I Could Have Been an All-Star. It Was the Hitting I Had a Problem With.

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Cubs fans, this isn’t for you.

For the rest of the universe? Spring means hope.

Sure, baby birds are born and flowers bloom, yadda yadda. But it’s about baseball. It’s a time when your team – except for the Cubs and Astros – are still in the thick of the race. Or close enough to pretend.

Even my Rockies find themselves in that no-man’s land of “we don’t suck – right now.” It might be better than that. I’ll let you know July 4. And maybe again in October. Your baseball team not sucking makes you feel good.

My Home Away from Home

Here’s a glimpse of my home away from home.

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It doesn’t have to be this exact field. Any soccer pitch will do. Even a rival’s.

I’ll tell you why this is my home away from home, ahead even a disc golf course or closest taco truck. (Maybe in heaven there’s a disc golf course around a soccer pitch with a taco truck. On each sideline).

It’s cliché to call it a field of dreams. A field of hopes, maybe? Of transformation? You’d have to know me before the soccer pitch became part of my life. I’d never won. In anything. Introducing the King of Mediocrity. Average grades. Average SAT.

Plenty of third- and fourth-place ribbons.

Soccer wasn’t even on my radar.

Five for Friday: Movies to watch with your kids when mom isn’t lookin’

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I’ll buy chips for my kids on the way home from soccer practice.

Allow them to wrestle and chase each other. In the grocery store. Look the other way when they throw a little swagger in their soccer game. I’m a little funny, though, when it comes to movies.  My oldest is 14. She can watch PG-13 movies. But I cringe.

Not the language or violence, necessarily. But the themes. The innuendo. The … I dunno, sultry stuff.

Makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth and pee myself a little. I’d rather her see a car chase with a smash-up ending, hear more applications of the F-word, or get startled by a killer, zombie, or politician in the court room than to hear locker-room talk.