I felt like Charles S. Dutton watching Rudy sack the quarterback at the end of the movie.
Sports will do that to you … make you feel great because your kid worked hard, made a contribution to the team, and considers himself proud of his accomplishment. I mean you had nothing to do with it, but you still feel good nonetheless. He’s your kid. He’s related to you. You’re proud by association. You feel those weekly batting sessions at the park worked. However, sports will also make you a little too intense, like The Hulk, if you’re one of those crazy parents. It’s a fine line.
But if you’re on the normal side like me, sports brings out good moments and provides Sandbox Adventure List opportunities.
And this … was a big one.
I knew his expression would be priceless. But I think what he was feeling at the moment was even better.
When you enroll your kids in sports, you just hope he picks up some skills, meets new friends, has fun playing the sport, gets exercise, and learns about sportsmanship. You want him to learn all that, you do, but being acknowledged for you effort is also pretty awesome.
It’s something that reinforces all those you-can-do-it speeches I had with him.
And I know that the effort itself and seeing progress is its own reward, but a trophy seemed to personify that better.
He’d seen them in movies or at friends’ houses, but he never had one. He said one day he’d get one too. I mentioned his golfing championships and his TinMan Triathlon Medal, but apparently a trophy was different. A trophy is a trophy. And on the last day of baseball, at the end of the last game, during our baseball celebration shindig, and before the smashing of the baseball pinata … he saw it.
It was only about five inches tall, but it was the best baseball he’d seen. It was the best trophy he’d seen. It had his name on it and he had earned it.
His mini-trophy with his game ball.
And I think right then and there he felt like Rudy himself, although no one but me carried him off the field. And even though we had cake and pinata candy, it was a chocolate-worthy kind of moment. But not just any kind of chocolate … Rocky-Road-Ice-Cream kind of chocolate.
The Wish Factor 