Opening Day

Michael started his second season of baseball this past Saturday. They have dispensed with the tee, going with coaches-pitch from the beginning. The difference in gameplay between last year (kindergarten) and this (first grade) is remarkable. At this level, every kid gets to hit once per inning, regardless of whether an out is made, and each batter/runner moves forward one base with each "hit." Last year, Michael's team recorded perhaps one legitimate out all season. In Saturday's game, his team made more than half a dozen outs. The pace of the game was far quicker as well, as the kids generally were able to get a hit on the first or second pitch.

Baseball intelligence starts to make itself known, too. One of Michael's good friends, Sam, is an indifferent soccer player (he and Michael were on the same team this fall) but a fanatic baseball player, and probably the best on the team. He not only plays the game well, he thinks it well. Fortunately, although Michael is not yet as tuned in to the mechanics of the game, he is mentally adept enough to figure it out as needed. Early in one half inning in which our boys were playing the field, a batter hit a ball short, barely reaching the pitcher's area. Michael, playing third, and Sam, playing the defensive "pitcher" position, both charged the ball. As he got partway down the line, Michael saw that Sam was closer to the ball, so he turned and sprinted back to cover third. Sam tried to make the play at first, but he saw what Michael did. As the next batter prepared to step in, Sam and Michael called out and gesticulated to each other with all the seriousness of major leaguers working a playoff game, deciding what each would do if a similar play occurred.

Sure enough, one batter later, there was another short hit to the pitcher position. Instead making the customary throw to first, Sam immediately pounced on the ball and wheeled toward third where Michael, as they had arranged, had darted immediately to the base. Sam threw a strike to third that Michael caught, foot on the bag, to force the runner coming from second. It wasn't spectacular, but that was the best pure baseball play saw all day. (The simple act of an accurate throw and successful catch is often triumph enough at this level; it was one of the few such exchanges in the entire game.)

It is fashionable to declare baseball boring, out of step with the ADD-addled internet age. Yet it is plays like this that warm the heart of this baseball traditionalist, the game-within-the-game that makes it so fascinating. Not bad for a couple of seven year olds.