The end of a baseball career

It all started ten years ago when Adam decided to play T-ball at Shadybrook park.

He had so much fun playing T-ball that his older sister joined the team the following year before she moved on to softball.

Adam's next step was Veteran's park coach pitch Rookie league. They had a team that lost the championship game by a few runs and developed friendships that would spill over into other sports down the road.

As all the boys developed at different rates to different final sizes, speeds and strengths, it has been a joy to watch them rotate from team to team.

My favorite year to watch one of Adam's teams was his final season as a Pirate in the Cal Ripken minor league. This team know how to have fun winning.

In Adam's final Babe Ruth season as a Twin, he can definitely measure his maturity and struggles on the baseball field side by side with the rest of life.


Baseball in Lexington is an enjoyable but demanding lifestyle and I am glad that Adam had a chance to complete all the city has to offer in this sport.

Ben's Open House

Ben graduated from NorthWood High School this year. It was good to see many friends who had children that graduated with Ben.

It was also really good to see Ben's whole family there together. Peter and Stephanie just moved back to Nappanee and are settling in. Peter is the youth leader for Living Gospel church.

Bud and Vickie did a great job of decorating the garage with all of Ben's 4H and sports awards.

At the open house, Jackie cut the cake and put it on plates for three hours while I was the photographer.

It was a gorgeous day. Much better than Bethany's was four years ago. Most of the guests recalled that day when a tornado warning and strong winds force an emergency shutdown that included stuffing guests and a 30 foot canopy into a 20 foot garage.

The most photographed subject for Bethany's wedding shower and Ben's open house was Charlie Mattern. Here Charlie is developing some stick skills after watching Adam play for half an hour. It will be a while until Charlie can fill Adam's flip flops, but he has a head start on Lacrosse.

Ego Lessons from Chappy ( Iron Eagle )

When the kids were young, they watched Iron Eagle over and over. Their whole generation grew up viewing people in authority as default thinkers that never challenged the status quo.

The lessons that Adam learned from this movie now meet reality in High School... OK, I have to take some of the blame as well for the DNA that I gave him and the thinking patterns that I have demonstrated to him.

Please read the following script while imagining the following substitutions:

• Chapman is me doing my best Louis Gossett, Jr imitation
• General is Jackie wavering between pardoning her son from prison while considering the safeness of just visiting him there everyday.
• Mr. Masters is young Adam Eby
• Air Force Academy is replaced with Lexington Catholic High School.

Chapman: "Begging the General's pardon, I urge you to reevaluate that decision. Letting this boy loose, would be a big mistake. He already has demonstrated his inability to keep his big mouth shut. I would suggest sending him to an institution, that can order him to keep that big mouth shut."

General: "Are you saying, we should confine this boy to some kind of penal facility?

Chapman: "As a matter of speaking yes sir, you see sir,.. Mr. Masters has applied to the Air Force Academy an institution well-suited for this kind of treatment, eh, unfortunately his application has some.. resistance. I was wondering if you could eh.."

Technically, Adam has not applied to Lexington Catholic, but it still sounds like a great idea for a young man that struggles with positional authority and can not keep his big mouth shut. He may find Lexington Catholic more challenging than IB at Tates Creek, he already does plenty of creative thinking, activity and social service.

Jackie is working on helping Adam understand his limitations as the middle child by making him read about birth order and I'm trying to get him to spend some time upgrading his PC from Windows XP to Ubunto instead of watching TV.

If he can just change his birth order, he might be a good leader some day.
I also think memorizing Romans 12 would be good. The whole chapter is applicable to life's problems whether you want to lead as a middle child or make friends as an oldest child.
If anyone else has any suggestions, we are grasping at straws.