Summer Baseball

Reluctantly, Collin is playing summer baseball again.  He does not want to play but did not give us a reason.  Knowing how much he has really liked baseball in the past and knowing that he would be one of the older kids on the team, Dad signed him up anyway.  We did miss the first two weeks of games while we were on vacation.  One of the games was rained out so we have only missed three games.  They are usually Monday and Wednesday nights starting at 7pm.  Late games during the week are tough because we get home close to 9pm and Collin is ready to watch a movie, read books, play games and do anything else but go to bed.  I, on the other hand, am ready for bed because I get up generally around 5:15am to work out before heading to work. 

For both Monday's and last nights game, Collin played Pitcher a lot.  He does not pitch the ball because this is still Coach pitch but he stands there to field the ball and stop the "play" on the field.  He gets a lot of action in that spot because the catcher also throws him the ball after the pitch if it's not hit.  He does not like this spot because he gets nervous about where to through the ball if he gets it.  At first, he did not move towards the ball when it was hit leaving it up to the other infield players to get the ball.  He did figure out that he is expected to field the ball too and went after two hit balls during Wednesday's game.  There were a few times he should have thrown the ball the 2nd base to get the runner out but, instead, he through the ball the 1st which is a longer throw so it takes the ball longer to get there.  He also does not like to wear the mask that you see in the pictures below.  He is required to wear this for protection from the hit balls.  I am fine that he does wear this because I have seen what happens to the boys that don't wear this.  I don't want my little guy to get hurt.



Because he is a good hitter, he is at the top of the batting order.  He hit second last night hitting every time he was at bat.  All of his hits made it past the infield and had more power behind them than his hits did in the Spring because he is using his entire body to hit the ball now.

Caught him in the dugout talking to team members and getting a cold drink because it was 98 degrees out even thought it was 7:30pm. 

Coach Bennett is really great with the boys.  He is calm but direct with his instruction.  I really like that and the boys seem to really like him as well.  Here he is at the end of the game talking through what happened and discussing some things the boys need to work on.  Collin is right in front of him (#5). That's Dad also listening in.