An Open Letter to Little League parents and Coaches

Dear Little League Parents and Coaches,

This is my third year as a baseball mama so I now consider myself an expert on the dos and don’ts around the field. Here are ten tips to get you through the season….

1.  Don’t buy your son an extra small pair of baseball pants while buying an extra large cup. He should never look as though he could leave a game and head straight to a Magic Mike audition.

2.  Come to the fields comfortably dressed. Your hot pants and stilettos are lovely and I’m quite certain you are getting plenty of stares, but when you fall and get stuck between the bleachers you may have wished for a nice pair of yoga pants. I truly thought they were going to have to get the jaws of life out there one night.

3.  Get your little girls out on that field. Nothing is cuter than a tiny girl in a baseball uniform with a pink helmet, cleats, and bat crush one past the boys and round the bases!

4.  I would not recommend brokering real estate deals while on the toilet behind the concession stand. Props to you for being there for your kid when you are clearly busy, but the noises coming from your stall were enough to ruin even the best deal.

5.  Team moms who provide gluten free, dairy free, GMO free organic snacks and fresh fruit to the team are great. Team moms who forgot it was their night and quickly stopped by 7-11 and grabbed a dozen donuts and a twelve pack of Sprite are just as great.

6.  No disrespect to Tom Hanks…but there is crying in baseball. A lot of crying. One night a pitcher hit a batter extremely hard. While the batter was wailing in pain the pitcher began to cry uncontrollably because he felt so bad that he had hurt him. There was at least a fifteen minute delay of game while everyone got their tears dried.

7.  Umpires will call a time out if the entire outfield is doing the “I have to potty” dance.

8.  Being a coach does not give you the right to trash talk the other team. I may be short, overweight, and wearing a dress but if you trash talk my kid I’m scaling that fence.

9.  As much as you would like to think your cutie pie is a phenom bound for the Major Leagues, yelling at him throughout the entire game about how and where to stand while miming the perfect batting stance from the bleachers probably won’t add too many points to his draft number.

10. There is nothing like sitting on the bleachers surrounded by new friends all cheering for your child as they make their first out, score their first run, or help lead their team to victory.

Play ball!!

Do you have an appointment?

As a TBk (teacher before kids) I use to roll my eyes at parents who had every second of their kid’s day scheduled. I would get so frustrated when kids would come in tired and without their homework because they had played a late baseball game. Kids should just feel free to relax and be kids right? You would never see me putting my kids in any after school organizations and become an over scheduled mini-van driving soccer mom.

I am now a mother. I drive a mini-van and I haven’t been home except to sleep in over a week. How did this happen?

It all started with a baby violin. It was so cute and tiny. He could take lessons right there at his school during the school day.  Perfect!  The only thing I had to do was sit through twenty minutes a day of what sounded like a cat dying a slow and painful death squealing something about a hot dog from Mississippi. (The first song any tiny violin plays is called Mississippi Hot Dog.) The violin is now almost full size, the songs are by actual composers, and instead of a dying cat most days it sounds more like a cat with a mild immune disorder.

A year after beginning tiny violin lessons we learned that one of our good friends was going to coach little league. Being a baseball fan myself I got super excited about seeing my tiny boy in a tiny baseball uniform. I had no idea that I was committing to at least three days a week of practices and games but to see him play out there was worth every second. That was four years ago. Now I have two boys in little league and it is a five day a week commitment. Last season the big one began kid pitch. He had always been a natural but suddenly nine year olds with full beards were whipping wild balls at him at warped speed. He was slowly watching each of his team mates being battered and bruised and decided he was having none of it. I tried everything I could think of. I actually bought him a padded undershirt that made him look like a mini Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nothing seemed to help. He hit a batting slump that would last all season. We are now in pre season and I have him in private batting lessons. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but apparently you can pay a guy over $1 a minute (a good deal I’m told) to teach a kid to bat. I’m not doing it for him necessarily. I don’t care if he hits a ball or not, but if I had to hear one more obnoxious parent make a comment about an easy out, someone was going to be drinking their peanuts and cracker jacks through a straw.

Two weeks ago the big one made the robotics team. I sat through a two hour parent meeting explaining how this could lead my child to be a genius millionaire. I didn’t understand the majority of what they would be doing in this club. The programming and engineering skills they say he will use are so far out of my league. This club will apparently require weekend and holiday commitments but how could I possibly deny him the chance at becoming a genius millionaire?

So there they go. Afternoons taken up by music practice and batting lessons. Evenings at the ball field and weekends and holidays building robots. Homework and studying have become a thing we do in the car on the way to school in the morning. The kids are over tired and over scheduled and so is their mama. But they are happy so I will keep practicing, keep driving, and keep cheering, allowing them to give whatever they want to a try. Because that’s what we do. We let them dream of being in the Boston pops, the World Series, and any other dream they may have.