Father's Day Tuesday: Sports-gear creep
Today's Guest Dad is Mark Hyman, a Baltimore resident and BusinessWeek contributing editor for sports (and a former colleague here at the newspaper). Mark's book about impact of parents, coaches and other adults on youth sports, "Until It Hurts," will be published by Beacon Press next April. Meanwhile, he blogs about youth sports at Youth Sports Parents.
Now that fall sports are starting, it's time for Mark to sift through his family's equipment -- and to make some interesting discoveries in the process. Here's his post:
"The fall sports season is upon us, already. That means weekends spent watching our kids play soccer, field hockey, and in my case, fall baseball. At our house, it also means it's time again to root through the chest of drawers, the equipment bins and other known hiding places for outgrown and forgotten-about sports stuff.
There's always at least one garbage bag of things we can easily part with. Some years, it seems we could load up a U-Haul. How do we acquire these things, anyway? (I just lugged an overflowing sports-gear container into my office, so I can blog and sort simultaneously. This might be a U-Haul year.)
I have pulled out these items: blue Frisbee emblazoned with the logo "GW Proud," a regulation sized day-glo basketball, three wiffle baseballs, a football tee, a baseball belt, five unmatched batting gloves and three tennis balls.
I wasn't aware that anyone in my family played tennis. The tee and tennis balls are going. I need to think more about the glowing basketball.
The next stop is my 17-year-old's sports socks and pants drawer. This could take a while."
