Today's cocktail: Golden Glove

Today's ingredients: light rum, triple sec/Cointreau, lime juice, sugar

With apologies to Don Henley, baseball season is here. Like a lot of kids around here, I grew up playing and watching baseball. I was never particularly good at it (fat kid with bad eyesight), but I was good enough to start most of my Little League games, usually at third (I had good arm strength) or first (I was fat). About that time, cable was becoming a thing, and "superstations" were coming into their own, so we got Cubs and Braves games pretty regularly on TV. I stopped playing when aged out of Little League to play in some basketball leagues and eventually take up wrestling until I went to college.

I don't keep up with baseball like I used to, especially after I realized that fantasy baseball was consuming my life (I no longer play), but I do enjoy the game. Having the Charlotte Knights recently move back into town makes it easy to go catch a game on a whim. When I lived closer, I'd go see a Kannapolis Intimidators game on occasion, which was like sitting in the middle of Bull Durham. People complain that baseball games are too long, but I blame that on increasingly short attention spans. People want constant action and getting whipped up into a frenzy, which might partly explain the growing popularity of soccer, which is fine, but try hockey sometime (go Checkers!), where fighting is not only allowed but encouraged. Anyway, I absolutely love sitting at the ballpark for a few hours, regardless of the quality of the game itself (I've been known to do my share of good-natured heckling), and generally just being.

I had planned a soapbox rant here against repetitive-motion sports activities among children, often forced upon them by parents trying to live vicariously through their kids' competition since their own souls and dreams had long ago been Hoovered out of their chest cavities, but I figured that might get a little dark(er) and, well, soapbox-y. Suffice it to say that I am solidly against most organized sports for children--note the words "sports" and not "activities" since there's a difference. Free-play is great, and if a child wants to pursue a particular sport on his/her own, cool, but the militant, year-round drumbeat of having every second of every day set out like an airline schedule is ridiculous. For a better idea of my opinion on the matter (as if you care), check out Until It Hurts by Mark Hyman. Children are children, not little adults, and the rampant proliferation of organized youth sports is a virus that is not helping to develop healthy children, only unhealthily overinflated parental egos.

(Yes, that was NOT the soapbox, just the Cliff's Notes version. Anyway...)

Golden Glove

If you're thinking, "hey, that looks like a margarita," then you're right. There aren't many famous or classic baseball-themed cocktails out there, at least not forced ones. The closest thing I could find was this one:

• 2oz rum
• 0.5oz lime juice
• 1tsp Cointreau
• 1tsp sugar
• Combine all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake, and strain into rocks or lowball glass filled with ice. Garnish with lime.

So that's a tad bit involved for us, but we'll make the sacrifice for baseball. Plus, the wife wanted to use some props in the pictures. Different variations used different types of rum, so it's your call on this one--just don't used spiced rum. Any light or *shudder* gold rum will work.

Despite the sugar, it's still a pretty tart drink, and if you're put off by the tequila in a margarita, this is a good alternative and is generally great all-around for a summertime cooler, though you could easily blow through a couple of these before remembering, "oh, hey, this has alcoho--..."