Baseball has been a favorite past time of mine since I was a young child. I had an excellent childhood, filled with good memories and even during the bad times, there was always unconditional love, family…and baseball. Specifically, Detroit Tiger’s baseball. Moving a few times in recent years has made me forget where I placed all the baseball trading cards I accumulated when I was a young girl. They are safely packed away in a keepsake box, I do know that.  I definitely know I had more MLB player cards than I had any other toys such as Barbie Dolls. Thank you to my loving, giving, Tiger fans I had as parents for raising me to love this game of baseball.

By the way, I think I owned a rockin’ outfit VERY similar to the Barbie’s on the far right in the photo below. Leg warmers included.

Like, repost or retweet this post if you had more of these:

Than one of these as a child growing up:

The role of modern technology in our personal lives and now the instant replay in major league baseball both need one thing:

Balance.

Thumbs up or thumbs down for instant replay? My thought briefly on it is while I’m not opposed to it, we need to be careful not to take out the human element of the game completely. Managers kickin’ dirt at umpires is part of the past time as well as players’ passion rising and throwing their helmets on the ground. All I’m saying is…well, I don’t know, I don’t want to see “I, Robot” baseball someday with the human error element taken out completely. 

Before you read my rant below about balancing our lives, take a look at the list of MLB baseball players below.  Any idea what connects this group of guys?  Once you figure out what these men have in common (or scroll down and read to find out, whichever :), please feel free to add anyone else I may have overlooked or forgotten).

Ryan Braun

Bryce Harper

Marcell Ozuna

Dustin Pedroia

Yasiel Puig

Hanley Ramirez

Jose Ramirez

David Wright

We need a healthy balance in several different areas of our life from diet to sleep to making time with family and friends.  This mind I was created with, sometimes can NOT stop.  I have not located the off switch, pause button or slow down key.  I must balance my writing time or I will get burned out and/or neglect other important areas of my life like my children or even sleeping (I have strung some all-nighters together that would make a college kid proud).

• To start the game, seven children are selected and come to the front of the room. In another version, two children are  selected.
• The teacher (or selected player) says, “Heads down, thumbs up!” or “Heads down all around!”. The children  who are not selected then put their heads down, close their eyes, and put up one thumb each. The chosen seven (or two) circulate through the room, secretly pressing down one thumb each and then  returning to the front of the room. A variation is simply  tapping the person. This part of the game takes about one minute.
•  The teacher/selected player then calls, “Heads up, seven up!” or “Heads up, stand up!” All children raise their heads and the seven (or two) whose thumbs were pressed stand up. Each in turn names the person       they think pressed their thumb. If they are correct, the thumb-presser sits down and the winning child takes their place. The game then starts again.
• Children who go later have an advantage, especially if one or more pickers have been eliminated. To make the game fair, the teacher can alternate the order in which the children are called each time (e.g. front to back, or left to right of the room, or  around the room).