My small dude might have been born with a baseball in his hand.  He’s been able to hit a pitched ball since he was three.  He sleeps with his glove on his hand.  Did I mention he is five? Baseball trumps just about everything in our family.  At least for the men on my husband’s side. So, it is with equal parts awe and terror that I watch the brouhaha surrounding the Little League World Series.

The first Little League game was played on June 6, 1939.  The Little League World Series is in its 65th year.  Its magic… its history is legendary.  Each year it is watched by thousands, both in person and live on television.  The Series begins soon, on August 18th.  More than 450 teams compete.

These are 11 and 12 year olds.  Their every move will be showcased on ESPN.  Is this the perfect platform to allow them to play college ball – or maybe chase that Major League dream?  Or is the close-up on teary-eyed pitcher who gave up the game-winning homerun just too much?

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Will your kids remember their grand slam in the championship game, or the time that Mom and Dad were arrested for beating up a kid?

Three parents, including the town prosecutor, in Castlerock, CO were charged with third degree assault and disorderly conduct when their little brawl landed a kid in the hospital.  Apparently, the whole fiasco started when Shannon Carlson and her son tried to dispute an ump’s call.  Now, I don’t know how they do things in Castlerock, but where I lived in Chicagoland, that was a big no-no.  It didn’t matter if an ump called a strike when the ball hit the dirt and literally rolled to the batter, we could not dispute a call, or tell an ump he’s blind, or run out onto the field and make fools of ourselves.  A parent, coach, or played who questioned an ump was promptly removed from the game.  (Hmm, maybe I should’ve tried that a time or two to get kicked out of one of the million freezing cold games I’ve sat through over the years.)

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Sorry, kid: you can't love 'em both!

The intense rivalry between baseball’s Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees is, as Wikipedia puts it, the “most famous and fiercest” in all of North American sports, having lasted now for over 100 years. Boston won the inaugural World Series in 1903 and four more championships between 1912 and 1918.

But in 1919, everything was to change for the Red Sox. Owner and Broadway producer Harry Frazee sold legend Babe Ruth to the Yankees in order to finance “No, No Nanette” – a move that turned out to be a big no-no, since the resulting “Curse of the Bambino” was not broken for the Sox until 2004 when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the AL Championship and went on to win the World Series.

As you know, many families have built fan dynasties around the lore of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. So what happens when someone in the clan decides to dissent? Well, your Dad tells you if you can’t be a Red Sox fan, you’ll need to find someplace else to live – even if you’re only 2. Watch, you’ll die laughing, I swear: Continue reading »

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Shut out of your kid's sports obsession?

As one of those picked-last-for-kickball kids with no affinity for team sports, a longstanding aversion to gym teachers and a son who is a particularly avid baseball fan, I have the eerie feeling that Elana Sigall is describing me when she writes in the October issue of Parents:

I never liked sports growing up. My poor hand-eye coordination makes it a challenge to drive a car, let alone hit a ball with a bat. I don’t like watching sports on TV and I don’t even like sports metaphors. So I never imagined that I would have a kid who was so focused on baseball. It was alienating to watch my son drift farther away from me – toward anyone else he knew who could talk about plays and records and suicide squeezes. I was starting to feel a little desperate, reduced to begging for good-night kisses. I knew I had to find a path to baseball or I was going to lose out on a connection with Julian.

In the piece, Sigall (a writer-mom I now know socially after our sons bonded over their mutual baseball obsession) recounts how she found a way back into 6-year-old Julian’s world by baking him a baseball cake, learning about all his favorite players as she lovingly formed them out of fondant. Somewhere along the way, as she drew pinstripes on Yankees jerseys with a food-writer pen and carefully sculpted mitts and belts and shoes, she became a fan, invested in a game her son adored and able to speak with him about it.

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Tyler Ross

Should a grown man making at least $400,000 a year still be living with his parents?  Such is the case for two Major League Baseball players: 23-year-old Tyson Ross of the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Neil Walker, age 24.

Stu Woo has written a profile of the players for The Wall Street Journal that outs Ross and Walker as the only guys in the league still bunking at home.  Sports historian Rick Obrand thinks “it’s great” that there are still some hometown players, but is allowing an adult child – especially one with talent and means – to stay in the nest a giant parenting fail, as Madeline suggested in a post last week?

The subject of Madeline’s post, 24-year-old Scott Nicholson, is unemployed and living at home without paying rent.  Ross and Walker have what some would argue is the greatest job in the world, but it’s certainly not the steadiest.  “Unproven youngsters like Mr. Ross, who had a poor earned run average of 5.79 as of Monday, are routinely sent down to the minor leagues for seasoning, so it might not make sense for them invest in real estate,” writes Woo.

Investing in real estate is one thing, renting your own apartment is another.  Walker says his mom does his laundry and Ross’s mother cleans his bathroom for him.  Ross says living at home, “cuts out all the hard stuff, like setting up cable and getting furniture.”  It’s charming that these boys love their mothers, but should their mothers be treating them like children?  I guess it gives more potency to the sign in the locker room that says, “Your mother doesn’t work here: clean up after yourself!”  Continue reading »

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There just may be a moment of silence at Little League games across the country tonight for the man known in baseball as the Boss.  The New York Times reports that beloved (and sometimes vilified) Yankees figurehead George Steinbrenner died this morning of a heart attack in Tampa, FL at age 80.

Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973 and resuscitated them from near death to become seven-time World Series champs, their most recent win taking place against the Phillies last fall in the brand new Yankee Stadium.  Steinbrenner died just two days after “the voice of the Yankees” Bob Sheppard died at 99 years of age. 

The Yankees are now run by Steinbrenner’s sons, Hal and Hank, who according to the Times, became co-chairmen in May 2008. “Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ managing general partner as well, was given control of the team in November 2008 in a unanimous vote by the major league club owners, who acted on his father’s request.”

Steinbrenner notoriously pushed general manager Joe Torre out after he’d secured years of wins for the team, and many baseball fans complained that the Yankees, under Steinbrenner, spent more than too much money on star players.  Continue reading »

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If the smoking baby is looking for a playdate, I think I’ve found him just the kid.  My pals at BestWeekEver.tv posted this video yesterday of a little boy drinking at a Phillies game, presumably out of his Dad’s beer.  Unless the guy next to him is his Karate Kid-style sensei, teaching him the ways of the American male.  1.) Drink beer.  2.) Shout, “Let’s go Phillies!”  Wax on, wax off.

Click below to watch the video and then let me know what you think.  One swig of beer seems pretty harmless to me, but my grandfather woke me up every morning from age 3 on with a big mug of coffee that I would drink while our poodle lapped up Schlitz out of an ashtray, so maybe I’m not the best judge.

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