Saturday, July 18, 2020

July 18

One of the more disappointing side effects of the pandemic has been the toll it's taken on baseball. The Spring Little League season was, of course, canceled, and the clinic the boys use was closed for several months. On the bright side of life, Isaac is part of a newly-formed 11U team, but even that has had its share of issues. Although the coach is amazing and has worked hard to be in compliance with local regulations, it's proven very difficult to set up and actually play scrimmages --much less actual games-- with other teams. Isaac (and I'm guessing virtually all of his teammates) were crestfallen when, on the heels of news that teams from other cities had been using our fields without permission, the city canceled their scrimmage against a different team at the last minute yesterday afternoon. I hated telling him that it was (again) a no-go. And he hated hearing it; in fact, he later lamented to Adam that he was worried he'd never get to play a real game.

But fortunately, as Psalm 30:5 says, joy came in the morning: he got up, suited up, and headed out to the Sports Park to take part in a last-minute intersquad scrimmage. (His coach added it to the calendar; I do love how he always tries to make lemonade out of the tree's-worth of lemons they've been handed recently.)

Isaac's half of the team was hammered pretty badly, but I know he didn't care. He was thrilled to be playing. Thrilled to be out there chatting with the other boys and thrilled to be in his baseball garb and thrilled to be really, really dirty when he got in the car to go home. In fact, he kept remarking on how delightfully dirty he was. And dusty, dirty grossness aside, I loved the enthusiasm.

So today, I'm grateful that although there's been plenty of disappointment of late, there have been "joy in the morning" moments, too.

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