The Little League Mom

(AKA E. Peevie of the Green Room )

You’ve been following the debate , of course, about whether or not I should bring C. Peevie back to Chicago from our idyllic vacation resort in South Haven for the final Little League championship game.

Well, as I reported in The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-are-champions.html ), the family was supportive, so we made the hot, un-air-conditioned drive, and arrived with about an hour to spare. I got comfortable in my folding camp chair in prime real estate behind the Brewers’ bench, where I sat for exactly one scoreless inning.

Then C. Peevie got up to bat with one runner on base and one out in the top of the second. I’ve mentioned that he’s been struggling at the plate, and when he whiffed the first pitch, my stomach lurched.

Moments later my boy scorched a line drive over the third baseman’s head and past the left fielder for a triple—driving in the first run of the game. I left my middle-aged mom self behind and jumped about 17 feet in the air. “Go, Zeusk*!” I screamed. “Run like the wind!”

C. Peevie has many strengths, abilities and assets. Speed is not one of them. And yet that boy—my boy—pulled off a triple, setting the stage for two more runs that inning. The Brewers led until the fifth inning, when the Twins pulled ahead by one run. By the end of the fifth inning, every fan on both sides of the field was standing, cheering every pitch, every play, every blink.

Coach Lou moved C. Peevie around, starting him in left, playing him in center and right, and a couple of innings at first base. Sometime around the sixth inning, he fielded a sharply hit ground ball about eight feet from the first base bag. He knocked it down, and fumbled it for a second. The crowd roared.

Then we saw the kind of smart teamwork that coaches dream about: C. Peevie realized he couldn’t pick up the ball and get back to the bag quickly enough to make the out. Abandoning his feckless fumbling, he darted to the bag. Meanwhile, the second baseman, in heads-up play, scooped up the ball and tossed it over to C. P. at first for the out. On the Brewers’ sidelines, we passed the defibrillator down the row.

Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, the Brewers faced a desperate one-run deficit. Batting for the last time in regulation play, the Coach’s son Tommygun led off, smartly accepting a walk. He easily stole second on a dropped pitch, and the fans urged the batter, my friend ChefKat’s son and wielder of a Big Bat, Nick, to bring him home.

Another dropped pitch, and Tommygun headed for third! We all stopped breathing, and yet somehow we were screaming at the same time! The Twins’ catcher threw the runner out, and we were two outs away from earning a respectable but disappointing second place trophy.

Big Bat Nick came through with a crucial single, and the next batter drove him home, tying the game four-four. We held them in the bottom of the seventh and went into extra innings. Honestly, I do not even remember any details after this point, probably because my brain was too deprived of oxygen, except that there was no score in the eighth, and the Brewers scored three runs in the ninth, and held the Twins scoreless to take the crown.

The boys celebrated with zero-proof champagne, and the adults celebrated with real bubbly. I was so grateful that C. Peevie had this experience, and I do believe the Little League Coach is right: it will remain distinct in his memory for many years, and perhaps even for the rest of his life.

And now I’ve made a deposit in my memory bank as well, one that will make me grin every time I revisit it. The trip was definitely worth it.

*Zeuskarelli is my weird and unlikely nickname for C. Peevie.

(Read more from The Little League Mom, AKA E. Peevie, in The Green Room , where she writes about parenting, politics, and other p- and non-p topics, and even posts a little poetry periodically.)

Guest Post for The Little League Coach

by Little League Mom (AKA E. Peevie)

Here’s the thing. We’re leaving for vacation today. Unfortunately—well it’s actually great, but the timing is unfortunate–C. Peevie’s team, the Brewers, starts the league championship tournament today.

I’m sure this happens all the time to teams and kids and coaches. I remember missing my team’s trip to the state championships when I was playing varsity softball as a sophomore back in the Mesozoic era. My parents made the executive decision that my cousin’s wedding was more important than the state championships. I’m still not sure I agree with them—even from the perspective of a parent facing a similar dilemma.

Actually, it’s not really a dilemma. We’ll leave a few hours later than planned so that C. Peevie can play in his first-ever championship tournament. But the Brewers will have to field a different first baseman for game two of the series, and game three if they split, because C. Peevie will be hitting the beach, not the ball, in South Haven, Michigan.

I’m sure that C. Peevie is disappointed. Whatever. He’s young. He’ll get over it.

But this is really about me, the Little League Mom. What about my feelings? I’m the one whose feet swelled to clown size, whose ankles disappeared, and whose belly was sliced open to get that ball-player on the field today. That’s MY boy out there, pointing to the left field fence and smacking one into the bleachers. Or not—but it’s still my boy making his championship appearance.

