Our grandson, Joseph, had his very first T-Ball game last night. The game was played at 'Wrigley Field' at our local YMCA and the teams were made up of very excited 3 & 4 year old boys and girls. The crowd was a mixture of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings - a friendly group that cheered both teams equally.
The very first thing that Joseph learned about playing ball is that you sometimes have to wait around for things to begin. In his case, to make the wait more bearable, all you need to do is find an abandoned tennis ball and try to push it through the fence - " it's small so it must be able to go through this holes in the tall fence if I push hard enough!"
The rules at this age level are that all children will have at least one turn at bat per game and the game is over after 45 minutes. Of course, the whole concept of baseball is a 'work-in-progress' for players at this age. At first, when one of them actually did manage to hit the ball into the infield, both teams made a made dash for the ball - including the batter. Later, when running to first after hitting the ball was understood, then they didn't understand that you needed to run to 2nd (and then third and Home) if the ball was hit again.
With each batter, the tiny players got better at following the directions of their patient coaches and you could see them beginning to get a little more into the game. Some of the players were more interested in batting than in catching or in searching for bugs in the outfield -- but, they all love to run!!
And, when the final batter had their turn at Home Plate - both teams lined up (with some demonstrations from their coaches) for the slapping of hands and 'Good Game' traditional end-of-the-game ceremony.
