Brinks III: T-Ball

Daniel started t-ball this year. I was so excited thinking about it, even going to register him for it. Then as I was walking to my car after signing him up, I got that whole sinking "he's growing up too fast" feeling. It's crazy that sports has already started in the Brinks 3 household. We got the call at the end of January from his coach Chris letting us know about practice and that Daniel was going to be on (drumroll please) the Rockies! Matt of course was thrilled. Daniel was not. He was not excited about baseball at all. We told him he was going to play like Maddie and he immediately saw huge kids hurtling softballs at his head so he was a little scared. After his first practice though we haven't had any real problems with him wanting to go. He says that he's having fun so that's the important thing. We went to his first practice and can I just tell you how highly entertaining that was to be at. First of all, the kids have no concept of the game so you tell them to run to first and they keep running until you stop them. When they started fielding, the coach was just rotating them around to positions and he started Daniel at first. A kid hit the ball, another kid "fielded" (in the loosest sense of that word) it and threw it in Daniel's general direction. Daniel went and got it and the coach told him to touch first base. So obviously Daniel ran over to the base and threw the ball at it. Matt then said "no, with your foot" to which Daniel promptly kicked the ball to first base. Good news is, we've worked on that he knows not to do that anymore. During warm ups, one kid threw the ball kind of in the coach's general location and yelled "Yes! Touchdown!" Also at practice, they do the running drill at the end of practice where they split the team in half, one half at home and the other second, and they do a relay race around the bases. In general, it was hilarious. You had kids that ran past the bases all the way to the fence, kids who never touched the bases because they were literally "rounding" like going around the bases, the kid who finally made it to second and when the coach said "run all the way home" he turned, skipped third and ran directly home. It took about 4 times doing it before there were only the occasional "rounding" problems. The boys loved it though. He has a couple of little boys on his team, Aaron and Isaac, that are frickin hilarious.

Yes his eyes are closed and yes he missed the ball completely. In his defense, it was his first try.

Game day! Saturday February 23 we had opening day where we had the pancake breakfast, opening day ceremonies, and his first game against the Angels. He's super excited here can you tell? And once he was in the dugout he kept asking if "the guys" were going to be at his game. By guys he means Grammy, Rick, Brent, Becca, and Lins. Bec came for pancakes but then had to work but everyone else was there. Laughing and cheering right along with us.

The way they run t-ball is that there are no outs. You try to get them out but even if you did, they get to stay on base because they're trying to teach them basics. So one teams bats all the way through their line up and then they switch and they do this twice. Daniel hit the ball both times without the tee. The first time he was technically out because after he hit the ball he stood there jumping up and down because he was so excited and the coach had to tell him to drop the bat (which he threw half way down the first base line) and go to first base.

Then on his way to second number 5 kept getting in his way to keep him from the base. This was there encounter after he made it to the base. My guess is that Daniel is telling him he can't do that.

While he was very excited about hitting and running (he was literally jumping up and down on all the bases) he was not so happy about fielding. There was one time when the ball came in his general direction that he went for the ball and did what he was supposed to do. But the rest of the time he was sitting, throwing his hat on the ground, dancing, playing with his cup, looking at the birds, talking to the coach in the outfield (you get the picture). Being the competitive person I am, it really frustrated me. Now I laughed when little Isaac was running circles around the outfield coach and throwing his glove up into the air and catching it but it made me bonkers that Daniel wasn't even paying attention. It's been happening in practice too but I thought that a game would snap something into him I guess. After a long time of not wanting to take pictures, I decided to take a boatload of them. For blackmail.