Week Four...Summary

"I tried my best, but mom (feel free to substitute dad's name here) said my best was not good enough!", cried my son after a disappointing 14-13 loss to the Dodgers. As I explained to my son that sometimes our best is not good enough and you just have to be happy that your best is your best, I started to question...is that our best? Should our pitchers struggle to throw strikes, our batters look at strike three, runners fail to slide, fielders forget where to throw or cover? We answered that with a resounding NO! as we played a much better game in a good 15-11 win against the Cubs. Sure we had some more defensive miscues and strikeouts, but as a team we played with good focus and had some terrific pitching, hitting, and fielding moments (I attribute that to coach Phil's suggestion that we have the boys run a lap right before the game to wake them up). Okay, so we are 4-4 and looking to peak at the end of next month during playoffs. Honestly, there may not be a team that can beat us when we are playing our best (or a team that we will beat when they are playing their best), so all we need to do is figure out what our best is! The game of baseball is a very complicated game with steals and cutoffs and smart pitching and hitting and the list goes on. As parents, we need to help our kids (and ourselves) be comfortable with "their best" (and we will have practice this week to help us understand what that is). We come back on Saturday against the Red Sox and I hope to even the score after a loss to them in our first game. I also hope all of the boys will be comfortable with their best and have fun in this season of 10-year-old baseball--win or lose (winning is much funner though!). Hope to see many of you at the Grizzlies game.