Our 10-year-old son John played in his first ever official baseball game today. (Actually, I guess it's yesterday by now.) He had never shown much of an interest in sports up until last July when we took him to a Cardinal baseball game while we were visiting back home in St. Louis. Something about the game and the great baseball atmosphere (St. Louis is the greatest baseball town on Earth--ask any major league ballplayer) at Busch Stadium clicked with him, and he's been a big baseball fan ever since. In a very short amount of time, he's educated himself on a lot of the history of the game. In one recent conversation about catchers, he casually dropped Bill Dickey into the conversation. Bill Dickey. The guy played in the 1930's.

John and his sister Leah are home schooled, and we've purposely shielded them from public school worldliness up until this point. He's been dying to play baseball though, so we decided that he was old enough to join the Cooper City Little League (though we're always there to keep a close eye on things). It's been difficult on Wendy knowing that John is going to hear things that he's never heard before, but he's a good kid and has a strong sense of right and wrong (thanks largely to Wendy's constant work with them in homeschool). So far, he's doing great, and I think he's a good influence on some of the more rebellious kids.

His first time at bat, he drew a walk. They had a practice game a few days ago in which he didn't reach base, and he was quite frustrated about it. All of the other kids on the team have at least a year of experience under their belt, but John is really just learning. He works hard and is improving, but in batting practice can still go through some real dry spells. Today, when the ump called ball four, John began jumping up and down and pumping his fist celebrating. You've never seen anybody more excited about a walk, and you likely never will. He eventually came around to score, and in the process managed to slide into every base--whether the ball was near or not.

On his second at-bat of the day, he made contact on a sharp grounder which he beat out for a base hit! My only son's first-ever base hit. As it sunk in, I got choked up. Fine, give me a purse, I admit it...I got misty. At the end of the game, the tradition is for the coaches to give the "game ball" to somebody. Coach Steve gathered the kids around and said something like "For the game ball, we've got a kid who played in his very first game today, and is already contributing. The game ball goes to John Rabe."

It doesn't get much better than that.