Recently, my mother, who loves to shop online, found something the just had to order for my four year old, Steven. When we were waiting for it to arrive, she described it as some "some sort of ball" that had something to do with the Red Sox. When it finally came, we say that it was a regualtion baseball, with the words "Boston Red Sox" on one side and the old fashioned logo on the other. Not only was it "dirtied", as in mudded like balls are when prepped for games, it came with a holder that looks like a Fenway seat! (OK, maybe not a Fenway seat, but a ballpark seat, and it folds up, too!) She said she only paid like $10 for it, but I thought it was pretty cool, and so did Steven, whose been staring at the three baseballs I received with the SI World Series package with lust in his eyes.

Steven goes to a preschool program at our local YMCA. Today they were scheduled to have show-and-tell. When I got up this morning, my wife says to my son, "Tell your father what you're taking for show-and-tell."

"I'm taking my baseball, Dad!" he exclaims. "I'm gonna tell then how the Red Sox won the World Series and how this is the old-time logo, and then I'll show them how to throw a curve, just like you showed me."

After advising him not to actually "throw" the curve as part of the demo, I just stood and smiled and realized how my plan to guide my son toward proper fandom is really working!

Labels: baseball, family, Red Sox

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 3/20/2008 04:28:00 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.