Parker's season as a Yankee

We're always nervous before baseball season starts. You just never know what kind of team you'll be on. This year, Parker was drafted onto the Yankee's. We found out that the team would be managed by one of the moms who would need the dads to step up to be the coaches. Being nervous about not having a "real" coach, I instantly volunteered Rick to help out. Well.....he ended up being the head coach for the entire season.

The season didn't start off too great. We only had one player who'd ever pitched before (Parker), and lots of the kids were new to baseball. Our first game looked like we could be filming the Bad News Bears. We only won 1 game the first half of the season - we were a sad little team. But by the start of the second half, the boys really came together. We ended up winning 7 out of 10 of the last games - not to shabby! It was so much fun watching the team pull it together and become competitive by the end. It was also nice to see Rick be able to enjoy the wins and have him not feel so stressed. I never thought I'd say it, but.......GO YANKEES!

I waited until the end of the season to post pictures so that I wasn't doing so many baseball entries. Besides, it's hard to take pictures when you're the scorekeeper, too.

The 2nd place trophy

Lining up for the Little League pledge

Coach Rick

Parker pitched in all but 1 game (he was ineligible that game). He's getting so good at pitching!

....except when he's goofing off.

Parker's favorite positions are pitcher and short stop, but I LOVE to watch him at catcher - and he's a REALLY good catcher, too!

For at least the last 2 years, Parker has done the same routine at bat. He comes up, stretches his bat over the plate while holding his other arm back, and then brings his bat up and ready to hit. In between each pitch, he twirls the bat like a baton and then starts the routine again.

In the very first game, he hit an in-the-park home run (really a triple with an error) AND an in-the-park grandslam (another triple with an error). Needless to say, he got the game ball!

Parker loves base running - especially when he gets to slide. Thank goodness for sliding shorts, I hope they helped!

We found out that there's probably not going to be an all star team for Parker's age group this year, so we're sad to think that our baseball season is over. Until next year.........now we can root for the Angels!