An Oriole?

My son is an Oriole, ironically enough. Here are some of the pictures from the first few weeks. They had two weeks of fundamentals and practice by themselves and then a game, then they had a team picture night (first two photos are from that night). Then they took a night off on Memorial Day (even though Dad -me! - didn't know they had the night off). Finally they played the Rangers this past Wednesday.

He does a pretty good job hitting the ball off the tee. As you may be able to tell, the tee is placed too high for these boys - it's about at their chest. My son asks for the tee to be lowered a little bit each time, so it ends up being closer to his belly button. Every time he hit against the Rangers, it was a line drive/hard ground ball that went through the middle of the infield ... and the outfield. He was the last batter in their last inning, so it ended up being a home run - otherwise they only get to take one base for each hit. :(

Here's the big guy waiting on third to score. He's a bit intense about it. Which is a bit different than the other kids. He played second base for one inning last Wednesday and got three balls hit to him. The first one he stopped and tried to throw to his teammate who was playing first base - the teammate ducked! The next time, he tried to throw it more gently - the teammate ducked again. The next time, the ball was hit closer to first, the firstbaseman missed the ball, my son fielded it and ran to first, beating the batter/runner. He asked me after the inning why the runner wasn't out. I told him that he was - they just let everybody run :(

So, tee ball will not be the greatest gift God gives the world, but at least he's on a team like he wants to be. The coaches care about helping the kids improve. And maybe next year we'll play coach-pitch :)