Teaching Catch

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I spent this afternoon with a two year old. Cute kid. At first he didn’t know what to make of this tall foreigner but all little kids love to play. First his parents took one each of his arms and did the “Jump and pulled him off the ground” game. Then I played the “Jump and lift the little guy to ride on my shoulders” game. He was probably scared so I let him down to his mother’s arms. Once his mother put him down he put up his index finger. Yes, the international signal for “One more time”. I don’t know what they are feeding the kid but he is solidly built. He is not one of your econo-two-year olds. He is built like a 57 Chevy. As you could imagine “one more time” is never one more time. Good work out.

Later I played a game of hiding behind furniture and having him find me. I even had to sneak out the back door to outsmart the guy. It is great to hear a little one laugh. Us tall guy don’t hide that well.

Then I thought I would try to teach the tyke how to catch. At that age you have to throw it just right and hope the ball doesn’t bounce out. Luckily the mom was there to teach and aid in the cupping action. I had a Nerf-like that worked the best. He was able to catch the thing all by himself. This means my expert coaching did the impossible again. Just so you know that when this guy makes millions playing Major League Baseball it was that first Dime that started the process. I will be humble another day.

I wish I had the parents permission to post a picture for I have a great shot that my wife took of the smiling mother and the boy catching. Priceless.

UPDATE: I put in a cropped picture.

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50 Responses to Teaching Catch

  1. DevereauxDevereaux says:

    I am waiting for that humble day, Centime.

    Good work on the catching part. I expect by age four you will have him with a 50 mph fastball.

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      No need to wait, Dev. Anytime you want humble I will give it to you gladly. BTW, 80 kph.

  2. DevereauxDevereaux says:

    BASEBALL, sport! In American metrics!

    • Vald the MisspellerVald the Misspeller says:

      Right, there’s no crying in baseball and no metic system either, thank the gods (and Abner Doubleday).

      • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

        Don’t try to convince me that the number 10 is not the best way to measure things.

        • DevereauxDevereaux says:

          Actually a ruler or tape measure is. The number 10 doesn’t “measure” anything.

          • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

            Yes, I am immeasurable. Thank you. Why are you being so effusive with the praise?

  3. DevereauxDevereaux says:

    BTW, ?are you implying you will make me humble.

    Never happen, GI! I’m a Marine. We’re never humble.

    “It’s hard to be humble when you’re the finest.”

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      “It’s hard to be humble when you’re the finest.”

      Dev, thanks for understanding and the compliment. My sock is blushing.

  4. Vald the MisspellerVald the Misspeller says:

    “Later I played a game of hiding behind furniture and having him find me…Us tall guy don’t hide that well.”

    Yeah, I can imagine this would be a challenge, especially with your furniture scattered about in unassembled piles while you vainly struggle to decipher the Icelandic pictograms in the IKEA instruction manual.

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      Would you help me out? I have a digital watch so what is this clockwise thing they talk about?

      They are not in unassembled piles. They are in pre-assembled staging areas.

    • MLHMLH says:

      **

  5. PencilvaniaPencilvania says:

    So cute! You would think an enormous talking sock would scare a 2 year old. And terrify his mother.

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      Funny, the mother was terrified of me when I married her aunt. She has got used to me now.

  6. BrentB67BrentB67 says:

    Uummmm, how does a sock play catch?

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      The Sockratic Method. (I am not stealing Pencil’s joke and not giving her credit. I am giving it back through Brent and hoping for colateral damage.)

    • NandaNanda says:

      Brent, I wondered if HRT has access to one of those separate-toed socks that might make toes prehensile again…Seriously, this sounds like great fun!

  7. EThompson says:

    Aww…

    Took my 8 year old nephew to a Yankee game when he was visiting us in the city and truly enjoyed indoctrinating him because he lives in LA. (He thought he was a Dodger fan.)

    We had two seats behind the dug-out so we got to see Jeter flex during the 7th inning stretch for a thrill of a lifetime! I was an embarrassing adult, because I elbowed my way to the front to get the autograph.

    It just couldn’t be helped and I make no apology.

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      Who do I make the autograph to, Liz? (These fans can be so pushy.)

  8. ctlaw says:

    “He is built like a 57 Chevy.”

    Might not be a compliment:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

  9. EThompson says:

    God help Tom Brady if I ever see him after a game!

    I’m an unabashed fan of Wolverines.

  10. EThompson says:

    That’s the logo! It’s excellent and the American public reacts so positively to it.

    Well done, Centime.

