I know I have been not writing lately and that is mostly just me shutting down for a bit due to some self-searching and trying to understand a few situations and not writing while I’m working through them because my feeling a week ago is different than my feeling now on those situations. So in many cases, I will just shut down and wait till Ive solved many issues before I talk about any of them.

One thing we have been working through is All-Star weekend and the work up to it. I tend to step off to the side and do anything I can to avoid tension. I know it is worthless to fight and get into a confrontation over little things so this all-star season I volunteered to do the paperwork and get the team set up and not push to be a coach on the field. This left me not coaching my son on the field for the first time. The practice season started very badly for him he was put out in the outfield and he didn’t understand why as a 6-year-old whose only experience this far was infield and the outfield was for the kids who played in the dirt, not the team’s star player. So he threw a few pouting fits and cried all through practice and hit like garbage. I was eventually able to explain to him in real baseball all positions mean a lot and everyone must play. He started practicing better this attitude early got him put in the outfield and he finally accepted it.

When we started the season back in April I would play catch with him and it was mostly a game of fetch for both of us. We played catch every day the past few months and he can catch almost anything thrown at him and he throws back properly 75% of the time he still has aim issues.

He always had a good bat as far as locating the ball. He had some issues like he would wind the bat behind his back before he hit to try and get more distance. He also had a bad habit of throwing his bat after a hit. He has now learned to swing through the zone without the wind-up and even has a pretty good load and he has learned to set the bat down in front of the plate after a hit.

We went into this last weekend wondering what kid would show up to the games this weekend. I know what kid I see and how he played all year in games but this practice as all-stars has been very poor but honestly, his practice in team play wasn’t much better he hates team practice and likes solo practice and performs when the crowds show up so I didn’t know what was going to happen.

We show up to the first game and his coach says hey you are gonna play catcher for these games with the other catcher. Taking turns in innings to keep both from overheating. Well this turned into full-time catcher which he had never done and honestly truly surprised me how well he took to it. His new attitude of any position is the best position has taken hold and he grew as a player and made me proud.

We get into game one of the tournament and he is hitting last in the lineup so we figured it would be a couple of innings till he hit but the team jumps out quickly and the bases are loaded and all you hear is the Imperial Death March starts playing and out trots Timmy smiling ear to ear. Oh, I didn’t mention we were doing walk-up songs and Timmy chose the Darth Vader theme. He walks up takes the first pitch to Left Center, Stand up triple that run rules the inning. Next at bat is his kryptonite for the entire weekend. He hits 3 fouls out to left field over 3rd then swings and misses out. Good foul balls just foul into left field but this was and is his biggest weakness the foul ball. The next time he is up he swings first pitch and it is a perfect connection up third base line and stays fair on this one it hits the fence at 225 feet. He gets the home run with 2 on base. Pops a nice one up to SS next time up for a single and its over a few minutes later easy quick win for the team.

Next game a couple of hours later he is still rotating as catcher and this game just doesn’t go his way he hits one single this game and has 2 foul ball issue at bats. Again this is his hitting flaw he fouls alot and a foot this way its a double or easy triple but a foot that way its another foul. We came back from a 7 to 2 deficit and win the game in extra innings.

Game 3 the next day is our first look at a real team. For some reason, people send real travel teams to Little League All-Star tournaments by legal workarounds. So we got destroyed that game and he only got 1 at bat that game, which he fouled 6 balls in a row then swing and a miss strikeout, because we got run rules quickly.

Game 4 was on day 3 and we were sitting in the losers bracket for the first time all tournament and had to play a team that ran into a good team early and was fighting their way through the losers bracket. This game was where Timmy took over full time catching no more trade-offs he just caught. This was also the day of his Uncle Johnny’s memorial four years ago. He put on the J M on his cheeks and went to work as a ball player.

As far as catching goes it is not very hard at 6 you’re mostly there to stop the ball and maybe try to get a ball at home for an out. He had one bad play but that to be expected from a first weekend catcher. As far as his hitting went he hit a double in the second his first at-bat. A bloop single on his third at-bat and his normal smash up the third base line foul that again touched the fence and had it drifted left a touch would have been another home run instead he misread the pitch count and in 6U after 5 pitches your out and he let pitch 5 go by him no swing for a strikeout. No biggie just a kid learning to play. We won that game in 4 innings run ruled them.

Our next game was back to back we were in the quarter-finals now only 4 teams left and two of them were travel teams with experience. We were playing the travel team we hadn’t played yet. We had hope but we got down quick and never got back into the game. Timmy got one at bat and it was a fly ball behind second that any other 6U team doesn’t catch but this otherworldly SS they had came flying over to catch it. Between the SS and 1B, they had that team could have played defense against 9U teams and won. Maybe not hit but their defense was something else. We ended the tournament in the third we got run ruled quick.

We did get 4th and Timmy did play well and impressed not only me but others with his willingness to play where the team needed and however they wanted him to. He also had the furthest-hit ball of the team and only one other kid had a true stand-up home run from the team during the weekend. He came second in RBIs at the bottom of the lineup but did strike out the most but I guess when you either hit like that strikeouts come. We will fix his foul issue as we have already started working on it and his work with the bat weight lately has really improved his hitting to.

We are looking forward to fall ball in a few weeks starting up and me going back to being coach for the team and not having other people tell us how to play. I think its good to get outside coaching here and there but I still care more about my son’s game than anyone else ever will.

That was the first of many tournament weekends we will be in and I loved it and he told me it was his second favorite weekend ever in his life behind the weekend I took him to see the Trash Pandas play baseball.