#boxhousedoesbaseball

Baseball season wrapped up for us last week, and I have about one week of down time before we start preconditioning for football. I'm more than a little nervous about this step. I love baseball. It's about the only sport I thoroughly understand. There are no weird rules about yard lines and penalties or half courts and full courts. It's so straightforward. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You run. And baseball is a sun-lover's sport. How I reveled in the blue skies and birds calling, the chatter of the teams and the smell of hot dogs. The red dirt, the grass, the chain link fence. They are all parts of my childhood, and now parts of my kids' childhood as well. 

Some of my strongest memories of when I was a kid are centered around baseball. Sitting in the back of our old blue and wood paneled station wagon; the back in the back, we called it- the rear facing seats- while my dad drove home from church on Wednesday nights, listening to the Yankees play on the staticky AM radio. He would fuss when we passed under a tree or the cloud cover was too strong. I remember staring out of the window on summer nights, watching the moon watch me, and wondering how he knew to follow me home. Hearing Bob Sheppard's baritone slide through the static: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen", loving when it ended with, "THE Yankees win! THE Yankees win! THA-AH-AH Yankees winnnn!" Not to mention the years I spent watching my dad play church softball, from the time when I was young enough to sit in the dirt and build an imaginary world with plastic zoo animals, to the days when I finally started to pay attention to the game, outside of stealing the Big League Chew out of his bat bag and counting down the minutes until it was over and we could go get a Slurpee. 

Baseball looms large in my childhood, and now in my motherhood. This year, when Ashton decided he wanted to try football, "at least once", it kind of left me at loose ends. Who will I shout, "Good eye!" to? Or "Bring it down some! She likes her pitches low!", "Wait for your ball!" "Two out rally, two out rally!" "Look alive, infield!" I don't know any football chatter. I don't even know all the rules. Football has never seeped into my bones the way baseball has. 

One thing baseball has taught me about is resilience. The resilience of Little League-ers, especially, never ceases to astound me. They can go out there, game after game, take a beating, and keep coming back. Sure, it sucks. It sucks for parents to watch their kids lose, and it sucks for kids to lose. But they keep coming back. These are just children. They aren't pro athletes who have had a lifetime of discipline to overcome their emotion, or millions of dollars to assuage their hurt feelings. Most of them are out there- in my child's case, at least- strictly for love of the game. They get out there and they get mad, and they cry, and they scuffle. They lose, and they sulk all the way home. But at the next game, they get back out there, and they're as full of hope as if the losing game never happened. And they get loud, and they get passionate, and they get joyful. 

And someday, they'll get something else: Baseball is more than just a game. It's a metaphor for life itself. You go out there. You take your hits. Sometimes you lose. You get mad. You cry. You scuffle. But you wake up again, and you start like the previous loss never happened. You get loud. You get passionate. You get joyful. And eventually, you win. And everyone around you gets to win, watching you win. 

I've won every game Ashton has ever played, whether his team has won it or not. I've won, watching him support a teammate. I've won, seeing his respect for a coach. I've won, looking on as he took risks, always stealing home (Always. Enough times to give me an ulcer) even when home was impossible to steal. I've won watching him question an umpire's bad call, even as I shook my head in frustration over his stubbornness, knowing he was one shoulder shrug away from getting thrown out the game; because, although I can't admire his attitude, I can admire his passion. I can admire his drive. And I can watch him win at life, even when he loses at baseball.

-M

{{Here are some of my favorite photos from our season this year. You can check out more on my Instagram feed under the hash tag #boxhousedoesbaseball. And for our other sports (impending football included), you can look up #boxhouseballgames.}}