My baseball team is complete

My sister Teresa called Sunday to ask if my baseball team had been completed.

Yes it had.

Tobias "Toby" Escobar was born to son Teddy and daughter-in-law Sabrina last Wednesday in Spokane. He is my ninth grandson.

I have one granddaughter, Cecilia Neal, in Texas. I call her the cheerleader. The family insists she's Princess.

Toby was born just about ready to play. He's one-foot-nine, 135 (ounces).

Toby's first gift from grandpa will be a wiffle bat. Soon after he starts walking, I'm going to unveil the team uniform for all nine.

Baseball is a big deal in our family. Dad played for the Billings (sugar) Beet Toppers in Montana in the 1930s.

The team was actually dominated by my Franco uncles. The only way Dad could get near Mom in those days was to join the team.

Mom's brothers were so bad that she lived with the eldest (her father was deceased) for one week, after the wedding, and then moved in with Dad.

Funny thing about all this is that Dad never let on that he liked the game. When we wanted to play growing up, all my brothers and I heard was, "It's time to work," and we did.

We played ball in those moments dad wasn't around. I finally learned about his love of the game when we sat down in the 1990s and he told me his life story.

Dad and his 20-ish Montana friends traveled all over that state, Wyoming and Idaho by hopping freight trains looking for work. They always had their gloves, bats and baseballs.

"If there wasn't any work when we arrived in a town, we went to the local park and played until they called us for work," he said.

That may explain my daughter Berney Neal at last year's Franco family reunion. She was seven months pregnant with No. 8, Maximilian Neal, and she played in the family wiffle ball game.

Many of us suggested Berney have a runner. No, she said. She was going to hit the ball and run her own bases, and she did outrun a couple of infield grounders.

The cool thing about Max is that he and his brothers Jude and Blaise have baseball blood from both parents. His dad, Andrew Neal, hit a Babe Ruth triple off of former Mariners relief pitcher Eric O'Flaherty when they played youth baseball in Walla Walla.

I was a fair baseball player, but most of the good baseball blood comes from brother Bob of Spokane, uncle to all of these kids. He was on the Yakima Valley Community College team when YVCC was the best JC program in the state and one of the best in the country.

The rest of my grandson baseball team lives in Spokane. Manuel, 17, Juan, Mateo and Amadeus were produced by son Grover and daughter-in-law Laura. Toby has a 2-year-old brother, Ray.

Toby should be ready to play in a couple of years. I'll be 70 then and about ready for a chair on the sidelines.

Or I could coach. I'd love to be called skipper.