Welcome to The Bleacher Society

Your now 3 year old is playing with his plastic Fisher Price t-ball set with the neighbors in the front yard, you see a post on Facebook about Little League sign ups, so you say what the heck, lets all get out of the house and give it whirl and make some new friends.

The first thing you do is make sure you sign up online to get pre-registered, for our league this was always so important roster spots filled up quickly depending on how many parents volunteered or were voluntold to coach. Then take your sweet baby to Walmart, Dick’s, or Academy and buy the cutest little glove, bat, and cleats you’ve ever seen and start getting ready for tryouts. You work on how to wear the glove and hold a bat, how to say “Hi, my name is _____, and I am 3.” I mean, you or your significant other played a sport of some sort in High School or College, how hard can this be to teach your own child these things? Then just like that on a cold week night in January (we live in Texas so our season always seems to start earlier than others) you get off work, go pick up your toddler and head to the fields where you hope all the hard word you’ve been doing at night in your front yard and living room works out. When you arrive at the park you must of driven past 1,000 times but never really noticed, you join the line of other parents waiting to check their child in.

Once checked in, you head over to a field with what seems like 100 3 and 4 year old’s doing their best to hit, run, catch, and throw. You tell the person with the clipboard the number on your child’s wrist band and start talking to other parents, which you don’t know it yet, but a few will become life long friends. They call your child’s number and you say your first, “go out there and just have fun” give them a quick hug and send them out onto the field. You record and take pictures and cheer them on as they try their best to use everything you’ve taught them, and you quickly learn that the coaches volunteering really are saints in disguise, because their patience is unmatched. When you child finishes their base running the coaches tell them how great a job they did and give high fives and send them back to you, you thank them and gather up all the gear and head back to the car.

A few days go by and you get a call saying, your child is now apart of the Orioles or A’s or Rangers or Astros and welcome to the team. In this moment you have become an official part of some of the most elite cheap seats in the world, welcome to The Bleacher Society.