I just got to spend two days watching a professional baseball team that my son now plays for… Matt was drafted two weeks ago by the Cleveland Indians. A week later, they flew him out to Cleveland where he joined up with their single-A team, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers (Niles, Ohio). Thursday he had his physical, signed his contract, participated in media day with the local press, and moved in with his host family. Friday, he was on a bus for three games in West Virginia (Black Bears; Pirates affiliate) – and back on the bus Sunday night for three games in Batavia, NY (Muckdogs; Marlins affiliate) where I was able to meet up with him.

To be honest, I truly never thought this day would happen. Of course, through all of the 18+ years of the boys playing baseball, I have encouraged them, supported them, tried to help them figure out how to get to the next level – and (almost*) always smiled and made enthusiastic noises when Matt talked about his driving aspiration to get drafted some day and play professionally.

Every kid who plays at some point says “I want to be a baseball player when I grow up.” But I never in a million years believed it could happen. I mean, really, how could you look at a kid going into his freshman year in high school at 5’5”, maybe 140 lbs, with braces on his teeth and believe that he had a snowball’s chance of becoming this?

But he did. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot in the last two weeks as we’ve been walking around in an elated daze with Matt setting off on this new adventure. I’ve realized that there is something I need to learn from this. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life chosen a direction that had a low probability of coming true. Throughout my life, I have been nothing if not pragmatic in my decision-making. Certainly I have taken risks, but they were always carefully evaluated risks that I had every reason to believe I could overcome…

There are a ton of things I’ve learned over the days, weeks, months and years of baseball seasons with my boys:

• The only restaurant in Brecksville, Ohio (Go Bees!! and Go Gators!!) with a kitchen open after 10pm when you get back from an away game is Sakura Sushi; in Green Bay, Wisconsin (Go Bullfrogs!!) it’s Old Chicago
• How to find a Subway sandwich place in almost any small town in Ohio and surrounding states where travel baseball is played
• How to keep 15 sets of uniforms sorted out properly when doing team laundry overnight in hotels and laundromats (Sharpie markings on the waistbands are a must!)
• The parents in the stands with opaque water bottles or coffee thermoses may not be drinking what you think they are
• There is actually a large and thriving medical specialty in the field of pediatric orthopedic sports medicine
• One can survive 4 straight years of watching T-ball, but barely!!
• You can actually eat Chipotle more than 3 nights in a week without turning into a burrito
• The best place in the world to be is in the stands on a summer evening with the sun going down and my scorebook in hand watching the boys (men!) warm up
• Baseball families are an amazing and supportive network to be a part of
• If a kid gets hit in the thigh with a fastball, it makes a bruise where you can actually count the stitches from the ball that hit him
• And many more….

But it is just this last week that I learned the most important thing from my son:  If there is something you truly care about, maybe it shouldn’t matter that there’s only a tiny chance of making it. Maybe you should let yourself care about it and work for it and see what happens… take the risk and go. Even the journey and the striving can be pretty cool! In the last few years as Matt’s baseball path kept going and going well beyond what I ever expected, I’ve said many times – “Wow, what an amazing day! Even if this ends tomorrow, how COOL was that!” I said it again today 🙂   And I hope to do a better job of living it in my own life as I continue on my own next adventures…

Muckdog!!

Mahoning Valley Media Day 2015 — Matt is #33 on the right

Tuesday evening at the ballpark…

Monday evening at the ballpark…

And he thought THIS was the absolute best day of his life (age 4)

Muckdogs’ stadium

He had some growing to do

Go Tribe!

The contract

Very cool to have “players’ tickets” waiting for you at the gate

* As many of you know, we did have some extremely heated debates about academic quality and future career options when he decided to forego a baseball scholarship to Holy Cross in favor of the University of Tennessee. Since I was sure he was never actually going to become a professional baseball player, I really did not want to see him walk away from the broader Holy Cross experience…. I was wrong!!

Meet Peter, the Anteater…  And why, you ask, am I featuring Peter?  For some crazy reason, back in 1965, the students of UC Irvine elected him the school mascot, and the rest is history!

Oh – and UC Irvine is where Matt is playing baseball this year.  After leaving Tennessee, he had a strong season at Cypress College last spring where UCI saw him and signed him on.  UCI went to the College World Series last year and finished 6th in the nation.  Also, Matt now gets to live in Newport Beach while he goes to school.  Tough life!  (This coming from his mother who is going to school in a place that has had well over 8 feet of snow this winter — hmmmmmm, at least I raised a kid who is smarter than I am!)

