I made the mistake of asking him if he thought he could play with the older rookie kids before I knew what Mission would have for teams. I thought if he and Azia played together on that team it would simplify my life to have two teams to keep track of rather than three. Azia was the youngest, smallest one signed up for softball so I thought she might not mind a year of rookie ball, too. But it was (and is still) a little unclear how all the teams work for these littlest people, so Azia went with softball. That is working fine because I forgot Azia could care less if others are bigger and older and she just jumps in and does things and is doing really well. And it's fun because there are 17 elementary school girls she gets to spend hours with every week. Hanging out with cool girls a little older is really not a problem for her at all.
But after Zoran had the idea in his head that he was playing baseball he wasn't interested in playing t-ball. After trying to convince him for a few weeks, I realized they weren't even splitting up the t-ball and rookie kids for practice. So of course he wanted to play in the rookie games because he wants to play "real" baseball. This is actually probably a better fit for him even if he isn't quite old enough & is still figuring out basics to batting and throwing and those things, because he is very interested in playing the game correctly--knowing where plays are, how to play the different positions, and how to improve his hitting. The problem is since they didn't split the teams there are all sorts of little kids who have never even played t-ball trying to jump right into playing baseball. It's mostly preschool and kindergartners. There are more four-year-olds on the team than seven-year-olds. (And no one above seven!) No one on the team had even played on an actual baseball field (even for practice) before the game tonight. So, all those factors add up to Zoran being really troubled by how the game turned out. The good thing is he isn't at all frustrated by anyone on his team. It's also the bad thing because he is so focused on what he needs to do he is completely upset when he can't make the game go better. Yesterday he wouldn't even stick around for the snack. I couldn't figure out why he was so upset. Later he told me it was because he "didn't do anything really good." He wasn't upset about messing up or doing anything wrong, just bothered he didn't do anything really outstanding (whatever that means by his standards). Today he was really upset because the game ended right before he was supposed to bat. One more chance he could have had to do something really good. Also, his team had clearly lost and he never like to lose at anything. Ever.
Tomorrow is the first t-ball game, and when the coach asked him today after the game he finally agreed he would play. I think any sort of competition is more fun for him than not having anything to do. Hopefully it's a little less stressful for him & he can just enjoy playing.
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