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By Virginia Moran

June 8, 1999 | T-ball is just about the perfect game. No pitcher, no innings, no outs added up, no score. For kindergarten boys and girls, it's non-competitive heaven. They do their best to hit the ball off the tee, run to first (when they've figured out what "first" means), where a parent stands to tell them when to try for second. And then there's the coach, showing them how to bat, urging them to run, yelling, "Third, third!" like mad, cheering them all the way home. They go into the field not when three hapless kids have made outs, but when half the team has batted.

I'm a T-ball mom. If national elections took place in the spring, we T-ball moms would be as famous as soccer moms. In fact, we're the same people. In the fall, we drive our kids and their black and white balls to practice, then switch to hauling their baseball gloves and bats in the spring.

I'm not just a T-ball mom, I'm a single T-ball mom. I don't know if those other three moms at every practice, every game are single moms too. We don't ever talk about it. There is a game to get on with.

Among the moms who come alone, one is the proud parent of a very talented boy who, at 6, deserves the batting gloves he wears. There is another mother whose child plays like a pro. Her older son is there too, and after T-ball is over, she takes him to his softball game. Then there is the very attractive woman with long, dark hair, the mother of a veteran player who shows the younger ones how it's done.

And there's me, midlife mother of two of the worst players on the team. Call them inexperienced if you'd like. Call one too young -- at 5 years old, he spent the whole first practice in his position on the pitcher's mound with his back to the hitter, facing the outfield. Well, that was where all the people were, wasn't it? He spent the next few games playing in the dust. And, despite the verbal gold medals he'd given himself, he soon gave up altogether and sat with me. Luckily, the season wasn't over yet.

I don't know if all the T-ball coaches are as good as Rusty. And I don't know a thing about Rusty outside of T-ball. I don't know what he does all day. And I don't know where his wife is. (Though Rusty's son plays on the team, no mom is there to watch him.) I've never seen him get put out with any of the dust-kicking, inattentive kids. Rusty claims he isn't nearly as patient with anyone over 7.

I don't care. I'm in love with him.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not confessing, or sending a valentine. I'm here to testify that there's a change in what a woman finds desirable after she has to raise her children on her own. That regular, pre-kids attraction -- which is often based on things like availability or looks or shared interests -- gets overpowered by an ability to fall in love with a man because he's kind to your kids. This happened to me with the soccer coach too -- and his wife was at every practice. There is just something about a grown man kneeling next to my child explaining how to hit or kick a ball that does me in. When the soccer coach mussed my 6-year-old's hair in that fatherly way, the kid and I were both gone.

My children's father moved 600 miles away two years ago. He had reasons: a new job and our troubled marriage. My children's father is a good man. He sees them when he can, calls, sends money. He would be with them if exigencies of professional life and emotional pressure allowed him to. But they don't. And we all have to get on with our lives. I teach minority students whose families are often led by a mother. To me the only new aspect in the disturbing trend of fatherless families was that mine became one of them.

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