Playing Ball

Yesterday I was eating my dinner at a neighbor’s house when the kid who’s about 11 turned to a baseball game. Red Sox vs. Detroit, if that matters to anybody. I was personally sad to see Detroit losing 2-0 in the 3rd, but not as sad as I am to be a Mariners fan.
Ok, all beside the point. I ask the kid if he likes to play baseball and he gives me the most enthusiastic yes I’ve seen from him. It progresses and he goes and gets his glove and a ball. We toss it in the house for a bit (I’m not completely grown up yet) before I suggest going out and playing in the street. I find another old glove lying around the house and take that with me to play catch with him.
At first things seem a little bit boring and then I start throwing him some pop-ups. He gets a little more energetic and starts telling me to throw it higher and higher. I throw it in front of him, behind him, to the side, the other side, and then it hits me…this kid doesn’t have a dad nor brothers to play ball with. He told me that he loves playing yet there’s nobody in his life that he can play with. This made me quite a bit more energetic to play, neighbors were watching us out on the cobblestone throwing back and forth as they ducked a few times for wild pop flies and errant return throws.:)
I remember that when I was a kid I loved playing catch with my dad and I’m sure he knew that cause I asked him to play every 5 seconds. At the end of playing this kid asked me, “so when are we going to play again?” I was so excited that he enjoyed playing ball! I hope that we get plenty of chances between now and the end of this next month and a half here to play. Maybe I’ll have to bring back some baseball stuff when I go home in the summer.
Now, my arm is of course not feeling as excited as my mind. I haven’t played real baseball in years and I don’t think that I’ve played catch for that long since I was in high school. So much fun…