WeeBall: The act of wee ones playing ball? That doesn’t sound right. An organization of tiny humans playing baseball? Well, that’s closer. A stage in life where your tiny human thinks they are playing baseball, but really they are in a cute uniform running around, rolling in the dirt, and also hitting a ball off a tee? There it is.
This was a first for my Husband and I. Our oldest started playing baseball at the TeeBall stage (that’s where they know what baseball is, but aren’t ready to have the ball thrown at their face yet). We basically stood on the sidelines and watched our boy work with his coach and cheered him on as he learned the fundamentals of baseball. You might think, well what is so different about WeeBall and TeeBall? Keep reading, I’ll tell ya.
So in WeeBall you are very hands on. Like even if you have no idea what baseball is or how it works, you have to be on the field practicing with your kids and also helping the other the kids that are there. I only know how baseball works because of watching my son, but I have no idea how to teach baseball and I definitely don’t feel comfortable throwing a ball with someone else’s kid. I don’t know their skill level of catching a ball, what if I hit them? That’s way to much pressure to put on me. Of course due to my Husband being a firefighter, his work schedule just so happened to have him working most of her practices and games. So guess who had to participate? Yep, me. My dreams of getting to take pictures and watch from the sidelines crushed by the coach saying we need a parent at each station to teach the kids a skill. Guess what station I was sent to? If you guessed the one passing the ball to the kid, then you guessed wrong. I was sent to the station where you rolled grounders to the kid and they had to have their glove down and prevent it from going past them. Easy enough right? Wrong, the rolling was fine, but they never understood that they just left the ball on their side and I’d come get them when we were done. Oh no, they thought they needed to throw it back to me as hard as they can while I did not have a glove or the skill to catch (I’m not very athletic when it comes to baseball and softball. Give me a soccer ball and we are good, except the running. I should probably working on my running). I should also add that some of these boys (my daughter was one of two girls on the team) play baseball a lot with their parents and have the arm to prove it, just not necessarily the direction to put it where they should. There was a lot of screaming and almost crying (all from me) as I dodged these grenades that were being pelted at me. I made it through it unharmed, thank God.
Moving on to her first “game”. I say “game” loosely because I also had to be on the field with her when she was fielding and no score was taken. Basically my job was to tell her to stop playing in the dirt, watch the ball, tell her when to go after the ball, and keep her on track. I failed, miserably. She couldn’t keep herself from playing in the dirt, it was as if the dirt was calling her in, like an addiction. She would almost have a twitch when I told her to stop. She also did a lot of twirling around like she was a tornado going after the ball. Unfortunately she was not a tornado so her plan of getting the ball that way never worked. She fell a lot, and not because she was pushed or anything. She would literally fall when no one was around her. At one point while covering 3rd base one of the boys on her team threw the ball at her and it hit her in the crotch. I didn’t realize it hit her because she wasn’t crying, she just gave me this look and then just kind of looked around all while I’m telling her to pick up the ball that was right in front of her. I did have to move her head down so she could see the ball on the ground because for some reason she thought the ball was still in the air, bless her heart. Now on to the hitting part. She loved hitting the ball, that was probably her favorite. After she would hit the ball and while we were all yelling for her to run she would shout “Super Cat Speed” (PJ Masks) and run as fast as she could to the bases. Hey whatever got her to the bases is fine. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I was just happy that she 1) Didn’t go after the ball after she hit it (That happened a lot during practice) and 2) Didn’t run the opposite way back to home (Also happened during practice. She would get to 3rd and instead of running straight to home she would go the complete opposite way).
I would like to say she got better during the season, but alas she did not. Everything I told you that happened during the first game continued on throughout the rest of the season. Now she did do a lot better when my husband would be there, probably because he’s the athletic one in the family and he also has a way with teaching kids sports. However even that didn’t last the whole season. Our girl is very strong and stubborn so if she doesn’t want to do something, it’s EXTREMELY hard to get her to do it. Also at one point she threw up on the field, so that was fun. She was fine, she was just fighting a cold and got choked up on some snot. You know, the usual. She ended up playing the whole game (she luckily didn’t get any vomit on her uniform, just the field. We literally rubbed some dirt on the field and it was fine).
So my thoughts on our first year of WeeBall? It’s a lot of work for the parents and sometimes I wondered if it was worth it. But, she had a blast. She made friends, she got snacks, she had outdoor time, and never complained about going. In my opinion that makes it worth it even if it wasn’t what I had expected or hoped. We didn’t sign her up for me, we signed her up because she asked to play and in the end that’s exactly what it’s about. I enjoyed it because she enjoyed it.
I think the next sport she wants to try is soccer. Wish us luck.