Sports As Made Up By Children

            Ah, sports. We love them, we play them, we make up the rules as we go along. Alex has played baseball since he was small enough to call it T-ball. The twins are very excited as they are finally old enough to play T-ball with their classmates this year. We decided a little practice was in order so the five of us hit the backyard for a little family time mixed with a smidgen of real life practice. On this day we, the three older members of the family; Alex, Roger and me, got the crap kicked out of us. This might be due to the fact that the little boys were the only ones that were batting and while we, the older three, called this ‘practice’ the little boys called it “all out, in your face, base running, home run hitting game of skill and endurance.” Well, they didn’t actually say that but as we played on it became apparent that this was the mindset of the five year-olds making the rules and they were out for blood. Roger pitched, Alex and I were the infield and the outfield. The young men became quite adept at hitting the ball over our privacy fence so we, the fielders, would have to go through the gate, cross the alley and look through bushes and trees for the ball. Since this was ‘practice’ we didn’t run and hustle as we might’ve were this a real game, or if we had realized that this was a real game. As the hitter hit the ball he would take off on the run and lap the swing set several times declaring that he had hit a home run. Not just a home run but a high scoring home run. They would count as they ran and that’s how the scoring works. Counting and lapping the swing set as they were doing did racked up some points and when they finally decided to head toward home plate, they were still counting.  This was a lot of fun and was really funny. I have no doubt that the final score was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,278,923 to 0. Glad I didn’t have money on this game, I would’ve lost my shirt, maybe even my house.