Sunday, January 15, 2017
I’ve been playing baseball with Connor since he was five years old. First tossing baseballs underhanded into a tiny red mitt, later playing catch out in the yard, most every night in the summer. A couple years ago we started a Sunday routine of taking a bucket of baseballs up to the high school for batting practice. I would pitch from the mound, ball after ball, while Connor swung for the fences.
Two years ago, he started complaining that I wasn’t throwing as hard as pitchers he was facing in games. Last year he connected with his first home run, the ball sailing out into the woods over the left field fence, Connor whooping and hollering. Both father and son did a victory run around the bases that day.
Connor is now a freshman in high school and will try out for the high school baseball team this spring. The big leagues. He and a few of his freshman teammates have been going off island, twice a week, to work on their skills at really nice baseball training facility in Tacoma. Here they’re getting helped by some amazing coaches, most former professional baseball players themselves. This weekly practice in the offseason, along with their fast growing frames, is going to give them a nice leg up in high school.
It’s been a wet fall and winter, so our Sunday batting practices have gotten rained out a lot these past few months. We found ourselves out on the field on a Sunday in November, and for the first time as as baseball dad, I started to get nervous about my precarious position on the pitcher’s mound. My best pitches were being clobbered, many in the form of hard line drives sailing past my ears. My reflexes aren’t as quick anymore, and it was more luck than skill when I caught a bullet aimed right at my forehead. I was happy to get off the field in one piece.
So imagine my delight on Christmas morning with my gift from Connor - an “L Fence” for batting practice. This contraption acts as a shield for coaches to pitch behind without having to fear their teeth getting knocked out. We tried this out for the first time today and Connor has gotten even stronger as a hitter. He had fun smacking line drives off my protective shield, laughing at my curses as I got used to my newfound sanctuary. I got a little cocky on the third bucket of balls, beginning to think myself invincible, when a ball whizzed by, inches from my left ear. I had failed to lean far enough behind the fence after my delivery. Even 60 feet away, I could read the gleam in Connor’s eyes.
Chaulk off another waypoint passing astern.
