Flashback

It’s been snowing on and off for the past 40 hours, a real Chicago treat along with a nice, nippy wind-chill factor.  This is what you could call perfect travel-ball weather.  Seriously.

Right about now back in the day, Clare would be spending her Sunday mornings January through mid-February practicing indoors at a high school fieldhouse a few suburbs over.  She and her fellow Blazers fielded balls just about every which way they could be tossed or hit under a roof.  The laps were just for fun, or punishment.  This went on till the start of the high school softball season the third week of February.

The team also had a weeknight practice that we went to maybe four times in three years; they were mostly at a grade-school gym a good 45 minutes from our house in good weather.  Fielding balls off a hardwood floor didn’t strike me as particularly skill-building, and, even if it was, Clare always had homework.  She was a good enough player to get away with not coming, although I’m sure that wouldn’t have been the case if it had been one of those elite teams that all but promised to get their players a scholarship somewhere.  I guess we’ll never know.

The point here is kids are practicing double plays and pickoff moves, winter or not.  You just have to know where to look.