A Parenting Lesson in Baseball
I have often said that one of the things I miss most after having kids
is my sports' mind. I used to know and love sports. I played all through
high school and even some in college. After college I was on rec teams
and could hold my own with any circle of "sports guys" at most parties. I
had one friend joke that she hated when party talk turned to sports
because, "Cristie is always right in there making the rest of us look
bad."
Then I had kids and not only did I stop paying attention, but I even forgot things I had known forever like team names and their corresponding cities. I don't even pretend to know who plays for whom anymore. As for my kids, they barely know anything except the mechanics of a jump shot and how to catch a baseball. As for watching sports, they were made aware this year that in our family, we love the West Virginia Mountaineers during football and basketball season when they make our lives crazy fun and though we live in Giant country, we root for the Redskins-even if they mostly stink. My brain got filled with more information than it could handle after I had babies. Something had to go and sadly it was the part of my brain that housed the Fan gene and all the knowledge that came with it.
It is not that I don't think sports are important-quite the contrary actually. I believe the participation in sports is almost imperative for the complete development of people. In fact, yesterday when I saw Armando Galarraga's name pop up on Facebook in a new group, I learned about his near perfect game and I was compelled to write about how his story is important to tell our children. Mr. Galarraga is a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers (yes, I had to look that up.) who was on his way to pitching a perfect game. For those of you non-sports folks, a perfect game is one in which the pitcher goes nine innings without any player reaching base. It is near impossible. Wikipedia opens it's definition with the fact that more men have orbited the moon than pitched a perfect game. It also can be a very selfish goal because unless you throw 27 strike-outs, you must rely on perfect fielding from your team and yet as the pitcher you receive the glory.
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