Now HS

The day finally came yesterday, that is YSSS played in his first HS scrimmage. Wow. No longer my little guy I guess. Anyways, SoulSlam took the roadtrip in some mighty frigid weather, got there just before gametime. Bottom 1st, team takes field and YSSS is trottin' out to LF! This is a varsity game so that was pretty exciting.
He played:

2 innings in LF

2 innings in RF

3 innings behind plate

At the plate he was 1-2 with a walk, a sac fly, w RBIs and a run scored. Hit the ball hard a couple of times. Batted in 8th spot so the pressure was off for the most part. Great ABs all. He gets to play some baseball now, which is what he loves.

It was really quite a day for me.

Yesterday, looking at YSSS I told him I was going to pick him up a new pair of baseball pants for practice. He was wearing a pair of grey flares that he's has since 13U travel. He's starting to look like Huck Finn wearing them (high waters y'all).
Then he hit me with this:

"Dad, get me a black pair."
I stared. Really?
Apparently his HS wears BLACK BASEBALL PANTS. I am beside myself. Wow.

At least they're not pinstriped.

The Goal To Eat Healthier

It's a lofty and attainable goal. I try hard. I've basically given up alcohol (I've had about a dozen beers since early January), walk away from fast food, try to eat the veggies, add protein shakes to make up the difference. Yet still I have trouble losing weight.
I've been going to the G-Y-M regular for 2+ years. I've ramped it up quite a bit in last two months, typically going at least 5x per week. I do weights and cardio. Different says means different things.
So while I have lost weight (lb-wise) it's not all that much I think. But when you look at SoulSlam you can definitely see a difference. A lb is a lb. But from my looking into, a lb of muscle takes up 4x less space than a lb of fat. That's me.

So people say "you've lost weight!". Not really, I've just changed. I used to stress about losing weight. Now I stress about getting bigger.
Bro!

A Week In

to NJ HS Baseball season...OSSS' team (BULLDOGS!) has first scrimmage tomorrow AM. He's looking forward to getting out and playing. He'll start at 1B and get his ABs in. Sweet.
YSSS was designated as a "floater" on his HS team (DEVILS!). He'll be playing both Varsity and JV this season. That's best of both worlds since he'll get the starts on JV and spot start or fill in on V as a freshman. Good for him. They have him doing some catching as well as CI and OF so we have to get some work done on that.

Springlike

From the looks of this here screen capture you could say we're having some warm weather:

Boys are actually having HS baseball practice outdoors already (last season they didn't practice outdoors until late March). But the weather twerps have a way of taking the air out of the ball and say April and May will be cool and wet due to El Nino! Great.
While we're here let's plug a few random TV shows SoulSlam enjoys:

Outsiders (WGN)

Supernatural(AMC)

Major League Legends (Smithsonian)

The People vs. OJ (FX)

Colony (USA)

NJ HS BASEBALL

STARTS TODAY!

Sons of SoulSlam from a couple years ago!!!

And just a couple of months ago!

March Is Here

We've had really mild weather the last few days so March kind of came in like a lamb...but the wind is picking up and the air is getting colder so the lion lies in wait.

The best thing in March is baseball. We've got spring training games where we get to see players again. And in NJ, we begin HS baseball this Friday in earnest. OSSS is a senior and is ready to go. He'll be starting at 1B and batting someplace 3-4-5 in order. YSSS is a frosh on a team of tech kids. So he's got a decent shot at seeing some real varsity time this year. They both go to different schools so that should be fun zipping around all over to see them.