Brawl on Boardwalk

We found ourselves at home the other night, done with dinner and with a couple of free hours stretching out ahead of us. What else to do then than to break out Monopoly! Deanna teamed up with Hayden, and I teamed up with Cooper, while Owen flew solo. Owen's dubious 8-year old strategy of not wanting to buy any properties other than Boardwalk and Park Place, and my dubious 45-year old strategy of leveraging everything to buy and build at all costs both backfired, and eventually we were forced to concede to Deanna and Hayden and their imposing collection of fancy houses and luxury hotels. At the conclusion of the spirited game, Cooper was in tears because we lost, bawling loudly and yelling that he should have teamed up with mommy instead. Hayden, in our family tradition of being bad winners, was singing a victory song, doing a victory dance, and generally taunting his brothers. This bought him a kick to the groin from a frustrated Owen, resulting in exponentially more crying and shouting and chaos followed by punishments. Ah, family game night. Next time something a bit less competitive perhaps.

Complete Game

From the moment the first thud of a ball hitting a catcher's mitt at spring training echoed up from Arizona to, well, right this minute, our house has been pretty much all baseball all the time this summer. A sampling of the many ways it has dominated our lives.

Playing: While the twins were heartbreakingly 12 days too young to play t-ball this year, Owen was able to play in Junior Minors little league, then on the league all-star team, and finally on a travelling all-star team. The season was one of ups and downs - playing well enough to be an all-star was great for him, but the travelling team's 2-10 record against kids from other towns was a real eye-opener for all of our hometown big fish in a small pond. It's tough out there boys! Still, I loved Owen's post-game post-mortems, especially when he would excitedly tell me things like "I threw him a four seam fastball for the strikeout" (the rainbow arc of his four seamer looking oddly similar to all of his "other" pitches). Watching the 8-year olds spitting sunflower seeds in the dugout and speculating to each other whether the opposing team was using a corked bat was priceless, as was watching them grow into better players and an actual team. Overall good experience. Cooper, for his part, was content to practice almost constantly in the backyard for his future chances to play - spending hours, and often heading out by himself in his pajamas - throwing the ball up and hitting it time and again, or practicing pitching endlessly with the pitch back.

Statistics: Cooper is usually the first kid up, at which point he stumbles downstairs, unlocks the front door, grabs the paper from the driveway, comes back in and sprawls across the floor while he proceeds to study the standings and previous days' baseball statistics for the next 15 minutes. The kid literally taught himself to read last year by learning the names of baseball teams (see http://cloudeight.blogspot.com/2010/10/boy-of-summer.html) and is now a great reader of everything. In addition, he now has a grasp of baseball statistics that is amazing to me in a 5 year old still weeks away from kindergarten, studying earned run averages, how many games out various teams are, winning percentages, etc.

Lore: Owen and his friends spent the spring studying baseball history in some book at school and he certainly knows a lot more baseball lore than me already. While as a parent you can bullshit your way through a lot of kid questions, I am unable to bullshit my way through ones like "what made Rogers Hornsby so good?"; a stumper I received the other day. Hell if I know kid, although I assume it wasn't steroids since the guy played in the 20s and 30s. Hmmmmm, perhaps it was the extra s tacked onto Roger. In case you get this question parents, the things you need to know are that he has the second highest lifetime batting average ever (.358, second only to Ty Cobb) and hit over .400 an amazing 3 times.

Trading: Much to my delight, the guys have all been avidly collecting and trading baseball cards since the Spring. This has given me a convenient excuse to do the same in the name of father-son bonding. I am currently the subject of much jealousy after my acquisition of the only Darwin Barney rookie card in the house. Owen has taken his collecting to the extreme - given $15 to spend on a recent vacation, he choose to spend it on a box containing 36 unopened packs of baseball cards ... from 1990. Due to his freakish knowledge of past players, this seemed to give him as much joy as opening packs of 2011 cards, although it all seems a bit surreal. Seriously, how many other dads this summer have heard their 8 year old happily exclaim while opening a pack of cards: "Dad, I got Wade Boggs!!!" Owen and I both tried pieces of 21 year old gum from the 1990 packs by the way - BIG mistake. Deanna, for her part, could not be less enamored of the fact that cards are pretty much everywhere in our house. Despite being largely kept in binders by each kid, you can pretty much find loose cards in every room. Deanna has an old George Brett edition mitt from her youth, and the guys excitedly planned weeks ahead of her birthday to give her a 1990 George Brett baseball card using the mitt as wrapping paper for her birthday. Her excitement was palpable.

Rooting: Cruelly, I have passed on to the boys my love of the Cubs. The Cubs spate of injuries, poor fundamentals, lack of leadership and all around terrible play have left them with a terrible record and 15 1/2 games out of first in a crappy division, leaving us with precious little to root for. Still, the boys have a Cubs fan's optimism even at such young ages and ability to find hope in even the most dire of circumstances. We recently cheered as the Cubs finally put together their first three game winning streak of the season (only four months into the season!) and blasted past the Orioles to have only the third worst record in the league. Look out, Kansas City Royals, were gunning to move past you for fourth worst! Cooper in particular seems to take it all in stride, taking the news of yet another loss with a momentary sadness followed by a smile and a "maybe we'll win tomorrow." Although Hayden is less enthusiastic about baseball in general than the other two, he is a good little rooter as well from time to time. A couple of weeks ago, the whole family ventured to Wrigley family, where we witnessed the home team surge to victory in extra innings.

I have watched more baseball this summer than the previous ten years combined. The boys watch as late as we will let them and then drift off to sleep to the call of the late innings on the radio. And so it goes - the pace of our summer dictated by the unique rhythms of this most-American of games. While much has been written in recent years about the inability of today's quick-cut youth to connect with the slow pace of baseball, two of my three guys have fallen for it head over heels and appear to perhaps have lifetime afflictions. Not a bad sport to fall for, if I do say so myself; not bad at all.