Baseball

It’s baseball, baseball, baseball every day around here, and Mr. TOF literally loves every second of it. In addition to some great pitching and hitting, he made a super sweet double play the other night which was actually really beautiful to watch. It was kind of like grace in motion, and it happened so fast. The batter hit a ball right to the pitching mound, and the ball thunked right in his glove and then without any hesitation he aimed it right to first base where the first baseman caught it with a sizzle. It was very exciting, and next to me on the bleachers were a group of players from one of the younger teams along with some of their parents and one of Mr. TOF’s former coaches, who exclaimed, “Did you guys SEE that!?! He was a machine! His body has literally done that hundreds and hundreds of times!” And it’s true. He literally has spent hours throwing hundreds of balls at his rebounder, catching them, and hurling them off at a target placed ninety degrees to the left. He’s done it hundreds of times. Hundreds and hundreds. And when it actually happened it looked instinctual.

If he’s not playing baseball he’s practicing with his team. If there isn’t a team practice, he’s in the front yard practicing on his own. If he’s not doing that, he’s listening to a Twins game or reading books about baseball or sorting old baseball cards from the 1980’s he found at a thrift store.