...For those who haven't been paying attention, it's baseball season again. Major leagues, minor leagues... and little leagues. That means I get to be a baseball mom again, but not just to one player this year.

This year I have two players to root for. That's right, B stepped up from being bat girl last year to actually joining the team. With all the rain we'd been having there were only two practices before their first game, and we went through a coach change as well. All things considered, I'm not surprised that we lost 13-8 on Saturday morning.

But there were highlights. There was watching some kid guarding first base who ended up with an unassisted double play. He caught the ball in the infield and ran it to first to tag out the guy who was running from first to second. I was sure that that was the play of the game and the game ball.

I watched A hit off the pitching machine and sail a ball beautifully into the outfield. I knew she had it in her, and yet again, I didn't. It's the kind of hit that every parent hopes their kid makes on a regular basis and I'm not holding my breath, but at least I know she can do it. The one that I was worried about was B. She was nervous going into the game, and I was fearing that the usual "It's too hard" was going to come out of her mouth. B must have been a princess in another life, because lots of things are "too hard" for her to do without a lot of cajoling, encouragement, tears (hers), frustration (ours), and sometimes a raised voice. Most of these involve homework or chores.

She rose to the occasion as a ball player. She tried her best at bat, not hitting anything except hand pitched balls, and then finally a good infield hit off the pitching machine. She stopped a ball cold that was rolling between the second and third base line, and while she wasn't fast enough to get it to third and get the guy out, she tried.

All in all, she made a great effort and I was really proud of her. The real surprise came at the end of the game when the coach handed her the game ball. A very worn out ball, not like the shiny clean ones that A got last year, but a game ball nonetheless. There were some great plays and hits out there, and I was sure that kid from first base had it all sown up. But B got the game ball because of her fielding, her hits, and the fact that she sure tried hard out there...

...and that's good enough for me.