Tournament update · Real Men Real Style Community

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Tournament update

A day of extreme highs and lows. My son’s team was the third seed of eight and played a very good sixth seed. Nathanial, my younger son, has been a fantastic pitcher since they allowed kids to pitch. He has thrown two no hitters in all star games and has thrown an immaculate inning (9 straight strikes for 3 strike outs in one inning). About a year ago he started having elbow pain which was diagnosed as growing too quickly and the supporting tummy issue not having time to catch up.

During the last year, he has tried here and there, but we all knew he wasn’t really ready. Lately, he has been building up in a more traditional rehab style and had some great lessons with his coach. Today was a planned trial of going more than one inning.

The first batter hit a home run off of him. Ugh. Then he struck out the next three. And in the second, he struck out 2 more. He finished the third with 8 strikeouts outs and just the one hit/run. I am not a fan of vanity, but I much a fan of his pitching through his years that few things give me greater joy and pride than watching him chew through batters.

Oh. He also hit his first over-the-wall home-run in this game. The game went to extra innings and they’ll other team batter first, and we allowed way too many runs to score. Yuck. We had last bat, and with 2 out we hit a bases loaded grand slam to get us to needing only 2 runs. The bases were loaded again and my son came up. He struck out and it crushed him. He hasn’t cried this hard in years. He loves his team and players and hates to let them down.

That said, like my favorite sport so often does, people made it better. His coach came over where Nathanial and I were sitting in the grass after the game and told him that he would willingly loose several playoffs to have his dawg back on the mound, and he is back! He reminded him that baseball, more than maybe any sport, is a team game and he himself did not ruin the game. Indeed, he did more to win it that anyone else. A bit later, one of his teammates, who has played with Nathanial for years, sent him a text that almost had me crying. He reminded Nathanial how many people also had tough games and no one person looses it. He reminded Nathanial how great of a game he had and that he pitched the best game of the tournament for our team despite not having pitched in a year. He told Nathanial how important he is to the team, how his team loves him, and how much he loves Nathanial. A 13-year old male just wrote something raw, supportive, and emotion laden to make sure my son move onward.

He showed me the crazy length of the text and even read it to me. He’ll, I have chills now writing this. I wrote to his mother to praise how great of a son she raised and how much this meant to Nathanial.

Oh, and since our tournament was just 29 minutes away, we stopped and took a pic here.

Apologies for the non-sartorial ramble but this is definitely a winning weekend even without the ring at the end.

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