Parker was given the opportunity to participate in a baseball game against a group of Japanese players today. It started out with a bit of drama - a major lightening & thunderstorm swept through our area and sent the players indoors to wait out the storm. They chose to go to a local pizza place where they ate LOTS of pizza and exchanged American baseball gear for Japanese baseball gear. I think it worked out really well to have the exchanges take place before the game rather than after so the boys could wear their "new" gear.
Parker met a boy named Mike and was able to exchange his old Athletics jersey for Mike's Chiba Lotte Marines jersey. The Marines are a professional baseball team in Japan.
At first the boys just exchanged their jerseys and went back to their friends. After a little bit, Parker decided to put his new jersey over his uniform and when Mike saw him wearing it, he put Parker's old jersey on and they posed for another picture. It was fun to see how excited Mike was to see Parker wearing his jersey!
After a 2 1/2 hour rain delay, the game was started and this time we had 2 boys to cheer for! Mike had an awesome hit out to right center field (Rick thinks he had good luck from wearing Parker's jersey).
Parker started out at short stop but then ended up being the catcher for most of the game - I love watching him at that position!
Parker almost got caught at 3rd base by their much smaller player - Parker has grown so tall lately (he's 5'5") that he towered over most of the Japanese boys that were close to his age.
I'm not sure what the final score was - the score just didn't really matter. The important thing was being able to bring boys from two countries together in a game that we all love!
The boys from Parker's game
All the boys from both games
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