T-ball for the Win!

I think I’ve found my calling: T-ball coach. We signed Austin up, hoping he was now old enough to enjoy it (unlike soccer at age 2…)

About a week before it started, an email asking for volunteers went out and I said I’d be happy to help. Translation: I was assigned head coach of the Detroit Tigers.

Austin and I had a blast! He loved hitting line drives and learned that he could “pull the ball.” He was one of the best of the bunch, alongside little Benji, who’s dad brought him his own bat for practice. I made up drills and learned that some wouldn’t work with 4-year olds. For example, lining everyone up to sprint to the cone at the far end led to various crashes, stumbles, and tears, and so it was better to split them up a bit and do a controlled release of each runner. 

I made the real-time decision that throwing partners should be parents and not other kids. Several near misses occur when projectiles, I mean balls, are launched by 4-year olds. Similarly, batting practice involved all parents on deck. I helped with each kid’s swing and form, we needed 2-3 parents to hold the other kids in a line far enough back so that the child swinging didn’t hit someone, and James #2’s mom had to hover close enough to him to catch his bat when he flung it with reckless abandon, but not too closely as to get her head knocked off. We needed a parent on each base to direct traffic and we needed to move homeplate away from the T as to not cause yet another opportunity for injury. Phew.

Our “game” consisted of one inning where everyone got to hit. Austin figured out that if he went up to bat last during games, he could hit a home run and run all of the bases. This was because each kid was allowed to run to first base and advance bases one at a time until the last kid hit and brought everyone home. I let him do it every time, promising myself that if another kid caught on to this boon I would make the switch, but no one did. At the end of our “game” I gathered everyone around and brought hands in for a great big tiger roar, and then on to snack time, which was a highlight for us all.

Teamwork for Austin and for the other gaggle of 4-year old boys and one girl was still elusive, but for the most part our second foray into organized sports went well.