Football Epilogue

The school year has started. The frantic pace of summer with it's figuring out who's doing what and when has been constrained to shortened weekday evenings and weekends. Even those have some semblance of structure. This fall's evenings are thus far inundated with gymnastics, soccer, Lego Robotics, Cub Scouts and piano lessons. It's hard to find time and energy to get a workout in edgewise, but try I must. My son getting ready for the end of days.... or just clowning  around at the local surplus store. One window of opportunity is during my daughter's gymnastics class. It's a 90 minute window of time at the recreation center where I am a member. It's an evening my ex-wife typically has the kids so she'll stay and watch while my son stays home. Recently, he has been expressing interest in exercising more. It has even resulted in procuring some free weights and a bench in my basement.  Knowing this, I called on my way home from work and asked ...

It's amazing at times to see the number of sporting activities available to kids. I recall baseball in the spring/summer, football in the fall, basketball and hockey in the winter. Now there's a plethora of sports to chose from. Baseball now competes with LaCrosse as the spring sport of choice. I have some opinions as this might be a good thing as baseball quickly becomes an "elitist" sport shortly after middle school. You can only put nine people on the field at a time and only bat nine. Substitution rules are cumbersome and result in a total of, 30ish kids making up a varsity/jv squad. It's a lot of standing around as well. Lacrosse places 11 players on a field with ample substitutions, etc. to get lots of kids involved. There are also roles for everyone. There's a lot less standing around on a given day as well. ...digressing, I didn't intend for this post to be a diatribe on why baseball will (rightfully) soon be a lesser youth sport. Instead, th...