One of the joys of watching kids go from squalling, helpless little balls of need to occasionally squalling, sometimes helpless four-year olds is seeing them develop their own interests and passions. So it was this summer when baseball planted a seed in four-year old Cooper that grew and flourished to the point of insanity. Our story began with a couple swings of the wiffle ball bat in the Spring (ahh, nothing signals Spring like the crisp sound of plastic on plastic, at least for four-year old baseball fans), and continues unabated to today, as the World Series limps towards its end barely ahead of the first snowfall.
Owen was in his third year this year of playing first tee ball and now baseball in our local little league. The twins won't be five until next spring and were therefore still ineligible for tee ball this year. Anyway, Owen was on the local little league Twins this spring (an amusing coincidence to our own twins). As I occasionally began to work with Owen in the backyard, Cooper began to take some turns swinging as well. He was soon hitting my underhand pitching regularly, and by the end of summer he was practically taking my head off with line drives. He was out there playing constantly, and home plate was quickly worn down to a patch of dirt. Some days I would come home to find all twenty or so of our wiffle balls lying in the neighbors yard (despite our suburban location, our neighbors are not particularly welcoming types, and have a giant pet pig that is so large and in charge that the boys won't venture through their gate to collect balls when it is out in the yard).
Anyway, as interest grew, I decided to brush everyone up on their baseball basics and dug up a game I had bought on vacation a couple of years ago where you simulate a baseball game by flipping over cards that say things like strike, ball, foul, single, stolen base, etc. Cooper was soon obsessed with both batting in the yard and, when inside, playing the card game, constantly badgering anyone within earshot to do either. An amusing offshoot of the card game is that because the boys learned baseball rules through the game, they tend to sound like the game cards when playing real baseball in the yard, making pronouncements like "Hit by Pitch, Take Your Base" or "Strike Three, Batter Out."
By July, Cooper had moved beyond playing. Although he can't really read, he quickly mastered being able to recognize the name of each major league team in print. Every morning from mid-summer on, he charged outside for the newspapers as soon as he woke up, flipped them open to the box scores, and pored over them, interrupting whatever else was going on to make exciting announcements like "Dad, the Marlins beat the Astros 4 to 3." This led us to develop a system of categorizing the margins of victory - any game where there was a margin of victory of six or more runs is a "cream" and any victory by ten or more is a "super cream". You can imagine the excitement when the Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Royals 19-1 on July 26. You have never seen a more impressed group of little boys - a "super, super cream!!!" Also in common usage in our house is the term "versing," as developed by the twins. It is a variation on the term "versus," which, if it isn't actually a word already, really should be. An example of its use is: "Who are the Red Sox versing today?"
By August, he was also poring over the standings in the newspaper, marveling at six game winning streaks and studying how many games such and such team was behind some other team. By the end of the regular season, baseball fever in Cooper had reached its most ridiculous heights. When I arrived home one night after work, Suzy the Nanny was sitting on the couch reading to Cooper and Hayden, pretty much like every other night when I arrive home. This particular night, however, she was wading through a book Cooper had chosen to check out from the library; an exciting tome entitled: "How Baseball Managers Use Math." As Cooper sat in rapt attention (Hayden's attention level looked something well below rapt, and possibly even below bored, although he was being a good sport (pun intended!)), she read "ERA is the average number of runs a pitcher gives up in nine innings. ERA is a decimal number. To calculate ERA, take the number of earned runs given up by the pitcher. Multiply that number by 9. Then, divide that by the number of innings the pitcher pitched." Tough stuff for a 4 year old, yet Cooper kept her moving through the book each day. Some of the exciting chapter names included "The Manager and His Percentages," "Keeping a Close Eye on the Pitch Count" and "Decimals and Decision Making."
On the last Saturday of the regular season, I bought a pair of tickets to the long out-of-contention Cubs and whisked Cooper off to his very first big league game. First of all, when you are a twin, it is pretty cool to go anywhere with a parent by yourself, even to the bank or Home Depot. When I told him we were going, he got a huge smile and said "Just me???" Second of all, IT WAS A MAJOR LEAGUE GAME!!!! We had a fantastic time. We ate a bag of peanuts and tossed the shells under our seats ("These are tasty!" he told me repeatedly), as well as hot dogs, soda and french fries. Cooper bought his mitt and asked me repeatedly whether I was ready to catch a foul ball when one came our way, and then assured me each time that HE was ready. Despite 5 relatively close calls, no dice. A month later, he still likes to remind me of the final score of the game (Cubs 7, Cardinals 3!) and to recall other details.
It has been a blast seeing something take hold of my little guy and stir such passion. Truly one of my favorite parts of this past summer. I sincerely hope he enjoys 96 more years of baseball love and perhaps, someday, gets the joy of seeing the Cubs super-cream somebody in the World Series.
