A baseball afternoon. The good news, when your son is the closer, is you can get to the games late, you can get some work done (hey, let’s blog) while sitting in the shade of an oak tree and then wander closer for the seventh inning. That’s our routine.
Low-key for six and high-stakes for seven. Three straight games with a hitless/scoreless final inning for three straight saves. My friend Sanna Neilson breathed a big sigh of relief when her son Parker Hendriks retired from being a steeplechase jockey this week. He survived – and she survived – six seasons, 331 races, over 3,000 jumps. All seventh innings.
Beautiful, wind-swept, sunny afternoon for a game. Two varsity players long toss. Three relief pitchers jog to the left-field foul pole. A Miller School player sits in a golf cart with an ice bag to his left temple. Parents text, clap, text, groan. A bus idles in the parking lot. A dog pants, just beyond the center-field fence. Trace digs in for the bottom of the third. A lazy fly ball finds a glove in center. One down. An error, one on. A foul ball into the woods. A single, two on. Another single, one run scores. A fly ball. A ground out.
And a long way to go before the seventh.
