I would add that using their name is more likely to produce the desired result than “Hey, can I have a ball?” or “Can I have a bat?” I heard of a case where a bunch of kids were asking a (visiting?) player for balls, and of course he was being asked for more of them than he had to give out. His response was to tell them that he would give it to the first one who knew his name! I thought that was a good way to respond when there was no way he could have satisfied everyone!

What???

Secondly, no matter how much you try to bring me down by taking comments, (I’m one of the only people you do that with) and turn them into Posts, you’re not going to hurt me.

I’m simply telling you that I have been going to Baseball Games for 43 years of my life and YOU are the kind of person who is a loner and would rather not be bothered with children, even at a Ball Game. Hence your talking to yourself regularly. Or haven’t you noticed that about yourself? Oh, that’s right, you’re talking to yourself, so there must be someone else there, right?

You can try to come off like some kind of great man for stepping into someone’s life and raise their child but guess what Michael, 50% plus of male American’s do the same thing, you’re nothing special. I did it, my ex wife’s husband did it, look around. Heck, even Jennifer and I are raising our Grandson, (and loving it, mind you) so we’ve done it twice.

As for the Ball Games, if you don’t like children ENJOYING themselves, (even though they paid for their tickets too) go to an adult theater like Pewee Herman and enjoy yourself. Leave the kids alone and let them be kids.

You should buy them some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, then again, you don’t care if they ever come back, so it’s root, root, root for your home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame, so it’s one, two , three strikes your out at the old Ball Game.

One other point that I failed to bring up before is that I chose to raise the child (“you marry me, you marry her too.”) So I had no thoughts about doing so previously and Lord knows I made mistakes along the way. But I didn’t think the sort of behavior I praised in my original post was too much to expect, apparently he did.

But thanks for backing me up on this one. I had one of the Shorebird employees bring up the comment when I was talking to her before a game, which got me to thinking about what I eventually posted.

As for the commenter who referred to his/her “biological” parenting status implicitly as against perhaps yours, it’s not the DNA but the sweat, the forbearance and the good judgment that makes good parenting. In fairness, perhaps the commenter did not intend the full slap that I perceived from the comment.