Baseball Moms

The boys of summer are back! It is baseball season once again, and what a great start our World Champion Cardinals are off to! They have at this writing, 9 wins, 4 losses and haven't lost a series yet. Lots of good times for Cards fans!

But this week there are a couple of great baseball stories coming outside of Cardinal Nation. And as I think about the players involved, I wonder just how proud their moms must be of their boys.

The first great story is that of Jamie Moyer of the Colorado Rockies. He got his first win of the season this past Tuesday night against the San Diego Padres, giving up two runs in seven innings pitched. But the real story is not this fairly ordinary sounding win but that Moyer is now, at age 49, the oldest Major League Baseball player to win a game! I love stories like this, but perhaps even more so when I realize that Mr. Moyer and I very likely graduated from high school the same year. Add to that a bit of trivia: in attendance at the baseball game were his wife and seven of his eight kids; the Moyers are also devout Catholics. I think I'll be following him this season!

The second story happened just today. The Chicago White Sox pitcher, Phil Humber pitched a perfect game today! That is only the 21st time in MLB history--that's an impressive stat!!--that a pitcher has successfully retired 27 consecutive batters. Wow! Congratulations, Phil Humber!!

I can only imagine how proud these players' moms must be. I'll bet they find themselves reminiscing back to their sons' Little League days and wonder how they made it all the way to the top of their game as professional baseball players. I'll bet they remember way back when, but not so very long ago, sitting on those hard bleachers with a lot of other parents cheering their own kids on. Seasons have come and gone, games have been won and lost, and their boys are still after all these years, their Mom's favorite ballplayer.

I will likely never know what they feel like today, their grown sons playing professional baseball. But I do know the feelings they had watching their young sons play ball. Today our youngest played the first game of his season. The team lost the game, but our son had a great day, and I was a proud mom!

His first position on the field was 2nd base. The first inning out there the batter hit a high fly ball to him and he caught it, and held on, falling to the ground. He got up and touched second base, putting out the runner who had not tagged up. Woohoo!!! What an exciting play for a 4th grader!

In the next inning, Coach needed another catcher. Since our son was the only other kid who had come 'equipped' to play the position, he began gearing up. He caught well, but the play of the game was when a batter on the other team hit a fly ball to the outfield. Several players were involved in getting the ball back in, and by this time the runner was rounding 3rd base for a possible in-the-park home run. Well, in comes the ball right to our son who is standing ready in front of the plate on the third base line. He catches the ball and just like Yadier Molina, tags the runner coming down from third. He's OUT!! And the crowd goes wild! (OK, maybe not wild....)

In yet another play he picked off a runner at 1st base. He was definitely thinking as he played, and all the hours of watching baseball and listening to the radio have helped him to know his game. I even noticed as he held his glove up to catch the pitch, he would wiggle his right hand fingers, as though giving signs to the pitcher. Nobody else noticed, but I did, and I had to smile.

What a game! Our guy was flying high all the way home. After we got home and had dinner, he was sitting in his place at the table, just staring into space, and he said somewhat dreamily, "I just love playing baseball." Yeah, and I love watching you play, little guy! 

There is just something about this time of year when once again the boys come out to play the game of baseball. There is just something altogether better when your own boy is on the field. He will not always have a great game like he did today, but just as I'll bet Mrs. Moyer and Mrs. Humber feel about their sons this week, today, and at all of his games, he is my MVP.

Play ball!