GO MUCKDOGS!!!

Brandon started playing tee ball again this week. His team was supposed to be called the "Lug Nuts" but that sounded too much like the Love Nuts (hardly appropriate for a 5-year old tee ball team.) The team is named after the Batavia (NY) minor league team. The name is a great name...or it was until Brandon decided to practice what he learned at kindergarten earlier that day...the great art of rhyming words.

Brandon: "Hey mom, let's see how many words I can think of that rhyme with "muckdog"...we could be the buckdogs, or the cluckdogs, or the duckdogs..."

WHOA! Stop right there young man! You're the muckdogs...and that's all...no more rhyming words.

I missed the first game of the season thanks to the scout camporee ('camporee' is still one of the worst words in the English language, right up there with 'pink eye' and 'root canal' but that's another story for another day). In game 2, I could tell that the young team had already mastered one of the fundamental skills of baseball...spitting. By the time Brandon was done proudly manning his third base position, there was enough mud at his feet to make a small adobe house.

I'm sure Brandon has been blessed with his father's amazing athletic ability, but it hasn't really manifested itself yet. He just can't seem to help himself when he's standing there on a great big giant sand box. He spent a lot of his day spitting, of course, playing in the sand, making binoculars with his hands and searching for fighter planes. At one point, we looked over and he was jumping up and down doing scissor kicks. Um, Brandon, you're a muckdog player, not a muckdog cheerleader (speaking of, I wonder what the real Muckdog Cheerleaders look like...anyway...) He did make one amazing play at third base, then he spent time proudly removing his cap in a sweeping motion, bowing to his invisible crowd while the next two batters took their turns.

At the end of the game, it was, as is customary, snack time...and what better snacks for a baseball game than Cracker Jacks? On the way home, Whitney had the kids singing "Take me out to the ballgame!" Ainsley commented one time how a boy in her class once got hit in the "peanuts" with a baseball. Then, the kids started singing "buy me some penis and cracker jacks." I'm not so sure this whole muckdogs thing is going to be a good influence on my five year old...