Caleb has always loved baseball. He played when he was younger and even into his freshman year of high school. Once he transferred schools, he decided to focus only on running, which did pay off in college, but he always wondered what would have happened if he had continued to play.

During his last deployment to Okinawa, he and the other Marines had a lot of downtime, so they played in a softball league. Turns out, he’s still got it!

When he came home from deployment, we moved and had a baby right away, so we didn’t do much last fall other than survive. 🙂 But now that we are settled into our new home and life with a little one, he found another softball league here on base at Quantico. He plays with a group of guys from his command (both Marine and civilian). All summer they battled it out! His team did well riiiiight up until the playoffs.

Fortunately though, there was another tournament that he was able to be a part of. So he went on to play in an inter-base tournament with over 130 teams! Of those 130 teams, his was the top two! Those top two teams were awarded the opportunity to play on the Nationals field in the Battle of the Bases game and even meet some of the Nationals players.

Caleb was like a little kid whose face lit up when he was preparing to play on a professional field! The Battle of the Bases took place on September 14th. It was particularly awesome because of all the bases in DC and the surrounding areas (there are Army, Air Force, and Marine bases, as well as the Naval Yard), both teams that made it to the finals were Marine teams!

Unfortunately, Caleb’s team didn’t win in the final, but he was still living out a Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez Sandlot moment, and I was so thankful to be able to be there to watch it happen!