Sun, Softball....Tears and no beer!

Yesterday Roger and I took a huge mental health break and spent the entire (read this from 9:00 am to around 7 pm) day at the ball park.
Genevieve's little team was playing in a tournament and they were short some players so they recruited Ms. Audrey to play with them. Audrey was so proud to be playing with the bigger girls. She told me before the games started "I'm going to play on Genevieve's team!" I replied "I know...that's because you are such a good player." To which she responded "NO....it's because they don't have enough people." So much for my feeble attempt to build self-esteem.
Both of the girls played really well, Audrey got a couple of hits and got on base once or twice. Her fielding still leaves a little to be desired as chasing balls seriously interferes with her lovely dirt mound construction.
Genevieve is an AWESOME little ball player. She can hit the ball well and hard and she also "gets" what she is supposed to do on 2nd base. In spite of all her success at softball yesterday, she was having a very emotional day. Probably a combination of a lot of things, the heat, pressure, just plain ole tired out. After I've had some time to reflect I also wonder if maybe her emotional episodes might not have been caused by embarrassment. The girls had a lot of people there watching them and cheering for them. And we are LOUD! and enthusiastic. In retrospect I wonder if maybe we might have served Genevieve better to have been a little more restrained in our cheering. She is easily embarrassed and we may have been just a tad over the top. I, for one, have trouble stifling my excitement (especially at ball games) and all by myself can be the equivalent of quite a racket. She has been so much better lately at controlling what we have lovingly come to call "meltdowns." Therefore, I have to surmise that yesterday's emotional roller coaster must be attributed to some outside stimuli. I will admit that I was semi-embarrassed by her emotional outbursts, but mostly I just felt bad for her. Something was causing her to have such a bad day and I hate to think that perhaps it was me who contributed to it. As gregarious and fun loving a child as Genevieve is I think she has a very sensitive nature and doesn't particularly like being noticed quite so much. The same boisterous outpouring of approval would have probably had Audrey strutting her stuff around the field like a little peacock, but I think it might have had just the opposite effect on Genevieve.
And now for the Daily Rant!
The rant for today are people who bring their children the ballpark and turn them loose. Yesterday we got to experience children who would just walk up and take things from other people's ice chests. And one little boy who had an extremely aggressive nature was walking around with a wooden ruler hitting other children with it. Kids piled into scorekeepers boxes and had semi-private tussling sessions that ended with one of them crying and no one who belonged to these children bothered to check. The day ended with a child in the scorekeepers box slinging a cup of water which poured down into Genevieve's grandma Gloria's purse. I realize it is hard to keep kids occupied at ballgames they aren't participating in. But, an attempt should be made to make sure they aren't driving some other adult to distraction or creating mini-mayhem on their counterparts. It is hard when these are children you don't know and have never seen before to be able to help in a situation where a child is being picked on and tormented by others.