It's been interesting, Thanks

To many this isn't news since I made this decision several weeks ago.
I haven't kept it a secret but I figured that I should say something publicly.

There's no better place to do so than right here where people can see it.

This decision has actually been brewing in my mind for a pretty long time.

In my July 21st post I referred to the Council meeting of that week.
Specifically a member of the public who showed up and was somewhat annoying.
What I didn't mention was that to be at that Council meeting I had to leave my sons' baseball game in the second inning.

As I sat in the meeting listening to that gentleman a nagging thought in my head was saying "I am missing my boys' baseball game for this".

That wasn't the first time I had heard that thought.

I'll admit that I've been pretty lucky in my term on Council as far as schedule conflicts. Usually these things have worked out pretty well.
However, there have been several occasions that I have missed a game due to a meeting.

I won't blame New Maryland Council for all that I've missed.

I missed T's very first hockey goal several years ago to be at a meeting of NBSCETT Council. I was the president at the time. (I'm not currently involved with NBSCETT Council.)

I still feel the sting of that day.
I remember clearly when my cell phone rang during the meeting. I excused myself to take the call.

It was T calling to tell me that he scored his very first goal that day.
I was so damn proud of him and announced it to everyone at the meeting that my son had scored his first goal.

An awesome feeling and a terrible feeling at the same time.
I wasn't there when he scored the goal.

Honestly, I don't know how my boys feel when I wave goodbye to them while they are on the ball diamond or hockey rink in the middle of a game.

If you were to ask them they would probably tell you that it's okay and no big deal but I'm not sure that would be the whole truth.

Do you know why I think this? Because of the bad feeling I have in my stomach as I am waving goodbye to them while they are in the middle of a game.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love watching my sons in anything that they are involved in.
That's no surprise. Any decent parent has that feeling.

My sons will be 14 years old next year when the municipal election comes along.
If I were to run for a Council position and win, that would mean another 4 year term on New Maryland Council.

At the end of that 4 years my boys will be 18 years old.
I'm not trying to predict the future but I'm thinking that by the time my sons are 18 years old they may not have as much time in their lives for baseball, hockey and activities as they do right now.

The next few years in my sons' lives are going to be pretty special ones.
My being there with them may be important for them.
It will be critical to me.

So, I've made up my mind that I will not be running for a position on New Maryland Council in the upcoming election.

I'm not saying that I will never run again though.

I plan to stay on at least one of the committees that I am on right now.

Perhaps in a few years when the boys have grown up and have lives that are mainly independent of my own I'll decide to jump into the fray again.

I'm not leaving the game. I just want to sit on the bench for a while.

Thanks for putting me in Coach.


Stay well,
Tim

Where to start...

Geez. It gets to be so long between posts and there are so many things in my head that I would love to talk about.
If I tried to I would be typing for days.

I guess I'll start with baseball.
In my last post I referred to the boys' upcoming year end baseball tournament that weekend.
If you go back a year in this blog you'll see that the boys took gold in the tournament by beating Minto and the kid with the rocket arm.
What worked in our favour was that we had several strong pitchers and we saved my son B for the last game to seal it up.
The Minto team on the other hand, only had a couple of good pitchers but the rocket kid was their strength.
Last year he was used in Friday and Saturday's games and when it came down to the final game he couldn't play for as much of the game as if he didn't pitch at all.

This year was a different story, thanks to Mother Nature.

The tournament started pretty well the same as last year with our lads walking over the competition for the first 2 days assuring their spot in the final game on Sunday.
As we expected, the same team from Minto was going to be the other team. Just like last year.

Our coaches had the same strategy and worked it out so that we would use my other son T and the others to pitch and save B for Sunday's final game.
If he didn't pitch at all in any other game he was clear to pitch up to the maximum 85 pitches in the final game.
If he was called in to pitch in any of the other games it would mean that his pitch limit would be reduced by half since there was not enough time to rest between games.

Our advantage against Minto would be that the rocket kid would have been used either Friday or Saturday and would be limited to how many he could throw on Sunday.

B was not used Friday or Saturday and was clear for Sunday.

This is where Mother Nature came in and messed it up for us.
Sunday was rained out so the Final game was postponed until Tuesday night.

Great.
All of the pitchers on boths teams had enough rest and could throw up to 85 pitches in the game.

It turned out that that other kid held our guys back and our bats did not produce results.

B did a very good job on the mound but I'm sorry to say that it was not enough.
I don't want to seem like I'm blaming but there were some plays in our field that were rather sloppy and put us behind.
Minto's offence isn't the strongest but they didn't make the errors that we did that day.
Plus, without hits we couldn't get runs back.

I'm proud of our guys for the effort but Minto deserved that game.

Some people don't understand how a team may not be overjoyed at still winning a silver medal.
Looking at the guys in the photo above it doesn't look like they were overjoyed about it, does it?

In all fairness to them that picture was taken immediately after the game when they were still stinging.
I'm glad to say that within an hour or so they all seemed to be back to good spirits and feeling much better.

Look at it this way. They were the second best team in the entire league for 2011. That's pretty darn good.

So, another baseball season is done.

Yesterday I signed up the boys for the upcoming hockey season.
The leaves on the trees have started changing colours like crazy this week.
Before long the snow will be here and the seemingly eternal Canadian winter will be upon us.

But we have hockey.

Bring it on. :)

Stay well,
Tim