The ‘Eaters have started out a bit rough at 3-8 so far, but had a strong outing this last weekend against…. you guessed it, the University of Tennessee!  Matt pitched a complete game win against his former buddies and looked great — gave up only 4 hits and 1 run.  For the baseball fans and Matt fans, you can check out more in this article that includes a post-game video interview with Matt.

I’m still not sure about this whole mascot thing, but I’m going with it for now.  Rip’em ‘Eaters!

Matt, Kyle, Bow and I all flew into Denver to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  We arrived on a frigid cold night!!!  When I landed, it was -9 Farenheit (that’s -23 for my Celsius friends) — and a couple hours later, it was -12 (-24) when Matt shivered in.

Thank goodness it warmed up to the mid-20’s (around -5 Celsius) for our New Year’s Eve of wandering to a sports bar, watching football all day and then heading off to a Colorado Avalanche hockey game.  Awesome game — with the Avalanche poking one in in the last seconds of sudden death OT for the win!  Than back out into the brisk evening to celebrate midnight.

All football games – all day long

Colorado Avalanche clinch in sudden death OT

Way warmer in here than it is outside!!

Happy New Year! (wine glasses as the bar ran out of champagne flutes….)

Matt had to head back to California later on New Year’s Day to make it back in time for baseball practice.  (Good thing, too, since both his teams got taken out of the National Championship Game and I can’t imagine he was much fun to be around after that!)

Kyle and Bow and I then headed for Fort Carson, about 1.5 hours from Denver — when there’s no snowstorm….  About 3 hours later, through dark and snow(!) we were there and safe.  On Friday, i got a tour of the base, including the PX (Post Exchange) which is the equivalent of an on-base shopping mall that has pretty much everything, including our afternoon Starbuck’s fix!

Touring around the base

The Post Exchange – with an amazing Colorado Rockies backdrop!

The Post Exchange

Great diner in Colorado Springs

Then we hung out for more football and some amazing home-made enchiladas and salsa (thanks, Chef Bow!).

Great…. wonderful…. relaxing week with the people I love most 🙂

Whenever I’m lucky enough to catch up with friends and family, they always ask, “So! How’re the boys??”   So!  Here’s Kyle’s update on his own “Next Chapter!”

LEADERS FORGE IS BRO FORGE

Hi, my name is Kyle, Erin’s other son that goes on long walks in the Georgia woods and traded a baseball for smoke grenades. Currently I’m at the Infantry Basic Officers Leaders Course (IBOLC) at Ft. Benning, GA, learning about small unit tactics and how to lead a platoon of infantrymen into close combat. For those of you who don’t know what infantry is, Saving Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers, Black Hawk Down… pretty much the job your mom tells you to not go for because you go for months without a real bed, weeks without real food and a shower, days without sleep, and on top of that you have to be trained and forged in the most austere conditions in order to even be qualified to then take all of this training and get sent to a third world country to save the day. So Mom, sorry that I picked this instead of the Logistics or Pilot job the Army had lined up for me!

Here at Infantry School we go to the field (essentially camping without a tent) for 9 of the 17 weeks we are here. This last week I completed the final field problem, which is 9 days of missions culminating with a 16-mile ruck march with an average of 2 hours of sleep (on and off each night). As a platoon-sized element, the main missions we ran by ourselves were raids on small outposts or ambushing small units. As the week goes on, you begin to work as a much larger company sized unit (4 platoons, roughly 150 soldiers), and set up defenses where we dig holes for 48 hours — and fill sand bags in order to build bunkers to fight off incoming attackers. Throughout this whole process, you’re only getting 1-2 hours of sleep and not a lot of time to eat your MREs. Now, all of the stuff that I’ve explained up until this point is very surface and all stuff you could learn about watching the history channel or military channel.  What I’m going to describe from here is the stuff that is so much deeper than that.

THE BALLAD OF THE SEXY SIX

As you can see in some of the pictures, there are several with 6 of us on a hill covered in dirt, our skin 3 shades darker than normal and hair that is anything but regulated. IBOLC is a very intensive course to the point that it is one of the only Army initial entry trainings that actually “recycles” individuals to the beginning of the course for failing to meet the standards. My squad was hit the hardest with recycles to the point that after 17 weeks, out of an original 10-man squad, there were 6 more recycles inserted over the course of IBOLC and only 6 of US remained. Because there were only 6 of us that were consistent, we called ourselves the Sexy 6.

