Merry Christmas Anika

December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas Anika!

Mom and Dad would like to give you a different kind of gift today.  We want you to know how proud of you we are, not for what you have accomplished, but how you have grown in so many ways.  This year we saw you:

• ·         Helping Mom with your brothers and sisters, in more ways than we could ever have imagined

• ·         Showing compassion towards others, especially orphans

• ·         Growing and developing your personality, which used to be on the shy side, but now is outgoing and very friendly

• ·         Being a very good friend to people you have known for a while, as well as easily meeting and making new friends

• ·         Being a good friend to Mommy, and making her laugh when she really needs it

• ·         Playing with Jordan, even when it gets a little rough

• ·         Learning to cook, and making dinner when Dad needed the help, like when Mom was in Ohio

• ·         Being willing to work hard in school, even if the subjects don’t come easily to you

• ·         Reading many, many books, which shows intelligence and interest in the world around you.

• ·         Never complaining about having to share your room with your little sister

• ·         Being beautiful inside and out

• ·         Growing in your faith and love of Jesus

We hope that you are having as much fun being in our family as we are having you in it, and we pray that you will have another great year next year!

Love,

Mom & Dad

Merry Christmas Jordan

Merry Christmas Jordan,

Mom and Dad wanted to give you this special gift, that will hopefully outlast all the other gifts you receive this year. We don't care so much about whether you were naughty or nice. We want you to know we were very proud of you this year in so many ways. You grew in emotional maturity, character, faith, love of your family, handling adversity, treatment of friends, compassion, courage, determination, and creativity. This year we saw you:

• Becoming closer to Anika, including her and playing with her a lot more often, and treating her with respect
• Being an awesome big brother with Daniel and Ellery, especially when Mom is at the doctors office
• Helping Dad coach Micah, and teaching him your baseball skills
• Showing love towards Peyton
• Standing up for your friends when other friends are being mean to them
• Continuing to amaze us with your inventions, including a catapult, a stinkbug zapper, and a flame thrower. You also built an entire wiffle ball field including fence and lights, and did all the wiring and lighting yourself. You were well known in the electrical aisle in Lowe's
• Doing well in an advanced and challenging science class
• Persevering in summer baseball in the new league with mostly older and bigger kids, but then turned it around in fall ball and made lead-off hitter and played shortstop, third base and pitcher. In the last game you were the ultimate lead-off man, getting four hits and a walk, stealing at least six bases (I lost count), and scoring all four times. You also impressed many people with your fielding and throwing arm. You had good outings on the mound and not so good, but at times you were unhittable. More importantly, when you struggled, you maintained your composure, and never gave up. 
• Exhibiting tremendous courage when you had the accident with your teeth
• Showing compassion for orphans
• Learning to surf 
• Learning to run the media equipment at church sunday school and becoming someone they can rely on
• Humbling yourself and apologizing with sincerity when you made mistakes
• Speaking to your next door neighbor about Jesus
• Going to Creation Fest with Dad and Anika 
• Showing total generosity towards your siblings at Christmas time with your savings

When you were little, Mom called you "Boy Wonder". This year you showed us you will continue to amaze us and fill us with pride. You will always be our lead-off man.

Love, 

Mom & Dad

Jordans flame thrower

Jordan's bug zapper

Jordan's remote thingie

Jordan Comes Alive

Jordan, you truly became a complete baseball player today. You've always been a good hitter, but today you played the game like you were having fun. You pitched a very crafty two innings. After giving up three runs, mostly due to bad defense, you struck out the last two batters to end the inning. I guess you decided you needed to get the outs yourself, since your fielders couldn't get anbody out. I could tell that you were going to have a strong second inning, and you sure did. After getting ahead in the count on the first hitter, a guy about 5'-6", you completely fooled him with your cutter. The next two batters were smaller kids, and you struck them both out after setting them both up with a change up, you came back with heaters right down the middle. The ump was great as he called the third strike with his arm pump, which really added to the excitement. And then, not to rely just on pitching, you walked and caught the pitcher sleeping and took off for second before anybody knew what was happening. It was a close play but you slid in safely and it really pumped everyone up. Pete Rose would have been proud. In the fifth inning you stole third, not even waiting for the ball to get past the catcher. It didn't, and he made a good throw but too late, as your excellent sliding paid off again. I've been looking for you to spark your team up like that for years, and today, you came alive and became a complete player.

