Making Memories

I'm sure I have mentioned somewhere in the 500 posts of this blog that our family is part of Red Sox Nation.  By that I mean we are Red Sox fans.  Well, let me qualify that.  Andy has been a long suffering Red Sox fan since the day he was born, watching them lose throughout his childhood.  When they won the World Series back in 2004, for the first time in 86 years, I was pregnant with Sonya and only a month away from giving birth.  While I wasn't born a Red Sox fan as he was,  I became one in college.  I had never watched much baseball growing up, but if you are living in Boston without a baseball team you better start cheering for the Sox or you better get out of Boston.  So I did. Cheer for the Sox that is.  I loved Boston.  It helped that my best friend, Melissa, and I could see Fenway Park from the roof of our apartment Senior year.  So when they were in the playoffs back in '04 I was just as excited as any long life fan.  Okay, perhaps I didn't get all the suffering for so long, but still.  I was pretty sure I was going to put myself into labor cheering for those games.  Luckily I did not.  Since then we have gotten to watch them win two more World Series.  One when Lana was just a baby and one a couple years ago when all three girls were old enough to watch it  on TV.  Luckily they will not spend their baseball fan years pinning away for a team that seems cursed.  They get to watch and cheer for the Red Sox knowing they have won 3 World Series (so far) in their lifetime.  

Before we had the girls, Andy and I would go to see the Sox play the Angels every summer when they came to Anaheim.  We went a couple years after having the girls, and even took Sonya one year when she was about six.  However, we haven't been in at least four years.  We've taken the girls to a couple Dodgers games, just to see some baseball.  For a long time the tickets for the Red Sox/ Angles games were way to expensive for five of us.  Just Andy and I going meant our tickets plus babysitting so we just forgot about it for a while.  Then this summer, Melissa mentioned to me about going.  She still tries to go every year.  While the Angels have been doing well this season, the Red Sox, not so much, so I thought perhaps I could find some reasonable tickets.  Fortunately, there were plenty.  They were the seats pretty high in the stadium, but they were $18 a piece.  Perfect to take the girls to.  It would give them the baseball experience, while cheering for our favorite team.

For those of you who don't live in California, you have no doubt heard about the drought horrors here.  The stories are all true.  In the 19 years I've lived here, I've never seen it so dry.  We are constantly monitoring how long the water runs in the shower, flushing toilets with water we collect in the shower, not watering our lawn, whatever we can think of.  When we went back east a couple weeks ago, I cringed at all the water waste there and had to remind myself that Florida has plenty of rain.  I don't think we've seen real rain since February?  Maybe there was a storm in March?  I can't remember.  So, when the weather reports were all predicting rain for this past weekend, Andy and I pretty much ignored it.  First of all it is July and even in our wettest years, it did not rain in July.  Second of all- no rain since this past winter.  Tickets for the game were for Sunday evening at 5pm.  They were talking rain Saturday and MAYBE Sunday.  Even if we got it on Saturday that would be it.  It would definitely not rain on Sunday.  When it did end up pouring all day on Saturday, we figured that was it.  We go rain-Yay!  But we would not see it again until November.  

I'm assuming you all can see where this is going....

Here..

That is Angels stadium at start time on Sunday evening.  Good thing I got the high up seats.  We were actually under cover.  We sat there for a while thinking it would eventually stop.  So did everyone else.  People who couldn't sit in their rain filled seats were hanging out on the concourse, consuming hot dogs and beer.  The thing is about rain in SoCal, is that even if is does actually rain, it never lasts long.  Maybe an hour, hour and a half tops.  Well this is what the powers that be thought too, because they moved the start time of the game from 5:05 to 7:15 thinking that they could wait it out, clear off the field and start the game.  We too were hopeful.  

We hung out with the rest of the fans at our seats, ate hot dogs, had a couple beers, chatted with each other, and were entertained by the videos of Angels players trying to "name that tune", and watched it rain.  My favorite part of that was when Sonya named Michael Jackson's "Beat It" well before the player in the video.  You gotta play the classics for your kids!   

At one point I realized my friend BethAnnDoddKoehn was there with her family just a few sections over from us.  So we all took a walk to say hi and chat with them.  It was a party at the stadium in the rain!  And it did continue to rain.  Huh.

