Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2005
long, good, posted at 8:36 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com It was a very long day today. I woke up too late to make it to the gym, but the day was full of the usual teaching and grading and planning practice, but added to the usual was my formal observation in the afternoon. I'm doing to this big "act out a scene from To Kill a Mockingbird activity, and it was fun and interesting but I think the groups were a little too big. We'll see what the Department Head will say about it tomorrow.After the very long teaching day, I had practice. It's still very, very cold out there. It was so cold that an aluminum bat cracked down the middle towards the end of practice. It was one of two usable bats that we have and I'm really disappointed about it; so are the kids. If anyone knows Cal Ripken, tell him we need some baseball equipment donated.
In addition, I feel like my arm is going to fall off after an afternoon of throwing batting practice. Tell Cal to throw in a pitching machine while he's at it.
Tonight was our All School Book Event. We read ZZ Packer's "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," which I liked a great deal. The event was a rousing success, with parents, teachers, and students talking about the book in a free setting, in both small groups and large. That ran until 8.
A 13-hour day, and now I've got to rigure out what I'm doing tomorrow. I guess Trader Joe's and a gym trip are not meant to be tonight. Maybe I can crash early tonight and get up in the morning.
This is my favorite time of year. I'm enjoying myself even though baseball isn't that fun yet because the weather sucks so much. I've also been kicking myself the last two practices for keeping such an inexplicably big team. I'm too damned soft-hearted about these things. If I made it just ability, I could easily cut down the team to 18 or 19, but I've kept 26. I refused to cut kids for the third year in a row. I refused to cut a kid whose mom just threw he and his dad out of their house. And on and on.
So practices would be a lot easier if I had about nine less kids. But I'm unable to disappoint nine kids when the only payoff is it makes my life easier.
Anyhow, the season begins in five days and we still haven't gotten the uniforms in yet. A raging battle still goes on between Kyle and Marcus at third base. I'm rooting for Marcus, because he can't play anywhere else, while Kyle will be pitching a lot and playing the outfield a bit. I'm also wondering how I'm going to get Sam any playing time. I cut this big (235-lb, not all muscle) white kid last year and told him to get in shape this year. He did, remarkably so, losing about 50 pounds and gaining some muscle. He's a decent hitter and is more limber than one might expect defensively, but my firstbaseman from last year is a decent player as well, more solid all around but probably less power. I can probably DH Sam a bit, which is probably what I'll start out doing.
These are good problems to have. I like the simplicity that coaching provides. Even though I get really wrapped up emotionally in it, especially with deciding about kids being cut and stuff, I enjoy the camraderie of it, I enjoy the fact that it's just me and a ball and a bat and a bunch of kids, that I don't have to worry about a whole lot else out there. My stress level is very low even though I'm working my ass off; the fun of heading outside and blowing off steam every day for two or three hours is very healthy.