Grandma, Baseball, and Apple Pie

My husband and I have been spending a lot of time this spring on the baseball fields of Little Rock in order to watch our twelve-year-old granddaughter and our eight-year-old grandson play. Though a few of the games have been rained out with the extraordinary amount of moisture we have had this spring, they have been able to play most of them. The evenings are cool, often requiring a light jacket, as we put up our folding chairs and sit under the blooming red bud tree near the pitcher's mound. Nothing could be a better slice of Americana perhaps than apple pie.

Our grandson takes the game quite seriously and spends hours in the front yard throwing, catching, hitting, and fielding balls. When he missed catching two pop flies in a recent game, he immediately went home and practiced catching 100 in a row. He listens intently to his coaches as they give him instructions to improve his game. And . . . the discipline is improving his game. He played third base this week as the coaches moved him there from the field.

Our granddaughter, whom I had never seen throw a ball, hit a ball, or catch a ball before participating in softball this season, is doing well also--at least when she's concentrating on the game. Without her cell phone to text her friends for at least an hour, she must content herself in the field by standing beside her friend Stella and chatting away. As a city girl, the two hours (and more in practice) of fresh air has to be good for her body I believe.

We have just three more weeks to enjoy America's favorite sport before the interests of the grandchildren will turn toward the swimming pool, golf and tennis lessons, and summer camps for both. For this Americana moment, however, we will bask in the spring evenings and wait later for the inevitable summer bugs buzzing endlessly around the lights and the monstrous mosquitoes that seem to arrive in mass.