Sounds like big league ball

The playoffs are just around the corner and I have had some time to reflect on my oldest son's first season of real baseball. Well, it was real baseball in the sense that there were three outs and strikes, even though there were 5 strikes allowed per bat appearance.

Around here, kids get 2 to 3 years of t-ball slash coach-pitch before going on to one year of machine pitch and after that, the kids pitch to kids.

After one year of coach-pitch I recognized my son was a little more advanced in baseball than of the many kids in his league. So I cheated the system a hair and lied about his grade in order to move him up to machine pitch. Machine pitch is a developmental league where they go over the fundamentals and more importantly, runs and outs mean something whereas previous years teams switched sides every six batters and runs and outs had no consequence. Well, moving him up worked out wonderfully and he gets another year of machine pitch whereas the kids he played with will go on to kid pitch.

Anyway, my future big leaguer is urging me to be a coach after and I've been thinking how I could top his first year. His team went to the championship game and lost by one run. Actually, I thought it was fortunate to come in 2nd place in the first year in organized ball. It leaves the kids hungry and I'm sure it will drive them to try just that much harder in the years to come.

Over the course of the developmental league season, I noticed the coaches constantly barking out the same things. "Force at one," "force at two," "force at any bag," and other vital pieces of communication. So I had this idea that instead of hearing these commands over and over, it would be fun to hear things you would hear at a major league game. "Programs! Get your programs here!" and "Peanuts, popcorn.. Cracker Jacks!" Imagine the other teams' reactions to hearing coaches calling out "Lemonade.. Lemonade.. Just like Grandma made!"

To make this work, you would have to call these commands while practicing the plays so the kids knew instinctively what it meant come game time. Here's what these coded commands could be:

Klondike.. alerting the catcher there's a pop-up he can catch for an out.

Cotton Candy... Make the easiest or closest out, even at home plate.

Hot Apple Pie (in the sky).. letting the runners know to stay close to the bag in case of pop up

Peanuts, Popcorn, Cracker Jacks.. Force out at 1st, 2nd, or 3rd

Lemonade, Lemonade...There are two outs and runners need to be running on contact

Cold beer here! Telling the runner on 2nd he should be looking to go home if ball goes to outfield (2nd graders like to slide into every bag for some reason).

Well, I could go on and on but to keep things from getting too complicated I'll start with these. If they work well, I'll expand into "Foam Fingers" and "Souvenirs!"

Lessons from 2nd Grade

I can remember going back to school like it was yesterday. Having a backpack full of new pencils, markers, notebooks and folders. New clothes including a pair of new shoes I was positive would help me out run everyone at recess. The memories are so vivid that I was a bit shocked I'd forgotten so much about the first few days of school.

First of all, it's okay to be walked to the door - but only on the first day. I remembered this rule the second day as my child ran off ahead of me as if the principal was handing out free candy. I followed from a distance just to make sure he reached school grounds safely, but trying to convey complete confidence in my child, I told the parents I was walking with that, "I just want to show his little brother where big brother is going." They must have bought it because the walked with me.

Second, a brown bag lunch is better than pizza day on the first days of school. When I was a kid, we had to buy tickets to buy a lunch. Now days the kids have a secret number they enter. It's a much better system. No concerns your child is going to lose the money on the way to school or spend it on something else. But not all kids are as good at remembering the code as my son. So while the cashier was looking through her book of codes to make sure each kid's account was being billed correctly, my son's lunch time was being cut shorter and shorter.

He came home that day with an appetite that frightened me. In between mouthfuls he told me he was at the end of the lunch line and every kid in front of him had forgotten their code. He managed to get a bite of his cheeseburger before the lunch time is over bell rang.

Third lesson, you can never have too much facial tissue. Maybe it's allergies or maybe it's being exposed to so many other nose pickers, but for some reason in those first days of school my boy's nose is like the Terminator. You can blow it out but it just keeps coming back again and again. With that kind of relentless tenacity, the couple of tissues I tucked into his pocket were exhausted before recess. And despite donating a couple boxes of Kleenex to the class, my son wasn't about to call attention to himself by going up to the desk to grab some. Oh no, it was so much more discrete to continually touch his nose to his short sleeve shirt. He came home looking like he walked through a paintball battlefield.

The last lesson - the alarm clock goes off earlier and earlier. That first day of school, my son was fed, dressed and polished a full hour before school started. The second day it he had a few minutes of free time before heading out. And the third day, I was almost sure he was going to be late. My wife and I were trying to adjust his bed time so he was getting up and going to bed in a cycle that was natural for him. For future reference, don't make any adjustments to sleep schedule at least for the first few weeks.

It's recommended that school agers get 10 hours of sleep - and that's actual sleep, not just time in bed. So allowing for the bed time routine, the time to fall asleep and the wake-up routine, you'll probably end up starting the night time routine about 12 hours before school starts.

It's been 30 years or so since I was in elementary school, but as this article demonstrates, I'm still learning lessons from 2nd grade.