Luke, I am your father

Go Rays. Wow, what an awesome series.
Just so you know I would love to go to the World Series so if anyone has access to tickets please let me know.
You can bet I am going to work all my angles, and you all are one of the angles.

The weather in Orlando is soooo nice lately. This is the weather we look forward to when we endure the heat of the summer. It was 75 and breezy almost all day yesterday. This morning there was a little nip in the air, so I shut all the air conditioner units and started opening the windows.
While I was opening them, I was saying to my 4 year old, "I am going to open the windows because it is so nice today."
He said, "Dad it is so nice everyday."
Isn't it nice to get a 4 year olds perspective on life.

I just finished watching Baby Mama. It was okay. There was some funny parts but just an average movie. With two budding SNL stars you would think it would be funnier.
I have The Bank Job here and plan to watch it today. Now that there is not a baseball game to keep me up til 1am.

I hope you all had a good weekend because mine was tough.
I had a moment this weekend that may haunt me (and Luke) for a long time.
Luke is 9 and I am realizing that these are the times he is going to remember. These are the times that are going to shape him.
I think about it often what are going to be the times in his childhood that he is going to remember. What events in time are we going to talk about at the Christmas table. What events is he going to remember when he is talking to his friends in college...
"Oh yeah, well my dad use to do this..."
or
When he is in therapy and he opens up about how his dad messed his whole life up.

Yeah, we had one of those weekends.

I told you about baseball and how three weeks ago Luke wanted to quit. Well since then I have been trying to "help" Luke get better. I have been subtly pointing out things that might get him recognized by the coach. I also would point out things that might look bad and that the coach might frown upon.
Baseball has been great for us. We go out everyday and throw the baseball. I think we both love it. It gives us some father son time. We talk about our days.
So there is some good things there.
But Saturday was the game.

It was a terrible game for the whole team.
We beat this team the first game of the season and we were far superior to them.
But in about 6 weeks it has become apparent this team has turned it around. They are now better than us.
Luke is usually pretty good at fielding but one slipped through his legs but everyone's fielding was particularly bad because this other team was hitting the ball very hard.
For the first time there were hits into the outfield. The outfielders who usually are picking there butts out there were shocked to see balls flying at them (and of course they didn't know what to do).
Our hitting was even worse. We had about 4 base runners the whole game and they beat us 13-1. And the reason it wasn't worse was because they have a run limit each inning.

Luke's hitting is getting worse.
Last year he was close to the best hitter on the team, so the kid could hit.
This year his confidence is gone.
The first two innings it is machine pitch and he does okay with this.
The last four innings it is kid pitch.
We have spoken after the game before and he admits that he is just looking for a walk. He knows the kids are not very accurate with their pitches so the likely hood of a walk is pretty good. I told him he is a good hitter so he should be ready when a good pitch comes.
But he still goes up there and looks for a walk.
So on Saturday he struck out during the machine pitch inning and got up again during kid pitch. He swung at the first pitch and missed. So then he sat there and watched meat ball pitches go down the middle of the plate.
I started to fume up inside. I want him to at least try. If he is going to fail at least give it his best shot. Not hoping for someone else to fail so he can succeed.
I started to pace. I started to think to myself, "I am so pissed right now, should I just get in the car and leave or what."
Okay I know it sounds stupid because as I am writing this I am thinking to myself, "you are such a dumbass."
If we can just have some mulligans in life, things would be so much easier.

But something happened first that got me going...when Luke was up the first time he stuck out but was unaware that he had three strikes. So he stayed at the plate. So they had to tell him that he struck out and leave the batters box. I thought that was funny so I yelled out, "Can he have four strikes."
But afterwards my wife said she hear the coach say, under his breath, "he could use it."
Now, I have told you before, I love this guy. He has a great attitude and he is really good with the kids. I don't know if he was also trying to be funny or didn't mean anything by it.
Or maybe he is giving up on Luke and to me that would be unacceptable.
But this is when I started to feel myself starting to lose it on the bleachers.

This is getting long so I am going to stop here. I know it is a cliff hanger but you are going to have to wait.
Trust me, Wednesday's blog is not going to be pretty. I was awful.
I am a bit ashamed but...I will tell you Wednesday.

See you then,
john