I’ve watched him learn lots of life lessons in five seasons of little league baseball—but I’ve never gotten the chance to see him get this close to a league crown and team glory. It’s the right decision, to head up to South Haven after game one. It’s not really much of a choice—the reservations are made and paid, the extended family will be there—but still. The heart breaks.

TTFN, readers, and I’ll catch you on the flip side of the tournament.

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Image by on2wheelz via Flickr

Guest Post for The Little League Coach

by Little League Mom (AKA E. Peevie)

I know a lot of you little league parents out there have finished up your seasons and have already headed into playoffs. You’re beginning to see the light at the end of the batting tunnel, and it’s not because you just got beaned. You no longer have bleach on your Costco list. You’ve promised your non-little-league children that you’ll be spending some quality time with them soon.

Not us. Here in Chicago we had a late start. We were still shoveling snow into late April , for crying out loud. It must make you wonder why this part of the continent is even inhabited, instead of remaining an icy scientific outpost. I often wonder the same thing.

But here we are, almost into July, with two more weeks of regular season baseball, followed by another two weeks of playoffs. After that, we could be lucky enough to have another two weeks of All-Stars—so I could be bulk-buying bleach and Gatorade ® for another six weeks. Oh, yippy.

Seriously, though, I’m thrilled that C. Peevie is finally playing on a winning team, and that they have a good chance of doing well in the playoffs. I’m happy that he gets to play different positions, and that he experiences small successes every game. In all but one of his previous seasons of Little League ball-playing, he’s had way more opportunities to learn how to be a good sport when losing than how to be a gracious winner.

Yesterday’s game had three separate rain-outs. Each time players, coaches, and fans ran for the mini-vans to wait out the powerful storm bursts, which acted like weather temper tantrums. The first time, Mr. Peevie actually brought C. Peevie home, thinking the game had been called—but the coach begged to differ: “Hey! Where’s C. Peevie? We’re headed back onto the field.”

The ump called a rain-out during the third storm, two innings shy of a complete game. (I’m happy to report that C. Peevie still had plenty of game time to get his uniform dirty, kneeling in the dust behind home plate . I really need to teach that boy how to do laundry.) So we’ll be squeezing in one more partial game before play-offs.

Last week C. Peevie asked Mr. Peevie and I if we’d let him try out for Traveling All-Stars. This would mean an entirely new level of commitment, which would feel more like a hostage situation than a family-friendly past-time. We said no. I love Little League as much as the next Little League Mom, but you know what they say: too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be in the bleachers. Or home, getting dirt stains out of white baseball pants. Still.

I have one of the most incredible wives in the world! First, she has to put up w/ me, that is a feat in and of itself! But she is very understanding of my time away from the house, almost every night! For that, I owe her more than I could ever give her!

That said, our 18th anniversary is coming up June 2nd. Wow, that is a long time! Seems like it was just yesterday I was anticipating the big day! I want to do something special for her. Anyone have any ideas? If I pick your idea I will give you a free link back to your site for 1 year! What should I do?

There are not enough kudos to send out to the Little League Mom. She sometimes works all day, runs home and gets dinner on the table, gets the kids to their games an hour early for batting practice and cheers as if she isn’t tired all night long.

Uniform coordination, coaching assistance, team mom, party organizer, domestic planner, they are often the unseen heroes, and sometimes on the front line. They tirelessly work concessions, console strike out victims, provide first aid for skinned knees and bruises, and offer encouragement in the face of discouragement.

A true Little League mom knows the difference between and injury and a little pain from getting beaned. "Get down there", "Get over it", is often heard from the stands, but the same voice consoles truly upset Little Leaguers.

I know at my house my Little League mom has 4 uniforms, 3 coaching shirts, and 3 practice shirts to keep track of. She has to make sure umpiring clothes and jock straps are laundered and ready to provide protection! Socks, belts, pants, underarmour, cleats, bat bags, hats, everything ready to go. Dinner ready at 5, coach in and out in five minutes at 5:15. It is a mad rush at our house every night. Snack bar duty, snack night for the kids, birthday parties to plan, attend and buy for, school events to keep track of, grades to keep up with, homework to manage, showers and in bed late every night, and up early the next morning to do it all over again!

Wow, I had a glimpse at her job today as I helped w/ everything I usually don’t attend too. An SHE CAN HAVE IT! I have no idea how she does it, I am only thankful she is so good at it!

Thank you to My Little League Wife and All of the Little League Moms and Wives around the world! You are the true driving force behind our success.

Anyone know a great Little League Mom? Give her props here!

Guest Post for The Little League Coach

Cup Stories, Part Three

It’s Official: I Am An Idiot

by Little League Mom (AKA E. Peevie)

I endured the humiliation and purchased the ding-dang cup. My cup troubles were over. Right? Wrong.

