tryout day

"There are three things you can do in a baseball game. You can win, you can lose, or it can rain."       Casey Stengel

I find Casey Stengel's quote funny. Funny because it's not that it can rain on the day of tryouts, it's that it will rain. Anyone who has ever been around little league baseball knows this. You might be soaking up the early spring sun in the days leading up to it, but come that fateful day soaking is all you will be doing. And this year was no different. Sun. Then rain. Lots of it.

I can remember many such tryouts as a kid. There I sat shivering in the cold, barely able to feel the ball, and begging for this hour to be over.  And now that I'm a little older I can assure this mindset does not change - for parents, kids, or coaches. The difference being I now have a coffee in hand to provide me brief moments of comfort.

Such is spring in Canada. Short, cold days of baseball tryouts and long nerve racking nights of watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

                                                                                     

a new Motley Crue

Out with the old and in with the new. And in the case of the 2011 Ancaster Cardinals it will be lots of new. With only two returning players we will be a different team with a different identity. Wednesday night was our second workout of hopefuls for next year.

Sitting there watching the kids play in an intrasquad game, I was reminded of last year when we began this exact same process in very similar weather conditions (re: COLD). We alternated between trying to keep warm and biting our nails wondering how things would evolve for the (then) coming Canadian Championships. Needless to say that version of the Cardinals did their coaches, their parents, and their community proud with a berth in the finals.

Last week, for a brief moment, I was taken back to that week in August when one of the boys hit a homerun in practice. I've said before that nothing tops the experience of a homerun in Little League. Of course there wasn't the people on the surrounding hill applauding or the crowd of teammates waiting for him at home plate, but it was still drew "oohs," "aahs," and smiles all around. That is what separates Little League baseball from all other levels of baseball - the way every achievement is lauded by onlookers.

What 2011 holds remains to be seen, but I'm confident that next summer will be filled with its own collection of unforgettable moments just as this summer was.