It's baseball season again, a time when the dawning of spring stirs something in my family.
I played baseball as a kid, and my two sons loved it, too. My wife cheered and I coached - that was our family ritual, our spring, our summer.
But when they entered high school, both my boys quit baseball. It wasn't burn-out, exactly, but the fact that other sports -- rugby, surfing, mountain biking -- were a lot more fun. What wasn't fun was losing that connection with my boys; the hours spent together trying to master the game.
I missed it more than they did. I was lost without a giant equipment bag to haul around. So I joined the Men's Senior Baseball League. This is the real stuff: hardball, played on college fields, even full-on "costumes," as my wife calls our uniforms.
Except it's for ancients like me.