The Fall Ball season ended with a championship trophy for my 3rd grader, Calvin, and his team. But seeing him accept the trophy was far from my favorite moment of that day.
It wasn’t an easy day at the ballpark for him. After getting to pitch for most of the season, he wasn’t chosen to throw for tourney day. To make it tougher, Cal has been having rotten luck hitting lately, and that didn’t improve during the tournament. For Ian and I, it was pretty tough to see our kid, so deeply in love with his sport, walk back to the dugout after a strikeout, knowing he wouldn’t get a chance to redeem himself in his own eyes by pitching a great inning.
Maybe little Miss Daisy understood that somehow. She got very antsy during the third game, walking toward the dugout and the field over and over. Eventually she became more insistent and vocal. “CalCal!! CalCal!!” She didn’t want to get on the field, as I had thought. She just wanted her brother.
When he got a break, I called him aside. “Would you say hello to your sister?” I asked. She toddled up to him as he stooped down. Then Daisy did something I’ve never seen. She wrapped a little arm around him and buried her face in his shoulder. She stayed and stayed and stayed, making Cal blush with the unbridled display of sisterly affection. “Daisy! Jeez!” he told her, smiling shyly as his teammates looked on with amusement.
Then Daisy lifted her head and stared right at her big brother. She began caressing his face, tracing its lines and studying his handsome features. I finally had to pry her away so he could get back to his team.
I’ve already forgotten the score of the final game, but I won’t forget that moment, when the tiniest fan in the crowd made one player feel 100 feet tall.