Last night, the team had their second game and I only saw the very beginning -- I wanted to get home so that the Em and M wouldn't go to bed too late. Anyway, at about 8:30 Yami and Z came into my room. I don't know who had the bigger grin. "What happened?", I asked.
Z asked Yami to explain. So, there were runners on first and third and the game was tied in the last inning. With two outs, Z was up to bat. Now, Z has had some trouble batting. When he hits, he hits hard but he tends to over think hitting and two of his at-bats early in the game were strike outs. On the way to the game he said to me, "Mom, I'm not good at hitting." I said, "yet.....just keep at it." So the pitch came and Z swung and hit a line drive past the first base man(kid) and ran to first scoring the runner at third. While the other team was throwing home, Z made it to second base and ultimately his team won as a result of that run.
I'm happy for him -- he needed a boost of confidence and he got it. I'm sure there will be many tough at-bats. Yami says he remembers all his good plays in baseball and Z will probably remember this at-bat for a long time. The beauty of baseball reminds me very much of the beauty of dance or meditation or love-making. Plenty of the time, the dance comes with the self-conscious concern of what it looks like, the meditation can feel like a bit of a struggle, the love-making is satisfying but still of this world. But, there are times when something happens that is other worldly and the "I" disappears as something separate -- when the "I" becomes the dance, when the "I" melts into the meditation, when the "we" unite as one with the divine..... baseball as mundane as it is, has that potential -- the potential to unite the "I" with the present moment and the cosmos and to connect us to something greater than balls and bats and gloves.....I'm grateful to Yami for sharing the joys of throwing and catching and hitting and for giving our family this way to connect....
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