Ty was chosen this year to be on the Huntsville Nationals AllStar team. He was thrilled. Being fairly new to the whole culture of baseball, Ty has a natural talent for this sport. I say you KNOW a child loves something when he spends every available moment doing 'it', never complains to practice 'it', asks when he will get to do 'it' next, and talks about 'it' constantly.
That is what Baseball is for him.
The AllStar players are announced after regular season. They are given only 2 short weeks for practices. This is an amazingly short amount of time when you figure all these AllStar players played on different teams for regular season and now need to create a new pattern together. There were players on this AllStar team that were asked to play positions they had never played before, and stepped up to the challenge beautifully.
Ty was chosen to play his favorite position... First Base. He loves the constant action it offers and he played first base and short stop during the regular season so it was something he was very comfortable with.
AllStars is a dream opportunity because it allows you to play with and against very talented players. A hit that would have given Ty a homerun easily in the regular season, was fielded quickly and would only result in a single or double. This pushed Ty to work harder and stretched him tremendously!
Ty loved working with Coach Conrad. Ty was always aware when Coach arrived at the field and listened to him intently and wanted to work hard for him and the team. Coach Conrad has a great talent for bonding with the boys and making his expectation clear.
The Nationals were ranked 4th after the seating rounds, which was AWESOME. We played with tons of talent and heart. We did not make it to the finals but fought hard and the boys were great examples. Not all parks have the same requirements of age and skill, so we were one of the smallest and youngest teams, often resembling Davids and Goliaths, but again... the experience was tremendous.
I hope Ty gets the opportunity to do AllStars Baseball again. I would gladly drive him to nightly practices, wait, watch, chew my fingernails in nervousness, yell, cheer, close my eyes cause I just couldn't bear to see the next play, eat ballpark hotdogs along side a soft pretzel, sweat in the bleachers, stand in the rain, etc, etc... to see Ty 'in his element'. I love this boy!
"Home is an invention on which
1 comment:
HATE that we missed seeing him play! Hopefully next year! I'm really excited to see him after all the bragging you've been doing ;-) hehe
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