6.1 - Living for Little League

There are a bunch of crazy people that live around here. These people have children and grandchildren that play baseball. These kids are on my son's baseball team.

With apologies to the few sane ones, most of this parents-of-little-leaguers crowd is just plain nuts.

Now, I'll clap, cheer, and yell some at a ball game—like any good parent, but when some grandma starts yelling at the pitcher to "throw the pepperoni into the pizza mitt," I start to worry.

I've been to quite a few baseball games at all levels: New York Yankees, Norfolk Tides, Peninsula Pilots, LeTourneau Yellowjackets, church softball games, and many of my cousins little league games when I was a kid. I never before heard anyone tell a pitcher to "throw the pepperoni into the pizza mitt."

I even watched the NCAA women's fastpitch softball championships. Those girls are yelling stuff constantly—they never shut up—and I'm pretty sure I didn't hear any one of them say anything about pepperoni or pizza.

So I'm thinking this is really odd, when I then realize that the other parents appear to be nodding to each other and have that "ooo, that's a good one—I wish I'd thought of it" look on their faces.

Then some of them join in with some random banter about pretzels—and something about salt.

So I look over at my family to see if I'm the only one that thinks this is strange, and find my wife and daughter trying not to fall off the bleachers from laughing at these people. Their attempts to stifle their laughter are so horrendously unsuccessful that they have resorted to burying their faces in their blankets and cannot even look at these people without cracking up.

It seems the only one unaffected by the yelling of absurdities at the pitcher is the pitcher, who has just thrown ball four for the third time this inning.

Grandma seems to think this has happened because he didn't listen about the pepperoni.