My son, J, did very well in this past weekend's travel baseball team. Though he's the youngest on the team, he bats third in the lineup and had 6 hits and three walks over 5 games, all of the hits doubles. On Saturday he got hit with a fastball on the inside of the right knee, but he was fine on Sunday despite a heavy bruise.

In the semi-finals, we played a team that won their tournament games by scores of 17-0, 17-2, 15-0 and 15-0 (all of them 15 run mercy games). J pitched the first three innings and gave up two runs. He was pitching against a kid, regarded as one of the top high school pitchers in the area and I could see why. His fastball was 90 mph. In the top of the fifth we scored a run and got two runners on base. J hit a ball high off the left-centerfield fence, which had the same height as the Green Monster in Fenway. The distance to the fence was 385 feet, so the ball would have gone more than 400 feet, the farthest ball he ever hit. It put us ahead and knocked the pitcher out.

The other team, whose players were dancing and joking in the field and ridiculing us in the early innings, changed their tune and rallied for a couple of runs and edged us 5-4. J's team gave them a struggle they didn't expect. They left the tournament happy.