  11. EThompson says:

    Let’s get this baseball party started!
    npb.jp/eng/

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      Liz, is BDB ready for the Carping that will ensue?

      • EThompson says:

        Let’s hope so! STD, our Nippon best sellers are:
        Hanshin Tigers
        Yomiuri Giants
        *Hiroshima Carp
        Yokohama Whales

  12. 10 Cents10 Cents says:

    http://npb.jp/eng/

    I know which team Vald and Dev would be on. The Ham Fighters of course.

  13. Mike LaRocheMike LaRoche says:

    The next Sadaharu Oh, perhaps?

    • EThompson says:

      Isn’t he retired now? This thread has made me think about the huge cultural impacts upon sports. It’s interesting. Par exemple:

      NBA- too obvious to mention
      MLB- very mixed ethnicities but unusually represented by Hispanic players in the U.S. and highly popular in Japan
      NHL- Canadian, Canadian, and Canadian with a splash of Russian
      NFL- mixed ethnicities but there are 12 Samoan pros from a country with a population of 195,000 people!

      Golf and tennis are obviously not as diversified; Vijah Singh, the true UN ambassador Tiger Woods, and the Williams sisters are all outliers.

      I think this would be an interesting topic for a book.

      • Mike LaRocheMike LaRoche says:

        Yep, Sadaharu Oh is now fully retired. In addition to all his awards and championships as a player for the Yomiuri Giants, he also won two Japan Series titles as manager of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks and was the manager of the Japanese national team that won the World Baseball Classic in 2006.

        • EThompson says:

          I’m starting on my book now … :)

          What makes baseball such an attractive sport in Japan?

  14. 10 Cents10 Cents says:

    I don’t understand completely the attraction of baseball. Part of this is because I was never very good at it. For me baseball is slow because the action stops and starts. A good baseball fan plays the game in their heads and thinks about what will happen next. They know the history, the stats, and the rules.

    I don’t know if Japan which is into group thinking ever produced a team sport. They had to import it.

    During the war they played baseball but had to play in Japanese. They had to come up with homegrown terms for base, ball, strike, and foul.

  15. EThompson says:

    Baseball was never my favored sport until the 1990s and I attended a Yankee game in which David “Boomer” Wells was pitching. I had grown a tad impatient with the endless back and forth between pitcher and batter… the balls, the strikes, the pop-ups, the digging at the mound, and the endless repositioning of helmets along with discussions between catcher and pitcher, etc.

    One game I attended in the Bronx changed my attitude towards the game forever. Wells was pitching and even I noticed this was a huge mental and psychological battle between batter and pitcher. I can’t quite explain it but those of you who know of what I speak understand this. (Drysdale/Mantle was a classic example.)

    I was fascinated and never grew impatient again at the sometimes tedious pace. I also read “Moneyball” by my fav author Michael Lewis and he explained that ‘on base’ percentage was the most important stat a batter could have; it wasn’t necessarily the hits or the home runs that mattered, but sometimes merely the walks.

    I of course prefer football because of the open action, but even that sport isn’t for dummies who don’t understand how to read the field and the body language of both the offensive and defensive linemen.

    All sports are hard to understand, hard to execute, and those NFL playbooks make calculus look like arithmetic!

    My next sport to master is hockey because it moves at such a fast pace. (Of course, the colorful fans sitting in the arenas are distraction enough for anyone.) Whenever I have attended a game at the Joe, I find myself with zero time to kibitz with my hockey pals because one could easily miss a major play in 2-3 seconds!

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      Liz, what do you think of soccer?

      • EThompson says:

        Three things:

        1. Most handsome men on the planet.
        2. Most athletic men on the planet.
        3. Most boring sport on the planet.

        :)

  16. TKC1101TKC1101 says:

    Nice post, Dime. Two year olds are amazing. They have such energy and their emotions are all out there to see. They have no filters.

    They see everything.

    • 10 Cents10 Cents says:

      What I find amazing is their concentration powers. They can focus on one thing totally. They also have not learned they can’t do things yet. Oh, and they have such beautiful innocent laughs.

  17. EThompson says:

    I feel slightly guilty because there has been no discussion of women’s sports. I have always enjoyed NCAA basketball, particularly at Tennessee, UConn, and Stanford. My favorite play evah must have been at Stanford 10 years ago when a 5’3″ freshman made a 3-pt shot and won against the late, great Pat Summitt.

    I was also a fan of Hall of Famer Cheryl Mills (Reggie’s sister) and I miss her commentating skills at TNT. She knew exactly what she was talking about and at 6 ft. 2 in. could look any player (male or female) in the eye. :)