Batter Up!

Baseball season started a few weeks ago! Here are a few pics from the first game. We switched leagues this year to one that is located in a much better place to save us on driving so far away. They didn't have enough kids this year to do separate tee ball and coach pitch teams, so they combined them.

This works great for me, I have all three kids on the same team!! First time ever! The coaches try to pitch to everyone, but for the younger ones (like Grey) if you're not getting it after a few throws, they put the tee up for them.

Baseball Grey!

Kenna is doing much better this year, her skills/desire to play seem to have met in a happy place, and she does alright!

Brooks, naturally, is swinging for the fence every time, and is one of the better players on the team, if not the best. Because of this, he always gets to play the "peak positions" (generally, the only positions that see any action), so he tends to be rotated around catcher, pitcher, 1st and 2nd.

Grey is the athletic dark horse of the family. He got his first baseball glove at Christmas (he's a leftie). And used it for the first time on the first day of practice. And he's good! Compared to Brooks who basically did nothing else with his entire existence for the first 4 years of his life, other than throw a ball - Grey is not the "athletic one". He never plays sports for fun, and rarely ever talks about them. The words "wanna go play catch?" are just not in his vocabulary. Well, wouldn't you know, the kid has great natural flair. He can throw very accurately, gets the ball scooped up quickly, and has a great natural stance and swing. Go figure. He hit the very first coach pitch that was thrown to him in his very first game!!! This is where his lack of "sports-ing" catches up to him - he hit it pretty far, but the fielders had it well under control, so it was really only a single - and there were other children on the bases ahead of him. But he took off running for first and just kept on going, around all the bases. He has a really big head, and runs kind of "head forward" (and actually looks just like my Dad when running, for a mental picture). Note: His head is so large, that while most batting helmets fall off the other children, and they layer their caps underneath to minimize the bobble - there is only 1 helmet, of all the teams selection that fits his giant orb. Anyway, he got all the way around to third (passing the other base runners) before he was reined in and sent back to first:-) I guess no one ever clarified that you can only run one base at a time, generally! Last game, he played first, and caught all the balls (always grounders by the time they reached him), and tagged up to the base, and even got someone out. All the while blowing bubbles with his gum and adjusting the peak of his hat like a been-there-done-that-this-is-slightly-boring pro.

And Grey has his glove on the wrong hand for the after game picture. Haha!

My baseball babies! They are the Beach Rip Tides this year.