BA was the one who kind of pushed to have Joe in baseball. It is a huge sport in our town. So we signed him up. We took him to "try-outs", after which there was a draft (which only the coaches went to). Mind you, I'm pretty sure the first time Joe has ever picked up a bat was at try outs.
After a few practices, the season started. Joe played in the outfield. And a few times when his team was creaming another team, he got to play second base.
He hit the ball most of the times he got up to bat for about the first 4 games. I was quite impressed with how well he was doing.And then he froze. One of the games, a pitcher hit a handful of kids on Joe's team while they were batting. That was enough to start a mental block.
In the mean time, I remember one of the games a couple of the boys made some errors and they were crying. The look on Joe's face was, "What happened to them? Did they get hurt?" He totally didn't understand why you would cry in baseball.
And, another side note that lends itself to the reason of this post: at the beginning of summer, I banned all Pokemon cards. We are done with them. We are selling them on Ebay. I had a talk with Joe about how Pokemon can prevent him from growing up and maturing in life. He needed to have other passions.
He made the personal decision that baseball was his passion. He had been taking lessons from an awesome baseball player in town. And he has improved SOOO much. I've seen some other changes in him just in the last few weeks since his decision. But he still won't hit the ball in a game.
I've tried everything. Bribing, being nice, being frustrated. I had come to the conclusion that we'd just have to wait for him to remove his mental block.
I took him to the batting cages today again. He was hitting amazing! He hit at least 75% of the balls. We hoped it would help in the game tonight.
He got up twice. He struck out twice (actually one of the times he had to duck 3 times to not get hit, but intermixed with those balls were 3 strikes). It is so frustrating to see him get up there and NOT swing!
After the second time he hit, he came over to me and I knew something was wrong. He was crying. My son who I've only seen cry a dozen times in his life, and sob only a few times, was crying. He was so emotionally invested in this game, that he was crying.
I must inject here. I'm all about supporting your team. But I'm not so much about yelling at the ump. I usually see calls that the ump makes and even though all the other parents are complaining about a call, I see that it was the right call.
It was a rough game to be nice to the ump. Three game changing plays come to mind where there was an obvious wrong call that changed the outcome of the game. And, in the end, Joe's team lost 9-12.
And Joe was sobbing on the way home. What a heart breaking game. And how glad I was that he was crying. Seems that he has made his choice. He will grow up. He won't stay an immature Pokemon loving boy forever. He has the passion to try his hardest and to put his heart into something. And even though they didn't win tonight, sometimes you learn more from losing than from winning.
And now we have one year to get him ready to hit, catch, and pitch (something he has decided he wants to do) for next season. Bring it on!
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