Thanks Trent. My favorite part of yours is your son innocently asking if his homer will make the TV news
You sound like the type of dad who stays totally supportive without putting pressure on a child. Mine was the same way. BUT, I did enough of that to myself for everyone. Case in point...
Epilogue to that story: when it came to remembering that season, the one thorn in my side used to be feeling like I let the team down at the plate in the championship game. Even though I had a solid start on the mound that day, my mind would zero in more on those at bats.
Then about 5 years ago, I found that season's old scorebook and looked again at what happened that day. In my four plate appearances, I walked the first three times up. Then I popped out in the bottom of the 5th, but the game was already well decided by then (so it didn't matter).
So the reality was that all of my relevant plate appearances in that game actually
helped our case slightly. But my mind had always framed it the opposite way.
That was how competitive I was and how badly I wanted to excel back then (and how rough that could make me on myself!)