All the kids who didn’t make the 2011 baseball team up at Ballard have been notified and my son is not one of them.
This means I get another year of concession stand duty, recycling removal and sitting the spring and early summer in the stands with the same women I’ve been sitting with since our boys played together, against each other and for each other’s fathers starting when Kennan was five.
Next year, I can go to as many games as I want and work as much concession stand duty as I want, but next year, my son will not be on the field.
My son is a senior. And, as glad as I am not to have to work any more concession stand duty at football, soccer, field hockey, lacrosse and whatever the hell other outdoor sport there is up at Ballard, I am supremely “practicing” with how hard it’s going to be to watch baseball ever again. With one exception, every baseball game I have watched or attended since his birth, my son has either been on the field playing or sitting next to me watching.
This season and his baseball career will come to an end in May. It’s kinda good timing: the zipper on my Ballard Baseball fleece broke over the winter and my girly T-shirt with the Ballard Baseball circle right above my cleavage is now rising just above the waistband on my jeans. I can’t blame the washing machine on that but without the zipper on the fleece, this little shirt has got to go.
So, I’m going to pass down the T-shirt to a little Freshman mommy who will maybe get to wear it for four years like I have. I hope it will comfort her if her son doesn’t get to play in a game; if he gets in the car frustrated as hell because some teammate wouldn’t hustle enough to get the ball to him to get a runner out or if her own son misses a ball after he’s slammed his shoulder into the purple dugout at Southern High School. I hope she’ll wear it to a game at PRP as she watches grown men yell and call each other names like first grade girls do on the playground. I hope she’s able to wear one of her son’s Under Armour skins underneath it to stay warm as snow spits in her hair at an away game scheduled at the last minute.
I hope she’ll take as much pride in it as I have when at Kroger or Target. I also hope she’ll spill some chili on it: chili she had to make for the Ballard Craft Fair – Holiday in the Halls — WITHOUT noodles or mushrooms just like the dictator volunteer mommy tells her to.
I also hope if I run into her and she is wearing said shirt, I do not run up to her, hug her and cry.