So here we are on Monday in Nags Head. Yesterday was cloudy and windy, today was nicer, but no swimming in the ocean.

The Double

"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. 
They make mistakes, but they don't quit." 

-- Conrad Hilton


He turned and stood on second base, slapped his batting gloves together making a cloud of dust (they must teach this at the baseball camp) and got caught somewhere between a giant smile and a cool look of a vindication. He has struggled all year, having been one of the top players on his team for as long as he can remember, this year was different. It was the majors. The leader on his team has at least ten homers, two over the trees and first row of cars in left field. There's a six foot pitcher with a mustache on another team who throws 71 mph which looks like 95 from 46 feet. They also throw off speed and curve balls, Then there's great fielders and kids with rifles for arms, as well as playing on a beautiful field with lights. I think he found all this a little intimidating.

Baseball can be as cruel as it can be beautiful. Just ask chase outlay, Ryan Howard or Jimmy Rollins, all of whom have suffered long stretches of poor hitting.  It becomes more mental than physical, and it what's you up.

Having switched to lacrosse in high school, I found it completely different in this regard. If you have a bad game you press harder, you work harder, you increase your intensity. All these approaches give you focus, guts, and determination in lacrosse, and I imagine in soccer and football as well. In baseball they have the opposite effect. The more anxious you are, the more you press, the worse it gets.

I probably didn't help. I thought it would be a good time to l earn how to bunt, which may have distracted him from his hitting. So we got him some coaching sessions at a clinic called diamond dreams. He has been working with a pro who always tells me how well he's doing, but still no hits.

But last night he looked different at the plate. We sat in the bleachers which puts us very close to home and I could see that he looked different at the plate.  His bat was at a slightly different angle, he lifted his front foot slightly, and he had this "look" on his face. It was a look that you can sometimes see on a hitter's face even on TV, when you can just sense " he's going to get a hit". It's a look that is impossible to define but I know my father and brothers and most baseball fans can just see.

It was 3-2 us, two outs, fourth inning, man on second. We could use another run. Our starter was done. He looked at his first base coach, no take sign, swing away. We need a hit. Even when he swung and missed on a 1-0 fastball, he still had it. His body language said no worries, I got this. That's when I noticed he was using his big bat, a 31. I thought, man hes really confident tonight. He was choked up about 2" though and looked ready to hit. The next pitch was right down the middle, slightly outside, and his swing on it was perfect, as he went with it and drove it to to the opposite field, over the third baseman's head and down the line.

I watched him run hard and look up at his first base coach and even though his back was to me I could see his amazement to see the coach telling to go to second. It seemed like it took forever for him to get there I think because he just couldn't believe he was going to get a double. The run scored easily and we picked up a very important insurance run, which broke the Card's confidence and lifted ours. We went on to win the first game of the playoff 5-2 and Jordan's RBI double turned out to be a key hit and RBI.

The fact that he had a big hit was really nice, but what I was really impressed about has been his perseverance and refusal to give up. In fact, in the previous game his coach told the kid's not to get down if they mess up or strike out, and after Jordan struck out he came running to the bench with a smile, and one of his teammates yelled nice strikeout Jordan! So this hit was especially nice after the long drought. But I have been impressed with his heart and courage, and hope that it will stick with him when the going gets tough in life.

After the game, a big win on the way to a possible championship I put my arm around him and told him how proud I was. He said, " the old Jordan's back, Dad". What a great kid.

Rays Playoff game 2

Guys, just wanted to get a quick email out to everyone - great game by our boys last night.  We played a very good Phillies team that gave us alot of trouble that last two times we played them.  We played very well as a team on offense and defense.  Key defensive plays were Jordan's running down of a ball down the line with a quick strong throw to the cutoff man to stop another run from scoring in the first(we especially liked this as we practiced this on Sunday and I challenged all our outfielders to be aggressive and try to throw someone out).  Also Jake Mathew made several solid plays on hard him balls at SS as he typically does every game.   Nick Cruciani also had a nice play on a hard hit ball down the line to get a force at third.  

