Put Me In, Coach!

A friend from Hunter, Andrew, and I quickly found out that we both like sports, more importantly - baseball. This lead to the following exchange at happy hour after we finished our last midterm:

A: Dude, I've been meaning to ask you - would you be interested in coaching a little league* team with me?
J: Absolutely.
A: Sweet!

A few days later I found myself as a coach, at my first youth baseball practice ever. My list of realistic regrets is pretty short, but not playing youth baseball myself, is in the top 3. Never mind the personal history there - I swear I could've been a solid 1st baseman (lefty that I am) - 4 practices and one official game into this season and I must say it's stupendously fun. Saturday, the Prospect Park Baseball Association opened the season with a parade in Park Slope that went down Seventh Ave and up 9th st to the Park, with a local marching band leading the way. The streets were filled with teams, coaches and family. Then later in the day we had our game. I suppose I should report that we did not emerge victors, but isn't the score fun-against-fun when it's 9 - 2? Wait...how does that saying go...I better look it up. Really, I was very proud watching our guys out there stealing bases (yes!), striking out the other team's little dudes (yes!), and even blasting a couple deep shots. We had the bases loaded a few times but couldn't bring 'em home. Luckily, there's a whole season ahead of us to figure that one out. While walking the dogs I'm finding myself thinking of drills to run in practice, and now that we have this game under our belt, I'm thinking of what we did well and what needs work. There were a lot of smiles in the dugout and I think we've got a pretty scrappy Bad-News Bears vibe kicking around, which is good because I'm a big Walter Matthau fan.


*technically, not Little League. It's a local Brooklyn organization.