As a dad, it’s been a treat and a delight to watch my son develop and grow his love for baseball over the past eleven years. He has loved that game more than I loved anything as a kid.

Little Tanner playing T-Ball

I’m not sure where it came from, really, because sports has never been my thing. At all.  And when I do pay attention to anything in the sporting world, it’s usually college football.  But no matter.  I’ve been more than happy to nurture and encourage his love for baseball.  In fact it’s been a lot of fun.

Tanner has never been happy simply playing ball.  Just showing up at little league games wasn’t enough to quench his thirst, and he became the ubiquitous instigator of neighborhood games.  He would work the telephone or scour the neighborhood to round up all the usual suspects, corralling them into our front yard where they would play until it became too dark to see the ball anymore.  Even as late in the year as November, Saturday afternoons would find a group of boys bundled up in winter coats and hats, playing their hearts out as if that very game was the Little League World Series. And in the dead of winter they would pile into our basement to play the same game, but on the Wii.  On those sad days when nobody else was available to play, he would stand in our front yard for hours, just swinging his bat, alone. Read the rest of this entry »