Building on the success of basement baseball, Finn and I spent the last few sunny Seattle summer days in the backyard this weekend working off of the tee. While my pitching is the stuff of basement baseball legend, the tee definitely affords Finn a little more predictability in ball placement and allows us to really work on the fundamentals, i.e., the proper method of sticking out one's tongue. Jordan may have perfected the look for a basketball player, but professional baseball is sorely lacking in this department. Notice how intimidated the tee is. It really works.
Unfortunately, we were only able to get about ten good swings in before he lost interest and started throwing the ball against the house yelling "Doofa!", which is a multi-purpose Finnese word, but in this case I believe it stood for,"I'm done with you, old man!"
I was happy to get those ten swings. Far from criticizing his form at this point, I'm just hoping to get him hooked on an activity that we can share. His existing hobbies of eating dirt and incessantly begging to watch Bob the Builder are somewhat limited insofar as my enjoyment goes.
As I think forward to his inevitable pro career, it occurs to me that we're going to need some Fun Trivia Facts to show under his name and picture up on the big screen at the stadium when he comes to bat. While I'm not sure "Dirt" would be a good answer for "Favorite Food," I'm positive that we can do better than some of the Mariners. Ichiro's favorite off-season activity? Baseball. Franklin Gutierrez's favorite? Vacationing. Don't you feel like you know them so much better now?
While we work that out, at least the kid has shown that he's not afraid to get a little dinged up.
I just hope Major League Baseball has a healthy supply of Cars band-aids for these knees.
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