Baseball

The Davis family is being indoctrinated into the crazy world of recreational youth sports. Walker had expressed to us that he was interested in playing baseball, so we registered him for the four year old division of Flower Mound Youth Sports. We decided on the fall season to start out, because this is his first year to play, and the website stated that the fall season was shorter and more instructional in nature. So...... Trumon takes Walker to his first practice where he finds out that the other team members have all played on a team before, for many this is their THIRD team... keep in mind, we are talking about four year olds. The league is not tee ball at 4, it is coach pitch, they conduct the practice with the assumption that the boys understand the fundamentals of the game, which Walker of course did not, and according to Trumon these boys could play ball like A. Rod. I should also mention that Trumon also overheard conversations between other parents regarding the fact that some of the dads were former pro athletes... at this point I start receiving text messages from Trumon that were are most literally out of our league.

It NEVER occurred to us to start Walker in organized sports before now. Trumon has always been wonderful about playing catch and teaching him to hit a ball, but they certainly aren't running drills in the backyard or going to batting cages. As I started asking around, I found out that this was indeed the norm for Flower Mound baseball. One mom even told me about a local batting coach who has students as young as THREE! How insane is that?! Trumon loves sports, and we want Walker to be confident athletically, but we are not banking his future on him becoming a professional athlete. We want him to play outdoors, have fun, swing and slide... you know, the activities four year old kids are supposed to do.

So as you might have guessed we pulled him off of the team. We do not want his first experience with baseball to be one that will no doubt be frustrating and possibly demoralizing. He is now a proud team member of the Denton Co. Longhorns... a fun loving group of 3 and 4 year old tee ball players. Actually, they are blastball players... tee ball begins at age 5 everywhere else except Flower Mound. In Blastball, the player hits from a tee, and runs to the base which makes a fun horn sound when you jump on it. The kids on the opposing team try to catch the ball and yell BLAST when they do so, throwing it back to the coach. They basically learn the basics... hit, run, catch, throw.... much more appropriate for a 4 year old child! He practices on Wednesday evenings, with games on Saturdays, we are all looking forward to FUN season.