Conversations With My Hairdryer

Life is full of those bittersweet moments. When you experience two totally opposite emotions at exactly the same moment. The times when you can't decide what you think or how you want the story to end.

Tonight at the baseball field, emotions were running rampant. Mostly because everyone there was feeling torn between at least two of them at any given moment during the evening. And I know from experience that keeping more than one of anything under control for any length of time is trying at best. And that goes for emotions, too.

It's tournament time here in our neck of the woods, and that means two things: 1) The very looooong baseball season is nearing its end, and, 2) anything can happen. Any team can beat any other team given the right circumstances and the right weather conditions.

Our team entered the tournament as a #8 seed. We beat the #9 seed, and then lost to the #1 seed, and were promptly moved to the losers' bracket. (Accept now they call it the "lower bracket"-- "losers' bracket" isn't really PC.) Tonight we were paired up with the #6 seed, the Mets. And truly, they are our nemesis. We played them last year and came up short 2 out of 3 times. This year we had a hard time beating them. They are a tough team and consistently good. No one likes to play them because they know it will be a battle, not impossible to beat them, just a battle to get it done. Of course we were the visitors, and by the middle of the 4th inning we were winning by 4 runs.

My emotions began to battle. Our kids were playing great against a really tough team. I mean stellar fielding, and superb batting. We were in our zone. It was such a beautiful game, it was just meant to be that our kids would win and advance in the tournament. As much as I cheered, yelled, and encouraged, every fiber in me was screaming just as loud, "Can't they just loose gracefully to a great team and let the season be over already? I mean, how much longer will our lives be controlled by baseball?"

Every time I would get excited that our boys made a great play or got a great hit, that little red devil sitting on my shoulder would whisper, "If they keep playing like this, they'll never loose!" It was tourture, y'all.

Then it was time for the Mets to take their 4th inning turn to bat. Time had expired on the game, so if they pulled ahead, it would be over. By this time the crowd watching the game had grown, mostly because there were other teams there ready to start another game as soon as ours was over. And most of the growing crowd was cheering for us, not because they liked us, but because if we beat the Mets and eliminated them, their team wouldn't have to play them. The crowd was cheering with such excitement that evidently, it was flowing over onto the field. Our kids were going nuts and unfortunately their stellar fielding went down the drain. The Mets were able to tie the game up by the end of the inning and that meant we were headed for extra innings. Our kids scored another 5 runs in the top of the 5th and at this point, I thought, "We've fought this hard and played this great, it would be a shame to loose."

The Mets ended up comming back in the bottom of the 5th and beat us by 1 run, ending our season. Knowing it was the end of the season wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be. The boys were so dissapointed, they'd played their hearts out, and they missed out on getting to shave the coach's head by loosing.

But, I have a feeling, that next week when we are relaxing in the pool instead of getting ready to head out to a baseball game, it will be a little easier to accept.