After last week’s column, in which I left readers with a cliffhanger, everyone wanted to know: Did he make the team? The attendant at the gas station asked. So did the cashier at the grocery store and people at city hall. Even my oldest son Ford’s teachers at the high school and the doctor who removed his wisdom teeth several days later asked him if we knew yet. (Ford, still under anesthesia does not remember this conversation. Incidentally, he also doesn’t remember that he was humming Star Wars when he came out of the surgery room.)

Last year, around this time, when the snow was melting and there were puddles in the gutters, my youngest son, Lindell, did not make the Little League team. Although this will sound silly to some people, it was a terrible thing to go through, and I have waited, as the snow started melting again, with dreadful anticipation for this year’s tryouts. I’m a big proponent of real competition and only giving winners the trophies they’ve earned, but that doesn’t make it any less brutal when your own child is on the losing side of things.