Tee Ball

I'm going to start by posting Joe's tee ball schedule for this season. As always, click on it to enlarge it or print it for those of you who would like a copy. Now, once you have looked at the schedule, you might notice that there is something odd. Aside from opening day tomorrow, which will most certainly be canceled due to inclement weather, we have no games on Saturdays. These are 5 and 6 year olds for crap's sake! I am really ticked off about this. According to the city's website, the only league with Saturday games is the 4 year old league. After some deep breathing and counting to ten a few times, I emailed the Alabaster athletic manager. Boy...was he insightful (the problems are, of course, due to the recession). I learned that the 4 year olds do not require umpires (i.e. the city doesn't have to pay umpires) so they can use the fields on Saturdays, whereas 5/6 year olds require umpires and the city doesn't want to have to pay them and their maintenance staff on Saturdays. Here's where the situation gets hairy. After we signed Joe up and paid his ONE HUNDRED SIXTY DOLLAR registration fee, we were informed that his league would not be keeping score or counting outs....hmmmm. Why again do we need a certified umpire? I'm not exactly sure.

Don't get me wrong, I love Alabaster. We have some awesome parks and recreation facilities, three municipal baseball complexes as a matter of fact. Instead of spending my Saturday afternoons at the ballpark like I did last spring, I will be rushing home from school, trying to get everyone something to eat, getting Joe to the field 2-3 times a week for his 5:30 or 7:00 games (mostly 7:00) and crossing my fingers to have him in bed by 9:00. I'm sure he will be on his best non-cranky behavior the following morning at school.

So yeah, I'm pretty ticked.