Baseball Makes Me Think of Hearts

My youngest son announced not too long ago that he wanted to play baseball. I have always had mixed feelings about the sport. I loved it passionately when I was a kid, until I realized that girls couldn't play. (Yes. I'm that old. Shut up.) So baseball and I broke up for a while, until I began watching games with my grandfather on television and fell right back in love. Then the ugliness of Little League parents screaming at their kids after school I witnessed every so often made me quite certain that I would never have my kid participate in it. But, here was my son, telling me he wanted to play. I had visions of every bad thing I'd seen associated with the sport. I pictured crazed baseball parents, foaming at the mouth, hollering at my kid when he missed a ball or struck out and caused his team to lose. I thought of other kids making fun of him or him sitting on the bench, knowing he wasn't playing because no one thought he was good enough. I imagined every awful thing that I could, but it wasn't a match for his enthusiastic and hopeful face. Then I remembered that it wasn't my job to keep my kid from playing baseball. It's my job to let him roam and wander and do as many things as he wants to do. So he's playing baseball. We just got back from tryouts where a herd of little kids threw balls and tried to catch pop flies. My boy missed some and threw wildly, just like all the other kids. He looked across the gym at me and waved, grinning like he does when there's joy bursting out of him like rays of light. So he's playing baseball. And I'm falling love again.