joy involved in the endeavor this time around. It was hard for him to have kids arguing over the use of gear in the dugout, the kids who wouldn't shake his encouraging hand after they struck out, etc. And incredibly proud that he unequivocally states for the record that he'll absolutely be back for next season, just as long as we take care not to sign him up with the same teammates.

 Happy, happy, joy, joy.

 You can't go wrong with a first base coach of this level of ability and experience.

Ever-attentive, on the prowl, on the move.