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Saturday, May. 17, 2003 - 6:50 p.m. Last home doubleheader of Codeman�s high school baseball career. Sad? Yes, a little. Today was one of those �milestone� days that sneaks up on you, and then smacks you upside your head. Yes, he still has a few games to play at home. Looks like at least 3 home games next week, plus might be another make-up game the following week. But this it the last time we will spend an entire Saturday day sitting in lawn chairs, watching other parent�s kids play ball all day. Codeman is now saying he wants to be an assistant coach for Mac next year, and the coaches both want him to be there if he wants the job. That doesn�t mean I will be there all day, if he does decide to take on the responsibility. He won�t be batting or playing the field, so I don�t think I have to be there all the time. I�ll come to some games if he does coach, but I won�t have to live there anymore�. Anyway�.back to today�s games. This is how the first game looked to Lease and I:
It looked this way because we were smart enough to spend the 2 hours of intermittent mist/rain inside of our warm Grand Am. Hey- the boy wasn�t playing anyway. He coached first base, and actually helped get a few extra bases out of our runners. I don�t know why the Coach doesn�t MAKE someone do the job all the time. If Codeman is in the game playing, nobody stands down there in the 1st base coach�s box. Nobody yells �BACK!� at the base runner when the pitcher tries to pick him off. Nobody tells the base runner to �take two!� when the outfielder misplays the ball. Sounds like minor stuff, but in a game like the first one today it can mean the difference between winning and loosing. Here�s why: with the score DickVanDykeVille (Ha! Figure that one out!) 4, Mac 3, runners for us on first and second. The batter hits a ball that should have been cut off for a single. The outfielder misplayed the bounce, and Codeman immediately yelled, �Go! He missed it!� to the runner who was on first and to the batter, who both took an extra base. The next batter hits a ball deep into the hole at shortstop. The runner on third scores, and we take the lead 5-4. If Codeman hadn�t pushed the runners to an extra base, he wouldn�t have been standing on third � he would have been stranded there after the ground out. 5-4 ended up being the final score. So if may seem to some like what he is doing is a futile waste of time (coaching first base), but I (and many of the parents who have managed youth teams in the past) see what he does out there actually means something for the team. Even the Coach paid him a compliment during the first game (before the rain started falling, I was watching from the comfort of my lawn chair). When a foul ball went unclaimed on the softball field (it was the visiting team�s job to get balls on that side of the field, but they didn�t seem too concerned if they did it every time a ball ended up over there), he stopped the game and yelled �Coach- have the girl in right field (note- they were also playing a game) throw the ball to you: The �coach� he was referring to was my boy, not the other team�s manager. He didn�t say it in derision. He said it like he considered him a assistant coach. I think that made his day�. Between the two games, the team did their �Parent�s Day� ceremony. The senior members of the ball team lined up on the third base line, and one of the teachers at Mac game a little speech about how parents are important to the success of the team, blah blah fuckity blah. Then, he announced the name of each senior player, plus their parent�s names. The parents come out on the diamond, the men shake hands with their son, and the mothers get a hug and a peck on the cheek from their boy. Oh yeah- we each had to shake the coach�s hand. No, I didn�t give him a bone-cruncher handshake. I played it straight, hard as that might be to believe. My Dad took this photograph. I asked him to do this for me yesterday, and I think he worried about it all night. I told him the camera is an automatic, and all he had to do was point and hit the shutter. He did fine. I think he was having flashbacks to the old 126 Kodak camera he had through my childhood years. Without having a decent viewfinder, he constantly chopped heads off of his subjects, or left people out of the photo:
Yeah, it looks like the coach is smiling in the photo. I think he was just worried about whether I would shake his hand, or squish him like a bug�. Game two found the boy in the designated hitter role again. In his first at-bat, he found himself at the plate with the score 0-0, and a runner on second base with one out. He fouled off a couple of strikes, and then took this odd-looking swing:
Somehow, he hit the ball on a line to left-center field, bringing home the runner from second. He took second base on the throw to home, too. After sliding into second belly-first, he called time and dug a little of the dirt out of the front of his pants. I really don�t know what the umpire is doing in this photo, but I titled this shot �Bless you, my son�:
He then scored from second on a single to short center field by the next man up. I had already put the camera up, so I didn�t get a photo of him sliding face first under the catcher�s tag. He grounded out in his next at-bat, and then finished his day by lining another single into left field to finish 2 for 3. He scored a run, and also picked up the RBI. That was about the only positive for Mac in the second game. They dropped it by the score of 17-3. No, I didn�t type the score wrong. If it were a football game, they would have lost by two touchdowns and two extra points. It has to be the worst loss Mac has had in the last 2 years. I wonder if the Coach will even call the score in? If he does, he should mention Codeman�s good game at the plate. It would be nice if he were mentioned in the paper for something positive before the year ends. The only time he has been in there so far this year was for being the loosing pitcher, a couple of Saturdays ago��
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