[Magdalen] beisbol Q?

[Jay Weigel]

My middle nephew was an excellent soccer player, but also played baseball.
It was baseball that got him into Wesleyan University in Connecticut, so
there we are. However, he continued his interest in soccer and worked (on
the business end) for one of the second tier teams in the Spanish
professional league as well as coaching youth soccer in Mexico. He
eventually completed his master's in sports management at the University of
Oregon last year and now works for Nike, so don't give up hope, Grace.
There are other avenues into soccer. Is there a local Hispanic league with
a youth arm? Sometimes they accept Anglo kids, and it would be a great way
for Joseph to learn Spanish. A lot of the Hispanic kids in the town where I
used to live come into the high school program that way.

My godparents' youngest son had a boy who was quite a good baseball player
and got a full scholarship to  TCU. He played minor league ball for the El
Paso Diablos for several years and had a cup of coffee, as they say, with
some major league team (I think maybe Arizona) before he hung it up. I
suspect he's probably coaching a youth team someplace now.

It's kind of hard to catch the baseball bug if you didn't grow up with it.
My best advice is to find someone who will take the time to patiently
explain what's *really* going on out there without talking down to you or
getting impatient. That's how I finally got over hating football.

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Well, much to my dismay, my grandson has decided that the sport he wants
> to focus on and hopefully play in high school is baseball.  I know, I know,
> that's heresy on this list, but I find the sport second only to golf in
> boring-ness!
>
> He was playing soccer, and I had high hopes for that, because he was a
> very good player. But most of the really good players left the rec league
> for the very expensive and time-consuming travel teams, and he aged out of
> the rec league last year. AND there's no soccer in the middle school, so he
> can't prepare for the high school team.  Apparently walk-ons never make it.
>
>  He wants to go to the Naval Academy, and he needs a sport, so baseball it
> is. He's taking it very seriously, doing conditioning three times a week
> and working with a local coach who is pretty amazing, runs batting
> practices and other kinds of drills for local kids, and who invited Joseph
> to play with his team for their last six games. So this afternoon I get to
> go to the second game of a double header and spend an otherwise gorgeous
> afternoon watching the grass gr__, er, I mean watching a baseball game!
> Well, at least with baseball you don't have to worry about concussions!
>
> If anyone has a magic potion that will make baseball interesting, please
> send me the recipe. Otherwise, it's going to be a very long four and a half
> years, though I have no intention of making *all* of his games!
>
> On October 10, 2015, at 11:46 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yeah, well, Jim, that's a HUGE (or should I say a YUGE) market there. And
> long established. But the rest of the country is a different thing
> entirely, what with all the team franchises moving, and the enormous
> mobility of people generally. If we grow up with a team, we are often
> likely to stay with them, no matter where we end up, unless maybe, as in
> the case of one of my brothers, we move someplace with a strong franchise
> (he's been in the Bay Area for 45 years and become a Giants fan, much to my
> disgust).
>
> In any case, there is no amount of advertising or anything else that is
> EVER going to make me a Nats fan. Furthermore, I disagree with MLB that
> there is any reason why Washington, D.C. "deserves" a baseball team at all.
>
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 10:16 PM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com>
> wrote:
>
> > From: Jay Weigel
> >
> > MLB's rules are completely outdated and totally suck. There IS no such
> >> thing as "local loyalty" because of the mobility of the American
> >> population
> >>
> >
> > I dunno. The Mets/Yankees have a huge amount of local loyalty -- as do
> the
> > other teams in NYC (save sometimes the Knicks <g>).
> >
> > But that might be because there are two teams that actually play each
> > other from time to time, with great hopes for a "Subway Series."
> >
> > I get annoyed because I can’t get the Yankee radio broadcasts. I realize
> > many fans hate Susyn Waldman and John Sterling, but I find them charming.
> > But they're blocked on the WFAN stream.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Jim
> >
>