C. Peevie was excited about getting a real, big-boy piece of equipment to protect his equipment…until he tried it on. Then he was all, “Um, no, uh-uh, no-way. This hurts. I can’t even walk. I’m not going to wear it.”

Poor C. Peevie. He walked around the house like a bull-rider with a bad back, legs spread and knees bent, trying to get used to the feeling of wearing a salad bowl around his gonads. He moaned and groaned and cried and whined.

“I can’t do it, Mom,” he said. “I can’t wear this thing. I won’t be able to run. I can hardly even walk!”

He hobbled over to the couch, and gently eased himself down, with one arm behind him to support his descent, like a pregnant woman at full-term. “I can’t even sit!” he moaned. “It’s so uncomfortable.”

“You have to wear it if you’re going to play ball,” I reasoned with him. “You’ll probably get used to it after a little while, honey.” Not that I had any real idea; my experience with uncomfortable sports equipment only encompassed sports bras, and as constricting as they could be, I don’t think they ever made me cry.

Well. He wore the cup to practices and games, but he never got used to it, and he complained loudly every single time. I couldn’t imagine why the world of baseball had not come up with a better solution to testicle protection than this one, which was so obviously flawed.

And how did other parents cope with the whining and complaining? Why didn’t more boys just drop out of baseball rather than put up with the discomfort? Were parents offering sedatives to help their boys over the cup-pain hump? It was truly a mystery to me.

And then one day my friend Cuz came up to me after a game. Her son was on C. Peevie’s team, and we sometimes shared rides and stories.

“E. Peevie,” she said to me, with a strange urgency in her voice, “I have to tell you this so you don’t think anything bad happened.”

“Um, OK,” I said, feeling my stomach start to sweat.

“Lefty [her husband] took C. Peevie to the back of van,” she started out, and my eyes saucered and my fist spontaneously clenched, “to try to help him with his cup.”

“He was so uncomfortable,” Cuz continued quickly, “and Lefty figured that something must be wrong. It turns out that the cup was on upside-down.”

Since you’re reading a blog about Little League baseball, you are probably aware that athletic cups are sort of triangle-shaped. In my infinite parental wisdom, I had been loading the damn cup into the jockstrap upside-freaking-down . The wide part was digging into his thighs, and the narrow part pointed up to his abdomen. No wonder he was walking like a cowboy with a hernia. And no wonder he was complaining!

I am an idiot.

C. Peevie is now playing in the Majors, and wears his cup comfortably and uncomplainingly. All is right with the world, and the ‘nads are safely protected.

For more from this author, check out The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/) for posts on the squirrels and the bees, weird things moms save, addictions, loss of sweet innocence, and much more!

Guest Post for The Little League Coach
Cup Stories: The 40-year-old Cup Virgin
by Little League Mom (AKA E. Peevie)

As I mentioned previously, I am a girl. I have never worn a cup, bought a cup, or thought about cups—until C. Peevie came along. One minute he was wearing onesies and swinging a tiny plastic bat, and the next minute he was signing up for Little League, and I was faced with the heretofore unexamined task of cup-buying.

You would think cup-buying would fall naturally into the domain of fatherhood. You would be wrong. Mr. Peevie explained that he had no experience with athletic cups, either. They just weren’t considered standard equipment for swing choir and marching band .

Yes, I married a nerd.

So cup-buying fell to me. After my less-than-satisfying experience at Walgreen’s , I decided to head over to an actual sporting goods store. I hoped against hope that the purchasing experience would be intuitive: I’d go to the athletic cup aisle, there’d be a package (oops!) clearly marked for a medium-sized 10-year-old, I’d buy it, it would fit, and we’d be done with the whole cup saga.

It was not meant to be.

When I got to the cup department, I found that cup sizes ranged from small to X-large. These designations were completely without meaning to me, since I had no idea at what age boys started wearing cups. Did six-year-olds wear cups? And if so, would the cup size be much different for a 10-year-old? Would I be insulting my son inadvertently if I bought him the smallest size?

So I looked around for someone to help me navigate the stormy seas of cup buying. The first person I asked shrugged her shoulders. I fully expected her to get on the store PA system and announce, “Customer needs assistance in the Cup Department! Customer needs assistance in the Cup Department!”

Instead, she pointed me to a guy behind a counter, and I headed over, knowing that this experience had a zero chance of ending without humiliation. Unfortunately, the service associate looked like Colin Farrell , and I started blushing even before I said the word, “Cup.”

“I’m kind of new at this cup-buying thing,” I started off. “You might say I’m a cup-buying virgin.” OMG , I thought to myself. Did I just say that out loud? To Colin Farrell?

I recovered quickly. “So could you explain cup sizes to me? I need to buy one for my 10-year-old,” I said. “Son. My 10-year-old son,” I added nervously.

