Moneyball

"I am totally using the big red bat," I thought as I selected the larger "girl bat" when it was my time to step up to the plate. I channeled everything I could remember about how to hold a bat that I had seen my brother do when he hit home run after home run going back for as long as I can remember. Jon is an AWESOME baseball player. He played in high school, college, and professionally post-college. But, I am not my brother. While I can row, run, and yoga flow with the best of them, baseball was never my sport. Heck, I never even wanted to play on a kickball team -- all those people watching you while you're up to bat?! No thank you. The idea of batting struck fear into every bone of shyness in body.

But somehow Katie had convinced me this would be fun, and who doesn't like fun? I had already survived being picked last for the team (granted, the captains didn't actually know my name since I was meeting most of these people for the first time), so how much worse could batting be? As I placed my feet next to home, I repeated the "keep your eye on the ball" mantra, bent my knees, put my right elbow up, and tried to breathe like a normal person.

And guess what?! I scored the first run for my team! Boom. Up to bat six times, hit the ball six times, AND got on base six times. That's right, batting 1,000. So apparently my younger brother isn't the only one in the family who got the hand-eye coordination genes after all. What is it they say again? Only the best play in October? Yeah, not a bad way to spend a Saturday.