PLAY BALL!

Well, it's baseball season again, and I spent the better part of this weekend wrestling with scheduling practices for two teams I'll manage this spring (Rookie 7 Red Sox and Minor 10s Red Sox), as well as setting up new web pages for each, updating the FAQ I send out every year, building the contact rosters to hand out to all parents, and working on some logos for some practice t-shirts I usually print up as surprise First Practice gifts.

Muddled in there is the scheduled practices for my 5 year old daughter, this year playing her first turn in T-Ball, as well as my duties MC-ing the annual Cub Scout banquet we had Friday night (250 people, 60 cub scouts advancing in rank, an Arrow of Light Ceremony, a Crossing Over ceremony where a dozen of our boys graduated to Boy Scouts, 50 pizzas, plus more Chinese decorations than will be used at the opening of the Summer Games in Beijing...), two taekwondo lessons, a Cub Scout trip to the hockey game at the same time our other Cub had a trip to the county courthouse, plus we had a sleepover last night, and tomorrow I get up at 5 AM to help oldest son install 63 large American flags for President's Day.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I actually have something like a career trying to start somewhere, as I am currently ass-deep in alligators eight days a week.

But that's all just details, as it's baseball season again, and thus it is time to lace on the spikes and oil up the gloves and smell that horsehide and new-mown grass and feel the chalk and dust on the back of your neck... and know that there yet remain some great and sacred truths in this world, and they often come delivered on a field of green, 'neath a sky of blue.

"I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball. "
-- Annie Savoy, in BULL DURHAM

Amen. Now pass me that rosin bag.
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