Good offense also - Jake Mathew broke the game open with a triple(with two strikes on him and while under alot of pressure) with the bases loaded that put us ahead by 6 late in the game.  He went 3 for 3 at the plate with 4 rbis.  Jake Mckenna had three very tough at bats during the game and was 1 for 3 but had one at bat which went to a full count and he fouled over several balls and ate up 9 pitches.  Tyler had a big RBI single in the first inning also.

Quinn hit a walk off grand slam in the fifth inning to make sure that the Phils didn't get another chance to bat and he pitched a very good game against a strong hitting team limiting them to only 4 hits - as I said before the defense was key as there were several hard hit balls that were just outs and not hits.  Unfortunately this stopped Sam from having an opportunity to close out the game but he will be fresh for the next game.

Our team was pumped up and in the entire game from start to finish and it was good to see.

Coach McKenna

Micah keeps on crushin it

Micah is just crushing the ball in T-ball. As you can see thanks to his big brother's instruction he's got pretty good form, too.

Happy Easter to Mom and Dad

Hi Mom and Dad and Happy Easter

I hope that you had a nice Easter, and I'm glad that you spent it with Rob and his family.

I had flashbacks yesterday of the many Easter's spent with you and the boys, especially the baskets. You always made holidays very special and a lot of fun.

I guess that Kim feels very uncomfortable coming to your house with all the kids, she is very concerned about them breaking something or spilling something or just getting into trouble. Marriage is definitely very hard sometimes, as we try to balance doing what we feel is right with being generous and sacrificing our needs and desires.

Anyway, I looked over Jordan's schedule and most of his remaining games are on Saturdays, so here is the schedule. Look it over and pick a weekend.

http://www.up-littleleague.org/Schedules/Schedule_BB-Major.php

He is on the Rays.

By the way, last game he seems to have solidified his spot and the second baseman, which is more of an achievement that he realizes. He started late and I remember practices where the infield was set and then the subs were put in behind them. There are two stars on the team, both 12 year olds that play short, so that spot is taken. The other kids are one of the coaches kids and he also plays travel team. They tried him at third and although he made two good plays, his losing focus led the coach to worry about him getting hurt and moved him to second.

In his last game he stayed very focused after we discussed it and made at least six plays from there. He's not as sure handed as Jimmy Rollins but the coaches have said that he is obviously not afraid of the ball as he always gets his body in front of it and knocks it down. The last game our pitcher threw very hard and most of the balls were hit to the right side so he had lots of action and did very well.

He also batted second, moving up from 6th, but looked bad at the plate. He has a habit of changing his stance even when he is doing well, which makes me crazy. (Just like at home, always tinkering!). Hopefully he will come around and start hitting the ball again. I also have to remember that the 12 year olds throw very hard and he is just a little guy.

More importantly, he got a 98 in Physics at the homeschool co-op he goes to, highest in his class, even though there are high schoolers in his class.

And last night I typed M-O-M on the computer in large letters and Daniel stared at it for a minute and then smiled and said MOM!

Every time we go out we get compliments on how beautiful they all are and well behaved.

It's roller coaster ride of highs and lows, the house is a disaster, I can't find my tools, and my job is too darn demanding. But I am grateful for everything I have and everything you and Dad did for me.

Baseball

Jordan has started to struggle at the plate. he struck out twice and walked twice and didn't look confident in either at bat. He messed with his stance, for whatever reason, and was more crouched. I wish he would just leave it alone. He played 2nd base the whole game, though and did well. I think he had about six plays, all were putouts. It's good that he has his confidence in the field. I know that 12th graders throw hard, but I also know he can hit them, he just needs the confidence. Baseball is hard that way. Confidence is everything.

