The incident that stands out last week has to do with my son's fall baseball team. We only started playing t-ball last spring, so we're still relatively new to the sport. In the spring K ended up as an assistant coach (to our friend down the street, who was the main coach), and it was a lot of fun. We're on the same fall ball team as both families on our street that we're friends with. Our schedule is practice on Thursday evenings and games on Saturdays. Last week was the third week of the season and I realized the total chaos and disorganization that characterized our team. For game one, I only stopped by for one inning with my dad. You can see the empty dugout behind Ryan in the picture since he was one of the last batters. That was a rare moment of calm. For game two, I went to watch the whole game and then ended up in the dugout when I could sense that K needed help. Then I realized that I was not at all prepared to deal with 14 rowdy 6-8 year olds. They were hanging off the rafters, putting their equipment everywhere except where it was supposed to go, provoking each other, and trying to bribe each other to not be ratted out! I also realized that the team parent (the coach's wife) was not recruiting sufficient help to make it run smoothly, and she spent half of the game sitting in the stands. This crew is older and VERY different than our spring t-ball team. Then last Thursday night, K ran the practice since the coach was out of town. K was informed at that time by the coach's wife that he was once again needed for coaching Saturday's game. And that's when K had to listen to my 30 minute rant about how anyone could run a baseball team with this level of disorganization. I asked, "So what was their plan going to be if you weren't free to coach on Saturday? And who's going to manage the dugout? Not ME, since I'm celebrating my friend's 40th birthday in SF!" And on and on. I felt very justified in my rant but knew deep down that I was also developing a really bad attitude (or battitude, ha ha) about the team. I almost wanted to drop out. I started grilling poor K on what other sports our son could play.
The next day I still hung onto my sense of personal suffering from being subjected to this level of poor baseball team management. It took a few more sessions of trying to gather data points from colleagues about how other kids' sports teams are managed to be ready to let it go. Then I reached a point of realizing that someone, or a few people, needed to step in to help. And, as often the case, it wasn't about me. K and Ry are both enjoying the sport and practicing together. Even though I don't have a lot of time and can't make it to all the games, I can organize things ahead of time to make sure they go smoothly. It literally only took me 15 minutes of my work afternoon (granted this was Friday of performance review week and everyone had suffered extreme brain drain at this point) to send a few text messages and emails to the coach, his wife / team parent, and the whole team. I found two people to run the dugout, started figuring out which kids would be there, drafted a lineup, and shared with a few others to get input. My friends on my street were delighted and probably laughing at me as well. It was actually fun. I heard afterward that the game went really well, and it was also easier since almost half of the team was out for various reasons. Now I'm back to where I was a few weeks ago of just enjoying the sport. Ry has definitely been improving in his hitting, he's enjoying it, and he's getting to know his two friends/neighbors better. And the girls even like running after the balls for him, so that's a bonus!
I have a LONG list of other things that I'm grateful for this week, including my mom's 75th birthday and her good health, dear friends to celebrate with, a spontaneous trip to the farmer's market with the girls and their godmother, and running another 5k that I survived with pretty minimal training (which is also why I missed my goal of running faster than I did pushing the stroller last time, but this is motivating me to train more which is good).
And I think I've identified a new skill that I'd like to learn. This may surprise some of you, especially the ones who knew K when he was a part-time professional photographer, but I want to get some lessons from him and dust off his equipment. It's 7-8 years old but he has some great cameras and lenses sitting around and I realized that I might as well use them since he's unlikely to at this point. Tonight he brought me a stack of his favorite photography books to read (which I should have expected, since he's a teacher), gave me a very useful 20 minute overview (which is more than I learned in the many years he was shooting since honestly I never bothered to ask), and tomorrow he's going to give me a hands on lesson with his 30D and one of his favorite lenses, his 50mm prime. Wish me luck!
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