Last summer a friend of mine was staying with us for a week in order to get some work done and one of the things we did during his visit for “recreation” was play wiffle ball.

Well, one evening we were out there playing and it got dark. It was so dark during my last at bat, that I honestly couldn’t see the ball at all.

Well, my friend was up by three runs on me, it was the bottom of the 9th inning, the bases were loaded, there were two outs and I had two strikes on me.

It’s easy to cheer when you’re in the “home team’s stands”. The real measure of your devotion comes when you’re in the enemies’ camp.

Several months ago, the high school basketball team from the town in which we attend church, made it to the state finals. We excitedly made the two and a half hour trip to the State Capital to watch the championship game.

When we arrived, we didn’t know which side of the stadium we were supposed to sit on to support our team.

It was shortly after tip-off that we realized we were surrounded by fans from the opposing team.

When I was a freshman in high school, I picked up a tennis racket for the first time.

Three friends and I formed the tennis team at our school and we embarked on what would become a four-year trek together that left us with a flood of wonderful memories.

Wonderful memories – except for the district tournament during that first year.

You see, none of us really knew how to play tennis. And that was all fine when we played each other, but when we met up against other teams from other schools that were comprised of players who had been playing tennis for years, that was a different story.

My dad has always been my biggest fan. As a youngster, I excelled in sports…and my dad was always an active part of my athletics.

Early on, I played a lot of baseball. Summer after summer my dad would load up our truck and cart half of my team to our games. Home games, away games, regular games, all-star games, tournament games – my dad was at all of them.

He was always there, in the stands, cheering on his son, proud as he could be of me…whether I made that game-winning unbelievable catch in the tournament game or I struck out with the bases loaded. I was his son and he was proud of me.