Baseball

It was Opening Day for the Red Sox, and Jack, to his credit, put on his red Kevin Youkilis Red Sox T-shirt and his Red Sox hat. As far as I know he's about the only non-Yankee fan in his class. In the afternoon I asked him if he got any grief about it. He said no. Any comments? He said, "Yes -- Mrs. Murphy." (Assistant teacher.) I said, really? He said she said to him, "'You're a Red Sox fan?' And I said, Yes, my parents got married in Boston." And I said, Jack, good for you.

After school we watched the Red Sox lose their opener, but at least they tied it up with two outs in the ninth, so they showed some heart.

When the game was over, wanting to kill an hour before baseball practice but not do anything too strenuous, we went on a Secret Spy Mission. Jack got out his spy folder, which is a manila folder he's drawn pictures and written a bunch of code words in, and gave us secret code names; he was Eagle and I was Tiger. I think. Then we skulked about the house and the yard pretending to kill and eat bears and find treasure and such. Jack drew a picture of the "Egyptian Bear," which hibernates in the summer, and which made good eatin' after we cooked him up on our invisible stove. Jack asked me if I wanted the tail or a foot, neither of which sounded too appetizing, so I asked for a leg. It was a little gamey. Then we found treasure and drew a picture of that, too.

Then it was off to baseball practice. There are 10 other kids and almost all of them are Yankee fans who wear Yankee hats and their favorite player is Derek Jeter. But other than that, they all seem like pretty good kids. Some can't throw and some can't catch and some can't hit, but they were all pretty game and all of them seemed better at the end of practice than at the start. We finished with a drill where each kid got three throws from behind the pitcher's mound to a bucket at home plate, with closest throw winning. A couple of kids hit it and a couple who couldn't throw 20 feet at the beginning of practice were close, and practice ended with every kid having a smile on his face, which was pretty awesome.

In the car on the way home, since it was 7:30 and Jack hadn't had dinner yet, I asked Jack if he was really hungry. And he said, "No, I don't feel hungry when I'm having fun." Then we got home, he had two hotdogs and a bunch of chips and a yogurt and some red pepper and a piece of Easter candy and showered and went to bed. So it was a good day.