We were 10 miles out of Simi Valley when the nerves began to take hold.
My child, you see, had made the All-Star Baseball team, and we were on our way to another weekend-long tournament, the sum of which represent the pinnacle of youth baseball season and a sizeable chunk of our weekends, not to mention the bulk of the Marriott Courtyard hotel chain’s annual profit margin.
This particular strain of baseball life carries within it a pleasing current of wholesome summertime nostalgia, as well as a heady intensity rife with the potential for accidental overdose. Trust — you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a parent, one hand clutching a rapidly congealing boat of cut-rate nachos, the other offering a series of the sort of enthusiastic gestures that might earn a kid detention, tossed from a game for spewing expletives at the ump.