Bulls Baseball + Tournament Champs

As mentioned last week, both of the boys wrapped up their fall baseball seasons.  The baby loves nothing more than playing ball, so I predict a long winter of practicing in the back yard.











I particularly love this one.  Honey is the third base coach for both teams and the baby was obviously heeding his advise to get on base and stay there.



I fulfilled my snack duty for the baby’s team at some point before the end of the season.  Since that game ended almost exactly between meal times, I went with little healthy-ish snack bags for the Bulls.  I found the orange bags at Party City, printed the team logo on circle stickers and then loaded them up with sun chips, oranges and cheese sticks.  Don’t ask me why, but I feel compelled to make the snack match the team colors.  Yes, these are the things that keep me up at night.





At that same game, “Big Hit Whit” secured the game ball with an in the park home run!!!  Needless to say, he was just over the moon!!!!







Aaaaand, the little ones wrapped up their season as Tournament Champs!!!!!!!!! 













It was well deserved and hard earned.  But that one set the bar high for future seasons :-) 
xoxo

See more baseball snacks and stuff here!

River Cats Baseball

We just wrapped up a great season of baseball for both boys.  The PCP really came into his game this season and he made us SO very proud as first baseman for the River Cats.  While I admittedly don’t know loads about the game, I DO know that few balls got past him. 

 

Of course, we were thrilled that Coach S drafted him again – he’s now been his coach for EIGHT greats seasons.  A huge thank you and a great big hug goes out to him (and bestie M) for his dedication to these kids year after year after year!

 

xoxo

Cat Chow {River Cats Baseball Snack}

I was snack mom last week for our (too) late seven thirty p.m. game and figured the parents would be beating a path to the exit just as soon as the last second ran off the clock.  To this end, I put together bags of “Cat Chow” for our River Cats so that they could just grab and go should they be so inclined.



With the game wrapping up at nearly nine, the last thing I wanted to do was load them up with too much junk so I included a red apple, pack of pringles and cheese stick in the bag.



This is what a gaggle of seven year olds look like when out way past their bedtimes... a picture certainly is worth a thousand words.



Go River Cats!
xoxo

Bulls Baseball

At just four years old, I can’t think of anything the baby loves more than baseball.  He could play all day, every day, and never tire of it.  Even so, I could hardly believe my eyes when he made his way out to pitcher for the first inning of his first game.  And when he stopped every ball, made incredible throws, and secured two outs, I had a moment.  A moment of pure, unadulterated, unabashed pride.  I wanted to stand up on the bleachers, throw my arms up and shout “THAT’S MY KID!!!!!!!  DID Y’ALL SEE THAT???  HE’S MINE!!”  But I just smiled and choked back the tears and tried to contain the heart leaping around in my chest.





And it didn’t stop there.  He “crushed the balls”, as he loves to say, and ran like he had wheels. 





All the while grinning from ear to ear.  Just like his mama in the stands and his daddy on the field.



There really just can’t be much as rewarding and fulfilling as seeing your child excel in something that he loves.  Even if he’s only four years old.

Go Bulls!
xoxo

300 Win Club - 125th anniversary

Are you enjoying my switch to two weeks between reviews? No? Tough, because I like it. It's giving me time to focus on my work and to work on some other projects, like this 30,000-word post about the 300-win pitchers on the 125th anniversary of the dedication of the 300-win club. It's kind of like the post I made back in June for the 4th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th win, only without graves. Maybe I should have ranked the 300-win games this time, but I suppose I can save that for next year on the 5th anniversary of the milestone. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy.

300-Win Club: the 125th anniversary

Baseball Tags

With both of the boys playing ball this fall, I feel like I’m living at the field.  I refrained from volunteering to be team mom, but I did offer to help out by making the dugout tags and bag tags for the baby’s team.  At that age, both are immensely helpful.

The dugout tags are hung over the bench in the batting order so that the kids know where to sit and have a designated place for their water bottles, hats, gloves and helmets.  I’ve experimented with attaching them to the fence in different ways over the years, and have decided that a simple paper clip works just fine.  It makes it very easy to get on and off the dugout fence.  I actually made these in powerpoint – they are 5.5”x4” and have each player’s last name and number on the card.  It’s easy to find graphics online by just googling the team.  After I print and cut, I laminate them, attach a small label to the back where I punch the hole for reinforcement, punch the hole, and insert the paper clip.


And after having multiple instances of kids (and parents) grabbing the wrong black baseball bag, I also make bag tags for the little ones.  I use the same process as above but use a 1” binder clip to attach them to the bags.  I put a few of those little labels on the backs before the holes were punched for extra reinforcement.  You could, of course, have real bag tags made that would be much more durable, but I didn’t want to invest that much.