Daniel sing ding dong

Rays - Cardinals

This is the email wrap-up from coach McKenna:

Wow, last nights game was truly amazing.  I have been coaching in UPLL since 2004 and that is one of the more amazing finishes to a game that i have seen in a long time.  The game itself wasn't that exciting but For the other team to go ahead in a very close game via a grand slam in the bottom of the fifth and for our team to come back in the top of the 6th like we did is really very special.  I am glad i could be there for it and i am glad our all the members of our team were there to see it.  I think it shows alot for these boys to just play baseball in the last inning when they could have easily just mailed it in and put their heads down and gave up.

It was truly a team effort and everyone contributed in some way.   To point out a few significant contributions in the game:

1) First lets thank Jake McKenna for the catch at the end of the game - i think he ran up at first to catch it in order to put some excitement in the catch.  He fought very hard to make the catch and end the game. Jake also scored from first base on Sean's double which was some very good base running.  Not sure where that speed comes from as he certainly didn't get it from his Dad (my brother).
2) Nick Cruciani got the bunt sign and got down a perfect bunt and beat the throw to first and Sean Toner kept on running from second base on the throw to score the winning run.  Perfect execution by all involved -i didn think they would be expecting a bunt in that situation.
3) jake Mathew pitched a good game and kept us close for most of the game
4) Tyler Edwards was tough on the mound in the last inning.  I know he was nervous but he didn't show it and he closed it out for us- that shows alot to me - to perform under pressure is very hard to do
5) Quinn Mckenna kept the HRs coming and went 3 for 3 at the plate
6) Sean Toner did another good job behind the plate and had another double and three RBIs.  Big game for Sean.
7) Ray and Jordon both had singles to keep their hitting streaks going
8) Sam had a nice catch in CF and Michael played a few good innings at first base

Jordan's remote controlled something

Two strikes? Use your hands

A few days ago the Phillies won 7-2 on a two-strike pinch hit grand slam from Carlos Ruiz. That same night Jordan faced one of the leagues flamethrowers and struck out twice. I sat in the bleachers right behind home plate and I was pretty amazed how fast that kid threw the ball.

I picked up the Sunday paper, which is unusual for me, and read about the Phils win. Chooch was quotes as saying, "I was just trying to use my hands". My father used to say "protect the plate." I used to say "don't let the ump call you out". I liked Chooch's quote so I had Jordan read it. Then we went to the cages and he hit the snot out of the ball about 60 times, and started feeling just a whole lot better about himself. So we talked a little about hitting with two strikes.

If hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, try doing it when you're down to your last strike. I can actually remember the intensity of that situation. You have  a split second to decide, not whether it's a pitch you like, but whether it's close enough for the ump to call it a strike. If it's close, you gotta swing. You choke up, shorten your swing, and "use your hands".

Jordan played again on Monday night, and in his first at bat, found himself down 0-2. The pitcher was not nearly as fast, but behind in the count is still tough. His first base coach told him to choke up, and he did. The next pitch was high but he swung and got a piece of it. The next one was down the middle, maybe outside, and he hit it off the end of the bat. The next one was in the same spot, and almost the same thing happened and the ball rolled down the third base line about 6 inches fair. I stared at the ball thinking it would go foul, but it didn't. I thought to myself for a split second "crap I hope he's running and not staring at it like everyone else in the park!". I looked at first base and saw the back of this kid barreling down the line and crossing first, no chance for a play.

Sure it wasn't a screaming line drive into right center field, but anyone who loves baseball knows that that kind of a hit is as fun to watch as a big line drive into the outfield. I really proud of Jordan for the way he handled himself under that pressure, and especially the way he allowed his dad, his coach, and Chooch to help him a little.

He kept the inning alive, eventually scored, and so I walked over to the dugout to congratulate him. He was as happy as if he had hit a two strike pinch hit grand salami for the Phillies. He said "I did exactly what you said, dad! Did you see it!?"

"Of course I did, Jor, and I couldn't be happier for you!"

PS: In his next at bat he hit a soft liner to the pitcher who caught it. In his third at bat he hit a screaming liner the second baseman's left side, who reached out his glove but it was too hot to handle. It bounced off his glove for nice solid single. I think the two strike demon is dead.