Then 7 o'clock came.  The sky started to look lighter and it appeared to be slowing down, but when you looked at the tarp covering the infield you could see it was still coming down.  Still, it was slow enough for them to decide to do this...

They were out there with push brooms, doing their best to get the water off the field, but it was a futile effort.  They worked on it for 20 minutes, but the rain kept coming down.  Then a few of them huddled together and five minutes later we heard what we were dreading.  

"Ladies and Gentleman, today's game is being canceled due to rain."

A huge groan mixed with boos went up from the crowd.  What is this "game being canceled due to rain you speak of??"  That was the thought of  everyone there.  We don't see this kind of thing.  We see sunshine and blue skies and sure, brown grass, but at least our outside activities never get ruined!  Unfortunately this one did.  It was hard to be mad about it though, because damn do we need any rain we can get.  We were informed that we could have come back the next afternoon for the makeup game, but unfortunately the girls were starting an afternoon Girl Scout camp.  I would have been the only one able to go and where was the fun in that?  

The girls were definitely disappointed. I was sad for Lana and Georgia who had been so excited to see their first Red Sox game.  On the other hand, we kinda had a really fun night hanging out in the stadium, having dinner and watching it rain.  It no doubt became a core memory for me as I'm sure it did for my girls.  (For those of you who don't know what I mean by "core memory", go see Inside Out.  The best Pixar movie ever.  Loved it!)  It will go down in our family history as, "remember that one time when we were supposed to see the Red Sox and Angles play...." 

When we got home that night, I said to Georgia, 

"I'm sorry that we didn't get to see the game."

And she answered, "That's okay!  I had fun anyway!"

It's all in how you look at things.  Plus! We a got to become part of baseball, and more specifically Angles history, by being at the first rain out game in over 20 years. And who doesn't love being a part of history?

The mixed "core memory" emotions of the evening. 

Season Two

Since it's the middle of March, Sonya is in full baseball season mode.  She had her first game a couple of weeks ago. This year she plays on a  coach pitch team.  I wasn't sure she was going to play at all this year though.  I'm not sure why, but by the end of the season last year, and all summer, she kept telling me she didn't want to play again.  She did such a great job last year and seemed to love it.  I wrote about it here and here.  I don't know if she was burnt out with all her activities by June, or she was nervous to go from T-ball to coach pitch, but she was adamant that she wasn't playing again.  I let it go and didn't bother her about it for a while, but then sign ups came around in December.  I managed to convince her to play again this year and see how it went.  If she hated it by the end, I would never make her play again.  So far, she is enjoying it even more this year, and I am putting a check in the good pushy mother category for myself.  Well, so far.


There are few reasons why it's better for her this year.  First of all, the team she is on this year, The Cardinals, really has their shit together.  The coaches know what they're doing and they're great with the kids.  Figuring out how to hit the ball when it's not on a T has been a challenge for her, but it's been a challenge for most of the kids.  She is starting to get the hang of it, as they all are.  She is also on the team with her best friend since she was 10 months old, Carter.


Carter and his family moved about an hour and half away a couple years ago, but this past December they moved back.  When Sonya was going to try outs for baseball in January, I told Stacy (Carter's mom) about it and mentioned they should sign Carter up.  They decided it was a great idea.  We did a little finagling and managed to get the kids on the same team.  This has helped to keep Sonya's interest in wanting to go to practice, because she gets to hang out with Carter.  It has also renewed her interest in playing the game.


She did well the first game of the season, but I could tell she was still a little nervous about doing this again.  Especially since the T was gone.  The good news was, the T came back after any kid couldn't hit the ball by five pitches.  During that first week, it was all of them.  So, T-ball was in effect that first game.  The second game, everyone seemed to pick it up a little more.  Sonya did end up hitting off the T her first at bat.  Her second time up, she did a bit better.   She was down to her last pitch before the T came out, but no need.  She hit the pitched ball.  So what if it was more like a bunt and rolled a few feet in front of home plate.  It was a fair ball, that she hit!  The other team had to scramble to get it, and because my girl is one speedy runner, she managed to make it safe on base before the ball was thrown.  This started a rally for her team.  Every Cardinal hit the ball and headed for base.  They scored quite a few runs, although I'm not even sure how many.  They don't  keep score at this age.


