The love of baseball

Tonight I went to the ball fields and watched the orange team play the grey team and it was wonderful. I love baseball, always have and always will and to see my grandson, our little daycare kids and friends of theirs out playing was just so much fun. I guess on Friday nights the teams invite some of the older kids to play with them as they don't have an older team. Austin's team had my great nephew Cane Forbes, who is only 10 but still too old play on the regular team in league play, and the grey team had Aaron Moody and another kid I didn't know but he looked like a Babe Ruther. I thought it was really nice to let those older kids play since they don't have a team. That is one of the things I like about sports - it teaches the kids to play as a team and hopefully to learn sportsmanship. I read this phrase tonight and I thought it fit so well what we try to teach our kids. "The real winners in sports are those who know how to persevere and to behave with dignity — whether they win or lose a game." I know how hard it is to coach kids and teach them those values when everything in the world seems to be all about winning. But I saw those coaches helping all the kids, rather it was one of their players or on the other team, learn the basics of baseball. After all kids learn sportsmanship from the adults in their life. Sportsmanship carries through in their everyday life rather they know it or not. Those experiences are what forms the people we become. I think our coaches must have learned that well because they sure were great with the kids. Kudos to the coaches, kudos to the kids who learn to play like good sports and kudos to the parents who are the REAL life coaches in their children's lives, and teach them the grace of winning and losing.