Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Connor has been playing baseball for the past few months, since April actually.  And, not pretend baseball anymore--this was real baseball...with real rules...and real pitchers...and real points...and real playoffs...and a real tryout and draft to be placed on a team.  Yep, we were in the big leagues apparently.   Connor was drafted onto the Nationals team this year, and our lives have revolved around baseball games & practices since then...

He had some great coaches!  His head coach used to be a pitcher for BYU back in the day.  His coach was also a lefty, like Connor (well, actually Connor is ambidextrous, but prefers his left slightly), so he was able to really give Connor some good pointers and Connor was able to learn a lot throughout the season.  Here's a few pictures I took at a couple of the games.  Here's Connor up to bat...

Connor throwing in a ball from left field...

Another batting picture.  Just thought it looked cool with the sun behind him...

Connor playing 3rd base...

Batting again.  I could never get my timing down on these pictures.  I was always too early or too late.  This was the only shot I got the entire season of him mid-swing, and unfortunately it was a miss...

Their team made it to the 4th round of the playoffs a few weeks ago and then lost, bringing their season to an end.

I'm pretty sure this will be Connor's last season of baseball.  Like I mentioned earlier, he's getting to the point where everything is very competitive.  Connor is progressing as a player, but not as much as many of the other boys that are still playing at this level.  After several of the games, Connor left pretty discouraged because he felt like he was hurting his team more than helping them.  It wasn't fun for him anymore because there was so much stress associated with it.

He says he wants to try soccer again this fall (which makes his soccer-playing daddy very happy since Connor hasn't ever shown much interest in soccer until now), and then he wants to focus on his wrestling after that.  But, I'm sure we'll still have plenty of baseball in our lives.  Aiden's T-ball season is going on right now--in fact it started like two days after Connor's season finished up--plus Cohen will be starting T-ball next year--because I'm going to fib a little about his age by a month so that they let him play.  Shhhh, don't tell.  --Lindsay