Yesterday Mason’s baseball team took a heart breaking loss after being up 11-0 that went to the last out of the game to end the season.  It quickly went from a blowout to a pretty tense game in just three innings.  We had it won and then everyone just fell apart.  We should have won the game.  In my few years of coaching, I don’t recall ever taking a loss as hard as this one.  When talking to the boys I could feel myself nearing a tear, very odd for me when it comes to youth baseball as I usually keep it all in the proper perspective, but I couldn’t help but feel like I let the parents down.  How sad is that, I was more concerned about how I let the parents down and not the kids?  Sure, the kids were upset, but five minutes after the game was over I saw at least three of them running the bases laughing away.  On the ride home all I could think about was the many things I might have done different to have won the game.  I was really beating myself up for a lot of things, then Cutler got home and he was all over me to play video games with him.  It was then that I snapped back to reality and realized that it was just youth baseball.  It wasn’t a game of survival like Cutler went through when he was six months old.  There were no scholarships on the line, no pro scouts searching for the next great 8 year old, it was just youth baseball.  It wasn’t like every six months when we worry about if the leukemia has returned and Cutler must start the fight over again.  It was just youth baseball.  For now on, when I start to feel down about something like this again, I am going to grab Cutler and sit down for a video game.

Here is a picture of the boys on Saturday night.  They get along so well…when they are asleep.  The little one has his semi annual appointment tomorrow with the oncologist and I would be lying if I said we weren’t experiencing some anxiety.  It’s amazing how we can let it slip our minds even just a little what he has been through and that our fight is never over.  Then the night before the appointment all hell breaks loose in our heads.  Please pray for another clean check up and for Cutler to handle the blood draw as well as he did when he was younger and oblivious to the needle.

Two weeks ago Cutler got back on the ice after taking a little over a month off and he was falling down everywhere.  I think part of it was a little bit of rust mixed with him messing around, but I wasn’t for sure until Tuesday night when he went out again.  He skated faster than I had ever seen him and is finally skating with both feet and his arms.  When his 30 minute lesson was over he didn’t want to leave the ice.  So he kept going for another 30 minutes until the Zamboni had to do its job.  I think he also showed some competitiveness in that he wanted to do whatever the older kids were doing, including chasing Mason down while Mason skated backwards and racing another five year old around the rink…and winning according to him.