Nanny Adventures

Question: What is it called when you advance to the next base without hitting?

Me: stealing a base or advancing because a hitter hit the ball

Kidlet: oh

Me:(laughing hysterically silently) That is correct right?

Kidlet: yeah

Me: You didn’t think I knew anything huh?

Kidlet: yeah….while changing the subject

So I dropped him off at practice at his coach’s house. They were having a team pow wow and batting swing practice.  I came back an hour and half later.  Kidlet was using this thing with the coach called a Two Man Batting Training Stick   I was pretty impressed with this little contraption.  So kidlet and I head out to buy new cleats and then off to his dad’s office so they can go to the Capital’s Hockey game. 

We get to Modell’s.  We find a stack of baseballs he wants, and find some cleats for him..$25 bucks.  Then I asked him if he wanted that training stick, he said sure. We find and it plop down our $90 bucks for everything. The training stick was $40. 

So the following week I decide we need to work on his batting stance. Now mind you, I am no pro by any means at hitting. But I did grow up with my mom coaching softball for basically all of my glorious 35 years. So I know a little about how you need to stand and step into the ball :)   So kidlet and I go outside to practice.  He is all over the place with his stance and hitting.  I am telling him he needs to plant his feet and step into the ball with his front foot.  He was just raising his front foot up and down.   So I am trying to explain to him how to do it.  He finally says he doesn’t care. I ask him why bothering going to practice and the games if you don’t care.  He said because I will get a participatory ribbon. (UGGHHHHHHH was all I was thinking). I was like well sure you will get a ribbon, but do you want to waste your time?  I said why not just work on your swing and hitting so you can work on getting some good strong hits in.  He was like ok reluctantly.   I was growing impatient with him because he was not concentrating and just playing around. So I said ok I am done, you aren’t being serious and I am in no mood for being abused by the training stick on my hands if you won’t work on hitting properly.  I went inside. About 5 minutes later he came inside and asked me to come outside and he will try better now. I said ok I will.  I told him I just wanted 10 good hits from him and that is all.  To be a good hit was to hit the target ball on the end and the ball stick to swing around towards my back–without whacking me in the back. :)  So we do that for about 10 minutes. He ended up with some nice level hits and stepping into them.   Won’t my mom and brother be proud of me for my batting coaching skills now.  HAHA.

Once we were inside, kidlet said thank you to me. I said no problem it was fun.  He said his old nanny never did things with him like that before and he liked how I was doing things with him. It brought a smile to my face.  Of course this happiness will only last till the next time I “nag” him to do the trash or pick up his room.  He and his older brother, Kidlet #1, tell me I nag them all the time to do things.  That is another whole blog chapter, chapters actually.

Moral of the story:

You too can surprise kidlets by your knowledge of sports just by paying attention to the world around you.  I don’t love baseball but I do like it enough to know what teams are what and some of the basic terms are. Now can I tell you what a batting average is..heck no. But I can tell you what advancing to the next base is without hitting