Hoppers Fever

I am enjoying my first summer with tee ball for my son Cooper.  He is five and we signed him up to play in the local Y league not far from our house.  We've had a couple of games so far, a few more left to go, but Coop is really enjoying playing so far.  Really, he likes hitting, and is working on the fielding aspect of the game.  We have had a tee and a bat since he was two or three.  This is him as a three year old hitting off a tee in the snow.....

One of the best parts of having my son in the tee ball league is the fact that the teams are named after Minor League teams in the area.  There are the obvious local choices like the Bulls (Durham) and the Mudcats (Carolina-Eastern Raleigh suburbs), but then there are a few others that maybe not all of the kindergarten aged tee ballers know very well.  For example, yesterday his team played the Sand Gnats which was a team that played in Savannah (not too nearby) up until this year when they moved to Columbia, South Carolina and are now the Fireflies.  

Of course, Cooper's team is also named after a near by team too.  He is playing for the Grasshoppers which is named after the Marlins A-Ball affiliate the Greensboro Grasshoppers.  

Complete with the orange scheme and the Grasshoppers hat.  This is Cooper patrolling second base against the Bats (Louisville).

Anyway, the exposure to minor league teams has peaked his interest a little more in some of my cards he has traditional ignored.  If I got a new card and he recognized the team, like the Cardinals and Tigers, he would ask me some particulars about the card.  Durham Bulls cards too, but the rest of the Minor League teams were completely irrelevant.  So, this week when this card showed up in my mailbox.....

There were a lot of questions and comments....

Is this guy on my team?  Not sure he's really a Grasshopper.  

We wear orange shirts with a grasshopper, not green shirts with a grasshooper.

Is that my coach?  

Do you really want this card?  I like this one, you can get it back later this afternoon.  

Luckily I got it back unscathed and put it in my scanner, then found it a home in a card box.  In exchange for returning my card back to me, we are going to go check out a Greensboro Grasshoppers game in few weeks during our summer vacation away from school.  I actually went to a Hoppers games last summer and sat right behind Tyler Kolek while he was charting pitches.  

Kolek will not be there this summer since he is recovering from Tommy John surgery, but the whole run in kind of made me a fan.  I haven't picked up too many of his cards, but I also like the patch cards out of Topps Pro Debut, so this one was a easy choice.  Hopefully I can keep it in my card box and avoid having it wander off this summer....