Wednesday after work The Little Boy and I were in the backyard playing some "spaceball" (I've been trying to to teach him that the game is baseball, and he says it right most of the time, however I kind of like it when he calls it spaceball). I've been working with him on batting. I've been throwing him some soft under hand pitches and currently he's hitting about a quarter of them. Not a bad average for a 5 year old I must say. We use the soft T-Ball baseballs that have a rubber core. Last thing I want is for him or I to be hit in the face (or lower) with a regular baseball. Brother K can tell you how bad that is. (when he was a kid, he pitched a regular baseball in grade school to a kid during recess and it came back and hit him in the nose. It caused him a lot of sinus trouble over the years. His jerk of a teacher told him he was fine and that he should just walk it off. Years later same teacher gets hit in the face with a soccer ball which is so much softer than a baseball and the guy passes out and had to be taken away in an ambulance.)
Anyhow so I was pitching a few to him and for fun I throw a tennis ball for him to hit. It's about 50 to 60 feet from the area he was batting to the 6 foot high fence in the backyard, well he cracked the tennis balll perfectly and launched that thing high and right out of the yard. I yell, "Incoming" and "Sorry" and the tennis ball landed in the neighbor behind us' patio. The Little Boy look at me, like, "What do I do, I am happy that I hit the ball that well, but I hit the ball over the fence man!" I smiled at him and said. "Yeah, did you see how far you hit that thing, It cleared the fence!" So he ran the bases we have setup and made sure to come by and give me a high five as he was passing second base, and just because he could he went for a second lap around the bases. Our neighbor was of course very nice and threw the ball back. I told the Little Boy, "I think we'll have batting practice at the school, you hit way too well to practice in the backyard". He smiled and gave me a hug.