Saturday, June 13, 2009

"Late Call Strike?! Are You Blind!?" 


Little!Brother had a baseball game today, and since I was babysitting I got to be both the designated driver and the designated cheering section.
I was, however, given some very strict guidelines involving the amount of participation I was allowed to get involved in whilst on the bleachers.

Me: "So... can I cheer?"
Little!Brother: "As long as you don't say my name too much."
Me: "Can I wave?"
Little!Brother: "Not unless everyone else is."
Me: "Can I leap up and down shrieking, 'That's Little!Brother!! I used to change his diapers!!'?"
Little!Brother: "Monica. You are not going to do that."

Sigh. They get so serious when they're big tough baseball players....
So anyway, I was left, abandoned, amongst a horde of equally serious Little League Parents.
They all knew each other by name.
They all knew all the children by name.
And they all were cheering far in excess of what I felt Little!Brother would approve of.
It was through listening to the cheering that I managed to get some of the lingo down, during the course of the hour and a half game.
Apparently whenever anyone bats, regardless of whether or not they hit the ball or not, we shout "Good eye!"
When the ref does something we agree with, we all nod wisely and say "Way to call it, ref!"
When the opposite team scores, or hits the ball successfully, or does anything that might lead to them winning the game, we begin clapping wildly and shouting phrases that include the word "rally." As in, "Let's start a rally here!" and "I feel a rally coming!" and "Yes! Rally time, guys!"
And finally, when our team has players on base, formerly normal-looking individuals stare out at the field, look back at one another, and remark that "We've got ducks on the pond!"
Ahahaha yes.
However, they all seemed mostly loving and not-crazy-parents-on-YouTube-ish, although one father in particular would pace up and down next to the fence talking to whomever was up to bat next, saying "We're up by four. We'll see if we can get the job done." Or, "We're down by two. We'll see if we can get the job done." And every time he said "we," he'd look meaningfully at the tiny bat-clutching child, clearly suggesting that if "we" did not get the aforementioned job done, "we" would not be getting ice cream at the concession stand afterwards. (He was also the same father who, at a certain point during the second inning, threw up his arms and shouted "One run isn't going to do squat, kids! Keep them coming!" Yeeks.)
Don't worry, though.
I kept my own cheering to a minimum, didn't mention diapers, and we won 14-3.
WHOO BASEBALL!

Comments:
I was never very good at making appropriate comments, even when I was a sport-attending parent. Mostly I would just shriek wordlessly-but-encouragingly, or say "So is Baby!Bro playing now or is he on the bench?...", or perhaps ask "So how much longer is this game?" Your paternal grandma has never understood my inability to really grasp the basics of most team sports, and remains somewhat disdainful of me for that reason.
 
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