“Baseball is like church. Many attend few understand.” – Leo Durocher

Last weekend, we watched grandson Auggie play baseball in a tournament at the Twin Creeks Sports Complex in Sunnyvale. He plays on a team – club? – named the FPs, for Future Prospects (which seems to show a sense of ironic humor that I didn’t have at thirteen). Another team was named Cali and, when I asked Auggie where they were from, he answered, “uh, California”. The kids had had four games over two days and were exhausted. They won their first three games and lost their last – which was the only game we saw, but it was great to see Auggie play.

One thing that I was struck by is that baseball played by 13-year olds is much closer to professional baseball than any other sport I can think of. Watch 13-year olds play basketball or football – either kind – and there is a major difference from the pros, but baseball, not so much. That is not to say that baseball is easy, it takes incredible coordination, more so than football and I do not know enough about baseball to catch the nuances but when a kid hits a deep fly ball, it will probably be caught. Early in the game, while Auggie was playing third base, the batter hit a line drive between third and second. Auggie took a big step, caught the ball, and threw the batter out at first. I think I may have been the only one who was impressed.

Next week the team goes to Aspen for another tournament which we will not see (duh!). In the meanwhile, Charlotte spent a week at a surfing camp in southern Mexico. Then, this week, she goes to a Soccer tournament in San Diago.

When I was a teenager, there were no tournaments like this, we had to stay home and entertain ourselves or, in my case, get a summer job after about sixteen. I talk to some people my age and they tend to glorify the entertain yourself aspect and worry, loudly, that kids are losing some sort of ability to self entertain (it goes along with “they use their smartphones too much”). That is not how I remember it. I remember a summer that was pretty boring and definitely could have used some organized sports to spice it up.