quote:Originally posted by Coach Milburn:
Wonder when the last time we’ve seen a Sandlot game going on?
Coach, I remember sitting on the bench keeping score for my son's LL team. They were all nine or ten. I decided to ask each of them the same question.
"Have you ever played baseball without a uniform or an umpire?"
The answer, from every kid except mine, was no.
We're lucky enough to live near a park with a diamond. The neighborhood kids go there and play three-on-three, call your outfield, invisible men (ghost runners), pitcher's mound, underhand to the little sister...
No adults around to yell 'keep your head in there' 'what are you swinging at?'. They love it.
Almost every kid from that LL team is long gone from baseball. I often wonder how much fun they really had on those Saturday mornings. I also wonder how much fun they might have had, and whether they would have stayed with baseball longer, if they had the chance to play the game in its simplest, purest form- the sandlot.