I don’t really get off by bragging on my kids much regardless of how smart or beautiful they are — and they are, but my kid made the sweetest unassisted triple play in little league tonight that I just need to, uh, document it in, uh, perpetuity on my blog.

The situation: bases loaded, no out. The boy was playing 3rd base. The batter hit a pop-up right to him about 5 feet off the bag toward the pitcher’s mound. He caught it and noticed the kid on third took off for home, so he stepped on 3rd base to double him off. The runner on 2nd took off for third and didn’t have the presence of mind to get back to 2nd after the ball was caught so the boy tagged him at 3rd base for the unassisted triple play.

Honestly, the boy didn’t really even realize what he was doing; it all just kind of fell into his lap. But it was a stunning play that killed a rally. The crowd went wild (all 15 of us parents) and his teammates mobbed him by the bench when they came off the field.

After the game, the coaches award a game ball to the player who had the greatest impact on the game. It was no contest who deserved this one, and to make it better one of his coaches pulled the actual ball he made the play with out of the game for the game ball award and wrote the date, the team name, the boy’s name, and “unassisted triple play” on it. That was really cool. I have to admit the boy’s coaches might not be the greatest team of little league baseball minds ever assembled but they’re all really nice guys. And none of them play up their own kids over all others, which is something you don’t see much in youth sports.

I didn’t think my kid would even like baseball let alone be good at it, but he’s shown an ability to play that I never expected. He likes football more, but he’s better at baseball and you can’t tell he’s only in his first year compared with some of the other kids on the team who’ve been playing for 2 or 3 years.

Some kids bloom late, I guess.