our oldest son has recently started playing baseball for the 1st time. he didn't play t-ball, but instead jumped right into coach pitch. i had been pitching wiffle balls to him in the backyard for some time, but this is the first time he's playing with real baseballs (albeit those slightly softer ones for kids) and with the pitching coming overhand from 30 feet away as opposed to 10 or 15 feet underhand.
we've had four practices so far and he's probably about in the middle of the pack relative to the other boys in terms of hitting. he has a nice swing that is one of the better ones, but he's just not making much contact yet. since his swing is aggressive, i'm not too worried.
for the last 20 minutes of each practice, the coach has them "scrimmage", which is where they bat until they hit the ball and then they run to first. once they've batted, they rotate around the infield until all the boys have hit. in the interest of time, if they don't make contact after five pitches or so, they hit off the tee.
last night, keaton didn't hit the ball, although he did foul one or two, and subsequently had to hit off the tee. about half of the boys did this as well. i didn't think much of it, although i was really pulling for him to hit the pitched ball.
anyway, as has been covered ad nauseum, our youngest boy is a handful. as such, he becomes too much to contain about halfway through each practice and my wife takes him home while i stay until the end of practice (we go in separate cars since we're both coming from work). therefore, my wife doesn't always see how keaton hits. last night she was putting him to bed and asked him if he had fun at practice and if he hit the ball well. he said he had fun, but that he didn't hit the ball and had to use the tee. not knowing that the tee was standard practice, she asked him why he had to use the tee and he said, "because i'm not very good".
oh god. that just tears me up inside. i don't know if i'm cut out to be a "sports parent", because things like that really get to me. i know he's five and it's really nothing, but i hate to think of him getting bummed out because he doesn't think he's good enough. the thing is, he's not bad. it's only been four practices and getting one's timing down is a hard thing to do. i'm confident that this particular thing will work itself out because he really does have a pretty good swing, but i also know that it's probably the first of many times that sports will make him feel bad.
i played baseball from 2nd grade up until just before my senior year of high school. it took me until about 4th grade before i was worth a shit at it, and even then i went through stretches where i sucked. i was a starter and usually on all-star teams and all that, but i was mostly mediocre. good enough to have fun, but i wasn't going to get a college scholarship or anything. if he could achieve that level of success, that's plenty for me. i'll never be the kind of dad that pushes and pushes, although in hindsight, i think i could have been much better if someone had pushed me.
i guess this is just one of the MANY trials and tribulations of having kids. you want so badly to protect them, but you have to let them find their own way and hope that you don't damage them in the process.
here's my little soon-to-be slugger:
raising the back elbow a little should help with the timing and limit head movement...along with a little less upright stance and he'll be good to go.
Posted by: Ezekial's Dry Bone | August 21, 2009 at 05:00 PM