When John saw I was making bag tags for the Bulls, he wanted one for himself and his two little besties on his team. 



He has a collection of them from his eight (can that be right?!?!) seasons of baseball!



I'm off to a dentist appointment, a doctor appointment and two baseball practices.  But I am managing to squeeze in lunch with bestie S between all the madness.
xoxo

2013 Topps Baseball Stickers

If your littles are anything like mine, they looooove a good collection of just about anything.  I’m talking everything from trophies and Skylanders characters to rocks and paper airplanes.  Marry that with the all consuming love of the all American past time around these parts, and we’ve got a real winner!  I picked up these MLB Sticker Collection books at Target for $2 to start the frenzy…



And these little $0.99 sticker packs have been good for everything from spending allowance money to flat out bribes.  They ADORE them!  Since they actually stick in a book, there is also the added bonus of not have a gazillion piles of baseball cards floating around every orifice of the house.


Excuse the lazy iPhone picture, but the insides of the books look like this.  The bonus?  The baby can now look at a number such as 113 and knows it’s “one hundred thirteen”.  I dare you to say this isn’t educational.  Not to mention they both can look at any card (out of 315) for a half a second and know whether or not they already have it.  I suppose males are just born with some weird ability to memorize insignificant and minute sports stats (yet are unable to remember to change the light bulb burnt out in the kitchen for twelve days.)

 
We’ve been giving these as gifts to our little friends over the last couple of months, so we have a little network of people to trade our duplicates with.  That’s a big part of the fun!



They’ve poured through these things so many times over the last two months that they have both been taped back together multiple times.  I’ve seen the books and sticker packs at Target, WalMart and Learning Express.  Most recently, the books I saw at Target had a coupon adhered for $1 off – so that makes the book $1 too! 

I couldn’t not share this cheap, summertime “entertainment”.  Go forth and collect baseball stickers, y’all.  (That’s one thing I never thought I’d say a mere eight years ago.)
xoxo

Randy Johnson's 300th win - 4th Anniversary Special

Well, today is the fourth anniversary of the day Randy Johnson became the 24th pitcher to win 300 games in his major league career. I was at that game, and that experience was the apex of my time as a baseball fan. Now that four years have passed since that fateful day, am I going to do something to do something to commemorate the occasion? You betcha! I've been visiting the graves of the dead 300-game winners and trying to meet with the living 300-game winners for the past two years now, and I've compiled them in a post on my other blog along with mini biographies of the players and my commentary on the action. So go read, please?

Here is a link. Now I am going to watch his 300th win again.

Meanwhile, you can read my other posts about Randy Johnson's 300th win
Part I: The Introduction
Part II: The Player
Part III: The Set-Up
Part IV: The Rainout
Part V: The Game
Part VI: The Aftermath

7 Team Baseball Snacks

With eight total seasons of baseball under our belts, I’ve had more than three years of fun coming up with a team snack each season!  I always try to coordinate the snack to go with the team colors, and I adore serving things like hot dogs (are available at the field for about $1 each) and Cracker Jacks since they are so quintessentially baseball.  Here’s a little compendium of snacks throughout the years and across the teams…

Hot Dogs + Cracker Jack Treats - Rockies

Snack Bag in Team Colors - Storm

Baseball Glove Cupcake Cake - Orioles

Cracker Jack Cupcakes – Ironbirds

Hot Dogs + Cracker Jacks - Ironbirds

Baseball Moon Pies + Popcorn Cones – Angels

Dolled Up Doughnuts - Angels

Our season is all wrapped up, but we’ll be back out there come August!
xoxo

Our Rockie Rookie + Team Snack

While my baseball prowess may be less than stellar (I just might have called home plate fourth base last week and can’t seem to remember to call them runs rather than points), one thing I can contribute is a festive team snack.  My originally assigned game was a rain out so I was happy to squeeze in the reschedule late last week.  Since the game wrapped up right about supper time, our little Rockie Rookies dined on hot dogs, purple grapes and Cracker Jacks (which was really Crunch n Munch, but the legit Cracker Jacks can be quite elusive). 
 
  
The baby played an awesome game!  He was 3 for 3 on coach pitch hits!





Our very last game of the season and trophy ceremony were this weekend.  The kids rotate through the positions and we don’t keep score at this age.  That being said, the baby made a solid play at pitcher to get an out at first base.  It’s incredible to me how much more he knows about the game at this age compared to his big brother :-)  I suppose three years of sitting at the ball field have sunk in.


Coach J said such nice things about each little player at the trophy ceremony.  The baby was positively thrilled to receive his very first trophy.  He slept with it at the end of his bed the past two nights.  Sweet doll.





Things are wrapping up left and right and the countdown to summer is officially on!
xoxo

See more baseball here!