Hey, Batter!

Soccer and baseball are overlapping right now. That means that on Wednesday I needed to be picking Mary up from soccer practice at the elementary school and dropping Frank off for baseball practice at the ball parks downtown at the same time. Bill needed to be at the One Acts at the high school at the same time as well. Gah!

But anyway. Frank loves, loves, loves baseball. He got hit in the face with a ball during batting practice. They each get 10 pitches or something and he got hit pretty hard in the face. He was crying and his face was red and his coach was checking his eyes. (He ended up with a big shiner on his eye.) After the coach realized that Frank was ok he suggested to him that he sit out for awhile to rest and then called out to the rest of the team, "Who hasn't had their turn yet?"

"I didn't get to finish," Frank said, raising his hand.

The coach turned. "Did you want to finish up?"

Frank nodded. The coach grinned.

"Well alright then, get your batting helmet back on."

(When I told Bill this story he told me that when he played baseball he had a coach who would purposefully throw a baseball at someone's head and then make fun of them and call them a crybaby when they cried.)

I think the coach initially thought he had a bit of a cry baby on his hands and then when Frank wanted to finish out his batting time the coach was impressed. I saw glimpses in my son of the man that I want him to be - it's ok to cry when it hurts and you need to finish up your batting practice no matter what.