Turning your Kid into a Baseball Enthusiast

Maybe you’ve been the guy who was the pitching superstar on your high school baseball team.  The guy who made it to every major league All-Star Game in the past fifteen years, or the guy who made sure to get the autograph of every player from the 1998 World Champion New York Yankees on a single baseball.  Sometimes, no matter how well you rock the knee high baseball socks or the monogrammed baseball cap, you still end up with someone in your life who doesn’t share your love and passion for baseball.  And when that person is your child, that can hurt quite a bit.

If you’d like to help impress upon your child a love, or at least a genuine appreciation of baseball, then at least you can feel as though you lived up to your obligation to pass upon the traditions of America’s pastime to the next generation, even if your kid isn’t quite cut out to be the next Joe Mauer.

Start by taking your child to a couple of home games for your favorite major or minor league team.  Hometown appreciation and celebratory antics sometimes catch on with nonfans more quickly that the more rote parts of the game, and your kid will have team to learn the basics later once he’s caught some baseball fire in his belly.  If all possible, however, try to attend a game where the team’s best pitcher is up or where the opposing team is a sight for sore eyes.  After all, you don’t want your home team to get crushed the day you’re trying to get someone excited about the sport (unless you want to risk your kid falling for the other team).

Next, play some ball in the backyard with your kid, or even take him down to the batting cages to spend some father-son time in front of the pitching machine.  In the end, a pitching machine is no more of a hardcore baseball activity than miniature golfing is a hardcore golf activity, so you don’t have to feel as though your indoctrinating your kid just by taking him for a quick round of swings or two.  Just be sure to stick with the slow-pitch setting, at least until he/she gets the hang of handling a baseball bat properly.

If all else fails, you can always try bribery.  A kid who is promised an ice cream cone any time he/she attends a game with you or sits quietly through a doubleheader on television in exchange for some candy is still better than a kid who actively roots against your baseball-laden activity schedule (just don’t tell your spouse!).