She played extremely well, defensively also.  During the second inning, she was playing the pitcher position and a ball was hit to her.  She stopped it, thought she had it, then quickly realized it had dropped out of her glove in front of her.  Any other kid would have become frustrated and moved more slowly to pick it up, not sure what to do.  Trust me, I've seen it.  Not Sonya though.  She spotted the ball on the ground, grabbed it, turned and threw it with precision right into the glove of the waiting first baseman, making the out just in time. Despite the mistake she made, she kept her cool and managed to get the out.  The kid seems to know what she's doing.


The coaches apparently agreed.   After the game, while the kids were having their snack and listening to their post-game talk from the coach, my little girl was presented with the game ball.  I, of course, choked back tears.  She was so excited and proud.  Andy and I even more so.  I mean, we know it's only Little League, but it's so great to see your child do well at something.  Especially when it's something they love.  Even if she fell out of love for a few months, it seems to be going strong again.  

Coach Marvin presents Sonya with the game ball.

Sonya, Carter and the game ball

Congratulations Sonya! Here's to many more great games to come!

Put Me In Coach

I felt that after writing about Zach's little accident, I should give you a less... well, gross story about my nephew.  This is the one I was originally going to write about, but when Sunday happened, I just couldn't ignore that gem!  I'm all about the funny.  This story is more about the sweet, which I do also like.  


Zach plays T-ball and his games are on Saturday.  That meant I was going to see him play a game, which was exciting for me, since I don't have any boys.  I will probably at some point, sign Sonya up for T-ball or softball, because she is pretty good at throwing, hitting and catching.  Her father has taught her well.  But let's be honest, she'll never go very far with it, because she's a girl. Well, I mean never as far as I like to daydream about one of my nephews going.  (Playing for the Red Sox).  Sure she could play softball for a long time, but basically she'll never make money doing it.  My nephews are the only ones who have that potential.  Plus Kevin was a baseball player for a while when he was younger, so hopefully he passed that gene down.    


I've mentioned before that Zach is a little rough and like all kids has some bad days.  I guess during one of his practices earlier that week, he had one of those days.  Another kid on the team and Zach weren't getting along so well.  So much so that the coach had to come over to my sister's house to have a chat about Zach's behavior.  He did go to the other kid's house as well.  When Saturday came, they weren't sure what kind of game Zach was going to have.  They had given him a "talking to" about playing the game correctly with good behavior, but you can never be sure what kids actually listen to and follow, until you're in the situation. 


As it turns out, he had taken whatever my sister had said to heart.  At least for that game.  He hit well, kept his hands to himself, except when he was trying to catch a ball, and ran as hard as he could.  That has apparently been a problem.  He likes to mosey to first base after his hits, instead of hustling.  Perhaps he paid too much attention to Manny Ramirez's base running when he played for the Red Sox. Zach even scored two runs for his team.   All in all he was doing great.  


There was the time, however, when he was playing first base and one of his teammates threw the ball from second for Zach to catch and get the runner out.  Turns out Zach wasn't really looking in the direction the ball had gone, or was being thrown from.  Instead it hit him on the shoulder and bounced up on to his cheek.  Okay, I admit I laughed, but only because he wasn't really hurt.  In fact he could have cared less.  This is totally normal of little kids playing T-ball though.  There were many kids not paying attention at the right times, so it wasn't a big deal.  


At the end of the game the coach gathered the team on the bench to give them their pep talk.  I'm not sure who even won or lost.  I don't think they really count that at this age.  The coach was saying how they did a great job that day and to keep it up.  Then he called out Zach.  Zach turned and looked at him with a terrified expression that said, "Shit-what did I do now?" Coach called him over to stand in front of him.  Then he praised Zach for the great job he did that day and presented him with the game ball for being such a team player.   Zach grinned from ear to ear and I started to tear up.  He's not even my kid and I wanted to cry!  What is with my overemotional mom tears?  I guess it's because I've heard my sister talk about how tough it is with him sometimes.  I know how awesome it was that he did something so right, he was rewarded with something so special.   It's a good thing I was there too, because I had my camera out to capture the moment, since my sister didn't.  Nice going, Beth!  


It was so much fun to see him play and especially see him get the game ball.  I'm just happy I was there for it, so that someday when he IS playing for the Red Sox, I can tell everyone  I was there when he had his very first best game ever.  Nice going Zachary!  I will buy season tickets to whoever you play for.  Unless it's the Yankees.  Then we may have a problem.