Colin Farrell smiled benignly at me. “Well, how big is he?” he asked.

I gulped. “You mean, down there?” I whispered.

“Ah, no,” Colin Farrell said, suppressing a snort. “Just in general. Is he small for his age? Or is he a big boy ?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “No, he’s an average-size 10-year old.” And then I accidentally looked right at his crotch.

“Oh, crap,” I thought to myself as I jerked my eyes back up. “I just looked right at his crotch!”

“We can probably go with a small size cup for your son,” Colin Farrell smirked at me. I grabbed it from his hand and ran for the door.

Tune in to the next Little League Mom guest post: Cup Stories, continued.

For more from this author, check out The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/) for posts on six word memoirs, nepotism, finding happiness, and much more!

Guest Post for The Little League Coach Cup Stories
by Little League Mom (AKA E. Peevie)

I’m a Girl

I’m a girl. I’ve never worn a cup. I’ve never bought a cup. Before my son became a little leaguer, thoughts of athletic cups had never entered my brain. I never thought about where to buy a cup, or how to buy the right size cup. I didn’t even know which side was right-side-up—but that’s a story for another time.

A Trip to Wal-Greens

A few years ago, I found myself in Walgreen’s, wandering in the “reproductive health ” aisle, looking for these mysterious Protectors of Maleness. I found athletic supporters right across from condoms , and I smiled gamely at the handsome twenty-something who was facing the difficult decisions of ribbed versus smooth and latex versus lambskin.

“Is an athletic supporter the same thing as a cup?” I wondered to myself. I picked up a performance cotton supporter strap—because, as you know, it’s all about performance!—and, filled with trepidation, I headed up to the pharmacy counter.

The Unknowing Geek

Of course, the pharmacy assistant was a pimply-faced teenaged boy whose only association with a baseball field was when he walked across one on the way to his chess club meeting.

“Um, hi,” I said, all friendly and nonchalant. “I’m trying to buy one of those “cup” things for my son, and I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”

He stared at me blankly. I forged ahead.

“Um, so I have this supporter thing, and I’m just not sure if it’s really what I’m looking for,” I said. “Is this what they mean when they say my son needs to wear a cup?”

The pimply pharmacy dude had spent way more time in front of a computer than on a baseball field; and his empathy skills had been stunted by a lack of human contact. Obviously, he had been raised by a pack of geeks in the wild. He let me continue humiliating myself, encouraging me to go on with the slightest raising of an eyebrow.

“I think there’s supposed to be something, um, hard,” I choked a little, and continued, “that goes into the supporter thing. Do you have any of those?”

There was a long pause while he considered my question and let the flush reach all the way from my neckline to my hairline.

“I don’t really know,” he said. “Obviously, I’ve never played a team sport in my life, “he didn’t add, but then he said helpfully, “Whatever we have is on the shelf.”

Uh, huh. Thanks, dude.

Tune in to the next Little League Mom guest post: Cup Stories, Continued.

For more from this author, check out The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/) for posts on The Golden Compass, pet peeves, Iraq, jellybeans, sociopaths, and much more!

The Wait

We got The Call last week. My son C. Peevie has been waiting for The Call since we handed over our check for 90-some dollars; pulled out the notarized birth certificate to prove that he’s not a short, 16-year-old ringer; and acknowledged the risk of fertility-reducing injuries.

During the four-week wait, C. Peevie dusted off his mitt and started singing the first of one-thousand choruses of “Mom, will you play catch with me!” I gotta start practicing, he told me. I gotta loosen up my arm—it’s been so long since I threw the baseball around! I need to be ready to cover first base, he said optimistically.

The Call

When he got The Call, C. Peevie was excited to learn that he had been drafted by the same coach he had last year. This meant that he’d be on a team with several kids from the ‘hood—but it also meant that he wouldn’t have to prove himself to a coach who didn’t know him. For a moderately-talented, anxiety-prone player, this was a huge relief.

Here in the frozen tundra of the Midwest, the fields are finally thawing enough to start pre-season practice. There are still patches of dirty snow stubbornly refusing melt, but for the most part the lawns and fields are muddy swamps—perfect for the season’s inaugural practice on Wednesday.

The Anticipation

“I can’t wait until Wednesday!” C. Peevie greeted me this morning; and I knew his mind was going to be on baseball for the next four months. (There are worse things an almost 13-year-old could have his mind on, so this little league mom is not complaining.) I guess it’s time to dig out the helmet, bat, baseball pants, and cup.

Speaking of cups, next post: Little League Mom Has Fun Buying a Cup for the First Time.

About The Little League Mom

For more from this author, check out The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/) for posts on sock bumps, poo, misogyny, pet peeves, finding happiness in the dentist’s chair, and much more!

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