Dan and I both have baseball in our blood. My scientist friends would dispute this, but I’m fairly certain the nucleus of many of our blood cells is actually a baseball (with the full functionality of a “normal” nucleus, of course).
Like most boys, Dan played Little League ball and for his high school team. Like many, he went on to play college ball for St. Xavier and Notre Dame. And like few, he played for a couple of years of single A ball with the Twins organization. He’s a good player with mad defensive skills (his career defensive stats as a first baseman at ND played a big role in my calling him after we first met). He’s also been an instructor and a coach, loves the game, and knows what he’s talking about.
As for me, I played Little League softball, high school softball, a couple of years of travelling softball (before travelling softball was a must-do) and then four years of college softball with Augustana and Valparaiso. Despite declaring in my youth I’d never play slow-pitch softball, I played on many co-ed social club slow-pitch softball teams… championship teams. I grew up (and still am) a White Sox fan, and one of my favorite things to do is to sit in the stands at a baseball game (any game), appreciating the little things in the game and not just the home runs and strikeouts.
So it would come as no surprise that Dan and I know that our kids are going to also love baseball and are going to play the game. Really, the kids can be anything they want to be; but Cal’s going to want to be a baseball player, and Ella is going to want to be a baseball or softball player for sure. And they’re going to be good – really good. That’s the plan towards which we’re influencing them, anyway. We already have countless hours invested into driveway baseball (drawing a mini diamond on our driveway and hitting a whiffle ball with a whiffle bat), backyard batting sessions (also with a whiffle ball and bat) and many fights through “I can’t do it”/”yes, you can – keep trying” and “you’re not pitching it right”/”not every pitch is going to be perfect –don’t swing at the bad ones.”
Sure, Cal, a right hander, still steps with his right foot when he throws; but he throws it far. And, sure, he catches the ball like I remember my sister doing, arms stiff and stretched straight out in front of him; but that’s to be expected at 4. And the kid, a natural lefty batter, already has a sweet swing and can hit a line drive off of a pitched ball pretty consistently.
So Dan and I have our hearts set on Cal being good enough to be a first-round, big-contract baseball player – not that we really expect it… but, kind of, we do. Usually, Cal doesn’t say much when Dan lays out this expectation of him; but a couple of days ago, we got a somewhat unsettling response to it during our general conversation in the car. It went like this:
Dan: “Cal, next weekend, you’ll have THREE stay-at-home days in a row!”
Cal: “When will we have thirty-one hundred stay-at-home days in a row?” <He loves that number… uses it all the time>
Dan: “When you’re a first-round draft pick and you can take care of Mommy and Daddy.”
Cal: “Actually, I’m gonna be a teacher.”
We laughed it off but deep inside know that this scenario (both respectable and disappointing) is possible. We may need to up the exposure to baseball a bit as we encourage him to pursue his passions. I think that’s fair.
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