As a mom of three sports-addicted boys and the wife of one, I have spent the better part of each year of the last 17 of my life attending sporting events - mainly baseball practices and games. Around 2011, my youngest son grew old enough to play travel baseball, in addition to Little League, like his older brothers. This brought the number of teams I had to navigate to a total of at least three and sometimes as many as six during a single season.
It was then that I knew I was going to have to convince myself that this was more than just a game. Once I factored in both the amount of money and of time we were tracking to spend on baseball, I was intent on discovering what that "more" was. What followed was the creation of my blog, The View From Behind Home Plate, where over the past ten years, much of my writing has centered on detailing the hidden gifts I have found while watching sports from the sidelines. And while I have come to love baseball at its most simplistic level - see the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball - I've learned to appreciate even more why we love it so much, why we give it so much of our energy and mental space, and why we grieve it so much when it's gone.
Today we are slowly, but surely aging out of amateur baseball in my family. The teams I watch in person are down to one or two. The laundry is less overwhelming. The end of my days in the bleachers as the mother of a player are on the horizon. And though I would have thought I had learned it all, it is in the last 18 months - a time of both global upheaval and personal challenges - that I have more deeply understood why I am so devoted to baseball.
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