Sports Grandmas….

I never pushed my kids to play sports but, when they expressed a desire, I was supportive. I took them to and from practice, served as scorekeeper, was the “team nurse”, and did my time in the snack bar. I liked that they were interested in team sports. There are so many lessons to be learned besides how to play the game.

They learned discipline, they learned to take direction, they learned to participate in a group activity and do their part to achieve team goals, they learned to be good sports, and they learned the agony of defeat. They learned that you don’t always get on the best team and you don’t always get picked first.

They also learned that some of the cruelest people in the world are the parents of the other team. They gained insight into just how immature some so-called adults can be. They learned that there are coaches who have no problem screaming at, and ridiculing young players. They also learned that their mother would not tolerate such behavior and didn’t mind telling the coach.

So, this afternoon, I watched the next generation play baseball. My son’s son is now the baseball star in our family. He is 12 and plays in the American Youth Baseball League. It is supposedly more competitive than Little League. This is where you play if you want to play baseball when you grow up. We’ll see.

Over behind the fence, slightly left of home plate, there were four women sitting fairly close together. The first was the scorekeeper for our team. The next was my grandson’s maternal grandmother, the next one was his grandfather’s wife, and the last one was me, his paternal grandmother.

The scorekeeper asked me which kid I was “with” and I told her. Then she asked my ex-husband’s wife, and she told her; and finally, she asked his maternal grandmother and she told her. Yes, through divorce, remarriage and lots of years……we were all there for the same kid—and his team.

My grandson had three RBI’s, caught two fly balls in right field and, when the game went into overtime, tied at 6 runs each, he had the dubious honor of going in as relief pitcher. The boys were doing a great job and had managed to tie the team that has won the league championship “for years.”

Top of the seventh, score tied and the other team is leading off with their 1 – 2 – 3 batters. Lots of pressure there…..and my grandson pitched a clean strike on his first pitch. In fact, it was three up, three down.

Bottom of the seventh. The thunderheads loomed ominously over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Dark rain clouds were gathering in the sky over Podunk, and it was getting harder to see. Our last chance to score started out with a new pitcher for the opponents and the bottom of our batting order. The other team also had a girl playing catcher. Not a token player, either. She can throw as hard and as far as any boy on her team and, as catcher, she is a force to be reckoned with.

In what was undoubtedly the most exciting youth baseball game I have ever watched, we managed to get a runner on base and advance him to third before getting two outs. The batter walked up to the plate, bottom of the seventh—in overtime—with two outs and one runner on third base.

No pressure here…….none at all.

And the poor batter is not a power hitter. In fact, he was 2 and 1 when the deciding pitch came across the plate. It was a wild one and the catcher lost it. The runner on third raced home and slid across the plate. Safe! We won. We beat the team that was undefeated. We did it in overtime.

And my grandson, the pitcher who got credit for the win, came over to us after the game, hugged all three of his grandmas, and listened to us praise him for being the best player, best pitcher, best fielder, and best grandson in the whole wide world!

Win or lose……