Detox

After eight years, I must finally be getting travel ball out of my system.  I’ve only thought about it twice so far this summer.

The first time was at Clare’s wedding reception, during my toast to be exact.  That Saturday happened to coincide with the ninth anniversary of Clare hitting five homeruns in a tournament, which I let everyone know about.  And this being the end of July punctuated by my birthday on the 30^th, I’m thinking of it again.  Trust me, birthdays and travel ball don’t mix, at least if you want a nice cake while your kid is playing at nationals, the last big tournament of the season.

As luck would have it, today is the ninth anniversary of Mark Buehrle’s perfect game against the Rays; we saw the last inning at a hotel in Salisbury, Maryland.  Clare had just suffered what may have been her second concussion that week at nationals.  The first happened when an infielder slapped a tag on Clare’s helmet so hard her head bounced off the infield dirt .  But a repeat of that would have been preferable to what came nest.

The second baseman tripped Clare while covering first base.  It was raining, which made everything slippery and helps explain why my daughter took to the air and did a perfect-360 before landing on her back.  When Michele and I ran out to check on our daughter, one of our coaches started yelling at my wife to get off the field, parents weren’t allowed on (it was OK for me because I was technically a coach).  Michele said simply, “Let them.”  I think the clown was afraid we would forfeit a game we were close to winning by the slaughter rule.

The Buehrle game took our minds off what had been a miserable summer—those five homeruns hit without a college coach witnessing them, the inexcusable behavior of a coach who felt the need to tell Clare she would never play in college.  (Thank goodness the college recruiters started contacting us as soon as we got home.)  You don’t miss stuff like that.


What I do miss are the at-bats, how my daughter would immediately fall into a 0-2 hole before getting serious; I learned to find refuge in the mini-eternities between pitches, foul ball after foul ball until my child connected.  That, along with the homeruns.