Strikeout
Posted on June 1, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
Poor Athena. We signed her up for baseball some time ago, but thanks to the weather the season has been a total bust: They managed to play three games (which they won, so that’s nice), but four others have been rained out (including today’s game) and one was cancelled due to bad scheduling on the part of someone — her team’s opponent was scheduled for two games at the same time. There’s no one to blame for most of this — no one could have known that the last May (and the first day of June) would be as wet as they have been around here — but it’s still a bummer. All the games are scheduled for around 6pm, which is apparently the perfect time to have a thunderstorm. We’re well into the season; hopefully at the end of it they’ll have played more games than they’ve had cancelled on them.
How’s she doing? Is she having fun when she plays?
What grade?
I’m volunteered to be my youngest sprog’s youth baseball coach, 3rd grade. Around these parts they don’t officially keep score until 4th grade, but by 3rd the kids themselves unofficially keep track.
Who cares how the team is doing! How is Athena herself doing?
I played softball a few years ago. A 10-game season, every Friday night. We started in early May with the season supposed to end in late July.
It rained so much that summer, we finished in September.
Athena has fun when she plays, and doesn’t seem horribly put out when she doesn’t. She bats well (she leads the line-up), and fields okay. The girls on the team are first and second graders. They do officially keep score, but they don’t make a big deal out of it.
Cool. I’ve done a fair amount of coaching youth baseball. Grades one through six. I didn’t seek it out – the opportunity was thrust upon me. Having four kids will do that to a guy.
Two years ago while coaching a first grade game I saw a hot air balloon taking off way out past the outfield. When my team came in from the field I had them all turn together, look at the balloon, and ooh and ahh. I gave them a minute or so of gawking but then we had to get back to the game.
Sometimes the little things are the best.
That’s a cool thing to get into. I’m majorly for team sports, especially taken not too seriously.
As for missing matchs, I’m in Imagination’s team in the London media league, and we drew one match and lost all the others we played last year. The others got cancelled because the other teams couldn’t pull together a team (media hours vary, eh?) and we got so many points in forfeit that we got promoted! Moral of the story? I… I dunno… but we’ve won one of our three games this year too. They didn’t show up either!
Chris,
Are you refering to cricket? I had a great time years ago explaining (via email exchanges) baseball to a colleague of mine in Hursley. He returned the favor by explaining cricket to me.
I’m not very good at cricket.
Next time she complains, put her outside with a pitch-back during the next thuunderstorm. That’ll make a big-leaguer out of her.
Our HS soccer coach would run us right through thunderstorms, until the football huddle got hit and the state began to monitor that kind of stuff more closely. We went 18-1, and played well in poor weather.
If you need a visual… I was running laps once when a tornado was going through the town south of us. I swear to Allah!
I’m not very good at cricket. I’m not very good at softball, either, and that is what I was referring to!
Actually, I’m not at all bad at softball, it’s just that we drink Tequila while we play. (Hey, it is the media league…) I think there’s some kind of correlation with our amount of runs per innings and the amount we’ve consumed, but I just can’t put my finger on it…
I played baseball in various leagues from 7 years old till I was 23. Sometimes for 2 or 3 teams at a time. My strongest memories (except for a few lucky plays) were how many games were rained out. I remember ( this was in the 50’s and 60’s) looking out the window and wondering “Would we play tonite?”
Wish her good luck and have fun!