Our family traveled to Seattle two weeks ago for a softball tournament.  Our youngest daughter was pitching at the Western Nationals, and I was ready for a week of sunscreen, sunflower seeds and cheering.

But somehow, some way, my thoughts still managed to turn to genealogy. 

I enjoyed the softball games, but I confess I was often the one asking, "what inning is this?" and "what's the score?"  After the games we would discuss the action, and it was obvious that my husband, who spent the game fulfilling his duty as official scorekeeper, had picked up on a lot more than I did.  He picked up on nuances I missed, and was able to see the "personality" that each game developed.  

It became apparent to me that being scorekeeper kept him engaged in the game and dramatically increased his enjoyment of it.  While I had fun, I really missed quite a bit.  And that's when it hit me...Softball had something to teach me about Genealogy. 

Continued from Newsletter...As scorekeeper, my husband recorded all the relevant details of the game - each hit, each error, each pitch, and so on.  In doing so, he often missed out on getting caught up in the emotion of the game as the other spectators did.  Instead, he started to see the bigger picture; to be able to anticipate what each hitter was likely to do…even anticipate where the BALL was likely to go!

More than once I would say, “Wow, so and so had some great hits today!”  which was my emotional response to the big hits.  But he could look at the compiled numbers and say “yeah, but this other player got more hits that got her on base.”  The hits were not line drives, but they accomplished the goal: getting on base.