In order to give some of the best friends their fair due, I will give them brief overviews. The Bald guy on the left is Zach “Old Bones” Trevathan, an avid snow boarder from Mexico who began to experience balding at the age of 10. Probably the most dependable person in the squad, he completely controlled Bravo Team through the entirety of the course. Second from the left is Kyle “Corbino” Corbin, a kid who worked at an organic food magazine and can man a machine gun better than anybody in my platoon. Next to Corbin (on the right) is Jack Wilson, a former Special Teams player for the Washington State Cougars. By far the best 2Lt in our squad, he led us a bunch through warrior forge — and he loves his hometown of Spokane and a good cup of coffee (“Spokane…now that’s God’s Country,” is one of Jack’s favorite phrases). Fourth from the left is Robert E. Lee, a kid from DC raised by two Senior Enlisted Marines, this idiot turned down a ride to Stanford Law in order to lead Paratroopers in the 82^nd Airborne.  Watch out for this kid — one day he will be running the Army. Second from the right is myself.  All the way on the right is Raychev, our international officer, a veteran from Bulgaria with a penchant for Marlboro Golds who could literally carry anything for days if asked. We were the originals, and after 17 weeks together in the most intimate of settings, we know each other better than anybody we know back home.

VEHICLES ARE FOR ARMOR, COLD WATER IS FOR POGs, and the 6^th Principle of Patrolling

As you can see in the picture that my mom started the post with, I’m on a road in full kit without my ACH (Army Combat Helmet) looking like a straight G. This was during our 16-mile road march as I was placing my team during a resupply point (where we get more water).  Most of the time, the water that we get is warm at best from sitting in a tank all day.  This resupply point, however, was from the Armor (tanks) Basic Course and was Ice Cold!  All the comforts the tankers get that we don’t — so we ended up calling it POG (Personnel other than Grunt) Water because it was too nice to be consumed. Also, most of us were rocking some wicked flow (great hair)!  At Ranger School there are 5 principles of Patrolling, but as hard chargers we added a 6^th:  Always look cool on the battlefield, it “instills confidence in your soldiers and scares terrorists.”

The last point made is that gross trash ‘stache some of us had going. Well, when you’re in the field, you can get away with some stuff, so some of us grew mustaches to establish dominance as great infantry officers.

And a last closing note contributed by Kyle’s wife, Bow, on their homecoming:

They are finally home from being in the field for 9 days and all they wanted was a hot cup of coffee and to play with their new Legos!

First off, a HUGE thanks to my brother, Erik, who recorded the national broadcast of the California Collegiate League All-Star Game that Matt played on July 16…. and then played Matt’s inning almost frame-by-frame for me so I could see it all!  (Personally, I think my favorite screen was the 93MPH 🙂 )

The day I came home, Matt pitched another really good game — 7 innings, 13 strike-outs, 1 hit (3rd-baseman was watching a great no-hitter during the 6th inning….), and once again, no runs!  Baseball scoring nerds (that would be me) will love all the K’s below.  Note that he struck out everyone on the other team at least once, and their designated hitter 3 times.  He nabbed his 4th win and his ERA is now down to 0.31.  Mom is happy 😉

Matt had a solid 3-up/3-down inning (F7, Ks, F6) — couldn’t ask for much more with only a half-inning to work!  (Unfortunately, both Matt and everyone else got a “No Decision” as the game ended in a 4-4 tie after 11 innings.)

Second half of the summer with the LA Brewers still to come, and then on to become a UC Irvine Anteater (yes, their mascot really is an Anteater) in the fall 🙂

By the way, Matt’s the one in the light grey hoodie who needs a shave…

Felt like it was time for a quick update on the guys.  We’ve been texting and talking fairly regularly while I’ve been in Cambodia, but I haven’t gotten a lot of pick-up from them on the concept of being “guest authors” for the blog — so I’ll do my best!

Kyle seems to be settling into his new life as an infantry officer in Ft. Benning pretty nicely….

He and Bow are, of course, finding it hard to be apart for so long, but were able to spend a classic 4th of July together in Georgia, including an Atlanta Braves baseball game, a BBQ and a trip to the aquarium — where they had a personal “meet & greet” encounter with a penguin named Ruby (like their puppy back home 🙂 )

And speaking of baseball!!  Matt has been having a great summer – as evidenced by the league-leading ERA 🙂

He has been named to the California Collegiate League All-Star team and is slated to pitch the bottom of the 6th inning.  For those of you in the U.S., the game will be televised on Fox Sports at 7pm on July 16th.  (If somebody can record it for me, I will be forever grateful!!).  And if anyone wants to follow the rest of his summer season, he’s playing for the Los Angeles Brewers, who are leading the CCL South with a 14-5 record so far!