An emotion-filled night

A few notes from the ballpark last night ...

• Since Nathaniel and I arrived 4o minutes early for his game (in time for his warm-up), I was able to watch the last half of my friend Megan's son Reeves' semi-finals game. They lost by one run in the bottom of the 9th, and the kids were heartbroken. This was my first experience seeing boys come off the field crying, and it made me ache for them. I know it's just baseball, but still. SAD.

• Our first inning at bat, the ump called one of our kids for "baiting." I just Googled that for you, but it brought back 15 million (I'm not exaggerating) results, and I don't have time to sort through all that. It has something to do with acting as though you're going to head home or to the next base to get the catcher to throw the ball somewhere he doesn't want to. Sort of like a fake-out, I guess? Anyway, WE WEREN'T BAITING. We are a team that's gone 1 and 12 this season. We don't know from baiting. We, in the stands, were all appalled at the ruling. APPALLED.

• Sorry. I intended for these bullet points to be briefer, but it's not working out that way. APOLOGETIC.

• After striking out twice, in the third inning Nathaniel hit a line drive down the third-base line. Our runner on third slid into Home, and Nathaniel made it safely to first. Then, about 30 seconds later, the umpire called it Foul ... after the third baseman had fielded it and everything. I had been standing up and screaming for Nathaniel, and I fell back to the bleachers, deflated. FINALLY, a hit, and it was taken back. I thought all the moms in our stands were going to storm the field for us. INDIGNANT.

• Sometime during the fourth inning, the opposing team's coach got angry and started talking back to the dad on our side who was in the announcer's booth. We didn't understand what was going on at the time, but the league commissioner (who is one of our team's coaches) asked the dad to come out, and he replaced him in the booth. Apparently he'd gotten a little loud with his critique of some of the calls on the field, and it was distracting the players and rude to the parents on the other team, who could hear him. MORTIFIED.

But Internet, we were the Guests.

!!! ECSTATIC !!!

The moms in the stands went NUTS when the game was over. You have to remember, we've only won one game all season, so this was a real crowd-pleaser.

The boys gathered with the coaches in left field to celebrate.

There was much piling on.

And after the several minutes of celebration were over, we got a group shot of our jubilant boys ... the small ones AND the big ones.

One final "one-two-three-BRAVES!" cheer, and we started packing up our things.

Drunk on team spirit:

And I had to post this picture of a very proud mommy and her very happy ballplayer, even though you could land a 737 on that landing strip of a shiny forehead (sorry; looooooong day and no powder available) ...

We stayed until the lights went out and the scoreboard, rolled back to zeros, was the only thing lighting our way.

What a night! ELATED.