Twice as nice: one brother throws left and bats right; the other throws right and bats left, and now they're finally together on the same baseball team, fulfilling a father's dream.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.
• Position: SPORTS SCENE

OF ALL THE REAL AND IMAGINED joys of parenting, I cannot escape the cliched--but wonderful--experience of watching my boys play Little League baseball together. In past winters, when they shared the same basketball court (Alex as a power forward and occasional small center with pretty good ball-handling ability; Trevor the nimble point guard who seems to be everywhere at once) or hockey rink (both able, stay-at-home defensemen, although I still insist on calling them The Rocket and Pocket Rocket after the legendary goal-scoring Richard brothers--Maurice and Henri--of Montreal Canadiens' fame), a father's pride was quite evident... my chest puffing out almost as far as my bulging middle-age gut.

They also are fine soccer players--as is their older sister Julie, a speedy (and, this season at least, high-scoring) midfielder whose feisty tenacity in battling for loose balls belies her angelic (at least according to her dad) looks--with the younger Trevor (8) tagging along with Alex (10) to Travel Team soccer practices and even jumping into some scrimmages and summer league games if the club was short a player. Still, I yearned to see them on the diamond together. The opportunity came when Alex--a flashy-glove-but-only-okay-hitting first baseman--unexpectedly made the Travel (or Tournament) Team last summer. The manager and one of his coaches double as board members for the local "inhouse" baseball league, so I seized on the chance to plead my case: Trevor, while no superstar, was good enough to play with the older kids, and since the next league up was now a combination of nine- and 10-year-olds, why not make his old man happy and let him move up to be with his brother? The clincher came when I pointed out that the boys' basketball coach also managed baseball, and Trevor would be with all his teammates from the hoops squad--and, if he was old enough to play basketball with those guys, why not baseball, too? The league relented, and my boys, much in the tradition of the renowned Waner Brothers----Paul and Lloyd (Big Poison and Little Poison) of the Depression-era Pittsburgh Pirates--found themselves on the same roster. As an added bonus, the manager lost his bench coach of the last three years, and asked me to step in. (Is this too good to be true, or what?)

Now, to backtrack, I already had received one of those slow-down-big-fella lessons from Alex, who, although he is the spitting image of yours truly, thankfully has the heart and mind of his...