Matsui Jr. he's not!

Ethan has started his first season of baseball.  This is his first time playing any sport at all.  And it shows. 

He typically lasts about 15 minutes before the jumping around, dancing, typical bored kid stuff starts.  He rolls around on the ground, sits in the outfield picking dandelions and blades of grass, and spends more time watching planes taking off and landing on the runway directly behind the field (and cars driving past, and birds flying overhead, and ants on the ground....) than he does watching the ball. 

He has zero hand-eye coordination, he runs, and throws "like a girl" (according to his sisters), and 9 times out of 10, not only is his glove on the wrong hand, but it's also on backwards (???).  If he's playing first base, and the ball goes foul past third, he runs after it.  But when the balls rolls directly to his feet, he just stands there, completely oblivious.  

When the coach yells "Heads up" to let the kids know the ball's coming, E thinks his saying "Hands up" and both his arms shoot up into the air. 

His first at-bat, he ran straight for first base, and kept going into the outfield, zig-zagging all over the place, intent on not being "tagged" by the kid with the ball.  As the coach shouted from home for him to come back, he turned around and ran for home, straight up the middle, over the pitcher's mound. The second time he went straight from first to third, over the pitcher's mound.  He's now graduated to running the bases, in the right direction and in the right order, but he runs w w w i i i i i d d d d e and doesn't come within 3 feet of any of the bags.

But, he gets really excited when it's time for practice and games.  And he loves putting on his uniform.  And what is it with guys and high-fives?  He high-fives everyone, for everything, shouting "Good job buddy!"  "Great game guys!" 

Fortunately, at this age, the coaches are only concerned with teaching sportsmanship and basic fundamentals.  There are no strikes, or outs, and they don't keep score.  They just play for 60 minutes, and each kid gets to bat once in every inning.  He's having a lot of fun, almost as much fun as we have watching him!