Moms & Baseball

Q. What's does a baseball player usually say when a TV camera catches him by surprise during a game?
A. Hi, Mom.

Both the big boys of Major League Baseball and the little boys of Little League know that Moms make baseball possible. Mom gave us life, and Mom also took us to a million practices, celebrated victories with us and consoled us after losses. In many families, Mom gets out on the field and helps with the game. (I can't tell how proud I was to see Karen get out on the field and play in the season-ending Mother's Game at Water Tower Park.)

In Whitefish Bay, we honor this day for Moms by not having Little League! In recent years, Major League Baseball has collaborated with Susan G. Komen for the Cure on Mother's Day breast cancer awareness and fundraising. In 2006 cooperating MLB players started using special pink bats on Mother's Day; the game-used bats were auctioned off later on.

The Brewers' Bill Hall is both a leader and a star of this new tradition. In 2006, he swung a mighty pink bat in the 10th inning to beat the New York Mets. TV cameras showed his proud mother Vergie in the crowd. Here is a low-quality (but still enjoyable) fan video of that moment:



Hall hit another pink bat homer on Mother's Day, 2007. As has become his tradition, Hall is also making a $25,000 contribution to Komen this year.

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"The Chicken Runs at Midnight"
On a day devoted to family, I commend to you a heartwarming, yet sad, story from the Palm Beach Post of a major-league coach and a player from another team (and country) who bonded over their lost children:

"They met for the first time on a cold morning in an empty baseball stadium — the 62-year-old coach from Steubenville, Ohio, and the 25-year-old pitcher from Maracay, Venezuela.

"Rich Donnelly and Anibal Sanchez had spoken once before over the phone.

"They knew enough about each other to understand they share a common bond that extends beyond baseball.

"Both are fathers who lost a child."

Continued

The special bonus in this story for us is that Whitefish Bay's Craig Counsell plays a key role in the middle of it.

Happy Mother's Day, Everyone

Jim Higgins

Happy Mother's Day to all our Braves Moms

Practice updates, makeup game discussion

Braves,
(1) Practice as usual Friday (May 1) from 4 to 5:30 p.m. The weather forecast looks fine. If the high-school softball field is in use we will practice at Cumberland (not at Cahill). It will be good for the guys to have one more practice before our game Saturday.
(2) From now at least until the end of May we will have practices every Friday and Sunday from 4 to 5:30 p.m., with days off on Sunday May 10 (Mothers Day), Friday May 22 (beginning of holiday weekend), and Sunday May 24 (holiday weekend). Our preference is always to practice at the softball field on the high-school grounds, with Cahill and Cumberland being backup locations if the high-school field is in use.
(3) Scratch the May 22 make-up game possibility. Too many of our guys will be out of town.
(4) Right now we have two games to make up (Phillies and White Sox). Because the Majors field is so tightly scheduled (lots of Minors games are being played there), there are very few available game slots. I have suggested to the Majors commish that the first two Tuesdays in June (June 2 and 9) at 4:30 p.m. would be times when we probably could field a team. If players have conflicts with those days, I hope five weeks' notice would enable us to minimize them. Games at 4:30 p.m. cause lots of problems for adult fans and coaches, but the most important thing is to get the games in so that the kids can play.
The Majors schedule is a mess, obviously. The coaches of the teams and Majors commissioner Darren Miller are working hard to find times when we can get postponed games played.
Thanks for bearing with us in this less-than-ideal situation.
Dave

Schedule update: No Memorial Day weekend game

Braves,
We will NOT be playing on Memorial Day weekend -- too many of our players will be out of town.
We continue to explore ways to help out the White Sox, who will have trouble fielding a team for the game scheduled for April 30. One suggestion was to play the game on May 10, but that's Mothers Day and none of the brutish, insensitive men who are working on this problem wanted to propose a Mothers Day game to the families of their players.
Updates as they become available.
Dave