Dreaming of Summer Baseball

Andrew's High School Baseball Cap

The following observation is from a game Hubby and I attended last summer. We love going to baseball games. My oldest son played high school baseball for four years. It remains one of my favorite sports. There is something so American about baseball. When we get the chance, we go and as you can tell from the following, not all the action I watch is on the diamond. Dreaming of warm days and baseball...

Last night my hubby and I went to a baseball game. We had been trying all summer to juggle this into our hectic schedules. Well finally, the last home game of the season, and we have tickets in hand. Then the rains began. Wow. All summer we've been in a drought where the rain has measured in scant fractions. All it was waiting for was us to get tickets.

The game did go on. Our seats were field level near home plate on the third base side. But as much as I tried to get into the game I was much more thrilled with the action in the row in front of us; and later the rows behind us. Seated directly in front of us were three of the most adorable tow-headed boys I've seen since my three sons were tow-heads.

These three ranged in ages from...ummm oh about...2.5 to five. And they were boys. Cute, round-eyed, sun-kissed, rowdy boys. Sigh. The sight of them prompted fond memories of all the games and events I sat through with my expressive sons. It also gave me great pleasure not to be in their parents' seats. I was loving it.

Let me stop here and say to all you parents of young sons, if you see women of a certain age smiling wistfully yet bemused at you, we are not weird, we've just been there. And it's lovely to remember and even lovelier to be a spectator in the wild tribal happenings that are sons.

These three were bouncing, prodding, slurping, sticking their tongues out at one another, doing the he-looked-at-me-make-him-stop thing and watching everything but the game. The smallest had the most angelic smile and kept looking back not only at us, but at the other little boys with their dads behind us.

Angelic boy bounced around from seat to seat between his mom and dad for a while until Brother Two (I'm going by size here) started poking at him. This prompted Angelic Boy to poke back and the games began. I must applaud the parents. They never lost their cool. They would lovingly separate the two causing the commotion and then go back to attempting to watch the game for a few moments. I do mean moments.

Then Curly-Locks Brother, who appeared to be the older, would begin the twenty questions Angelic Brother scrambled around from mom to dad, then back again. Finally, Angelic Boy crawled onto his mom's lap and she did what every mother on every continent has done since children have been born, she lightly rubbed his head with her fingertips. He sat motionless for a long time. Until Brother Two knocked his seat bottom into her arm for the second time. Ah...the pleasure of watching from afar.



Elsewhere there were more boys, more girls, more parents. You could look around and see older men and women, childless on this evening, smiling those wry wistful knowing smiles as children begged for more sugary treats, bounced over seats, and caught imaginary fly balls; happily watching the action - all the action!