April 29, 2005 - Friday
We finished building Harry's drums this morning and that would have been plenty of excitement for one day. But this afternoon from 5:30 - 7:00 was Harry first Tee Ball practice with his team, the Giants. We actually got there a couple of minutes late, so Harry ended up needing to join a crowd of kids who he didn't know. I might have though that would be tough for him, as it was last fall at Rip's soccer practice, but he sure didn't seem to be. Maybe that's because we'd talked about it a couple of times earlier this week, mayb e it's because he's just more confident with himself now, and maybe it's just that he was excited to finally be playing "baseball" like he has been saying he wanted to do since last summer.

I didn't know what to expect when it came to Harry's ball playing abilities, at least compared to the other kids. He's always liked to hit and can do what I think is a surprisingly good job hitting a [well] pitched ball, so I didn't think hitting off the Tee would be a probably, with the possible exception of his small size and inability to hit very far. But he's been less interested in using and practicing with his glove.

However, after we bought his handsome new cleats on Monday, he wanted to go right out and play (I remember the joy of new cleats from when I was young) and he agreed to practice catching grounders. It turned out that doing that, and doing it again Tuesday afternoon, were really quite helpful because at least he had a foundation of technique for the practice today. I wouldn't say he was the best fielder of the bunch - heck five-year-olds just don't have the dexterity yet and they were all pretty awful catching - but he was certainly in the better half. (Although, his excellent, fingers-down technique here on the left did not prevent this particular ball from going through his legs.)


Comments, Opinions?