Sympathy Pain

I’m not that dad. I’m just not. I have a degree from a liberal arts college for Christ’s sake.

But when my 8 year old son said he didn’t want to play baseball anymore and wanted to do swim team instead, something happened. He had almost hit the game tying homerun in the playoffs. He was finally showing aptitude in a sport other than Wii Fit. We…I…had put lots of time and money into baseball sign up fees, parking at every playoff game, bats, gloves, cleats…you get the idea. And now, after 3 weeks of swim team…maybe a total of 2 hours actually in the pool, he wants to drop out of any future baseball and be a swimmer? I even bought a county athletics t-shirt. Come on.

He has this habit of coming to the end of a season and, especially if they don’t win the tournament, not wanting to play that sport the next year. Football was the worst…but he’s signed up for football now and excited. This year, after not making it to the final four, he wants to dump baseball. And he ALMOST hit a home run…over the park, not some keystone cop, little league, between the legs home run.

I do hate all the practices and games on late week nights, but its baseball. And he has practice 3 nights a week and on Saturday for an hour every week for swimming. So it’s not much better…if at all. Swim meets are like 3 ½ hours long, and your kid is in the water 3 minutes…tops. Then you have to watch everyone else’s kid, from age 6 to 18 swim, for. For 3 ½ hours…at a hot pool…that you can’t jump into.

His mom, or so he says, is on his side. She is the one usually pushing base ball, but now she’s on the board and involved in the politics. Don’t even get me started down that road. So, if he is to be believed, she is ok, after years of little league, to give into his whim after 3 weeks of practice. Hmmm.

So, we shall see. I always thought this kinda thing would affect me. “Let him do what he wants” I always thought. But…it’s baseball. If he wanted to do both, while they do overlap, that would make me feel better…I guess.